Free Wishes in Her Eyes by D.L. Uhlrich

Chapter 1
What I Desire
    While at the spa with my best bud, suffering through the pain of eyebrow threading, I start thinking of the things we women put ourselves through to find, attract and keep a man. Things such as wearing uncomfortable undergarments that floss your ass or hold your tits captive and enduring painful shoes to enhance your legs, but make your feet look like some unexplained deformity. Getting things lifted, tucked, pulled removed and/or added just for the sake of vanity. Personally, I object to all these acts of torture, but here I sit having my feet grated, my nails hot glued and eyebrows ripped out. Oh, I say it’s to make me feel better about myself, but if I were really honest, I knew I was going through all this to look more appealing to a potential mate.
    “Sweetheart, he wants you.”
    “Huh? What?” I say as my best friend brings me out of my musings. He had been bitching at me for the last thirty minutes to approach our co-worker and the guy who happened to be my workplace crush.
    “Harper, are you listening to me?”
    “Uh, I’m sorry. What were you babbling about?” I say, just to piss him off.
    “I’m not now, nor have I ever babbled. Pearls of wisdom fall from these lips.”
    “Alright, alright, Darry. What pearl were you spewing forth?”
    “I was saying that he looks at you like he’s on death row and you’re the last piece of ass he’ll ever have.”
    “No he doesn’t. That’s the way I look at him, not the way he looks at me.”
    “Why do we have this same argument every time we talk about him?”
    “No. This is the same argument
you
have every time
you
talk about him. I try not to bring the subject up because we’re never gonna go any further than office acquaintances. He’s the kind of man that would like music-video-model-type women. I can hold my own, but I’m not by anybody’s definition, a music-video-type woman.”
    “Ugh! You’re exasperating! I could have a better conversation with my $1200 Kenneth Cole shoes.”
    “Then talk away.”

    The workplace isn’t exactly the ideal location to meet a perspective bed partner, but where else could I meet my dream man? I’m a Christian who’d fallen off the highway to heaven wagon long ago so I don’t go to church. Grocery stores aren’t safe and bars are out of the question, so that leaves me with work.
    Flirting at work is dangerous, what with people who aren’t even in the conversation able to claim sexual harassment. It’s especially perilous in corporate America, but somehow, I knew Darry was going to find a way for me to get around this teeny, tiny little problem.
    Darius. Darry, to all his friends, is a six-foot, two-inch-tall man with cocoa—colored skin and impeccable taste in clothes. He’s built like a linebacker and is gorgeous by any standard. He has razor sharp wit and an acid tongue. He is also the gayest man to hit the streets since RuPaul tugged on panty hose.
    He’s as outspoken as he is beautiful. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Men love him because he’s ravenous and women hate him because he can turn even the straightest man out. He’s also the subject of most women’s hate because he doesn’t discriminate against married men. In Darry’s opinion, a man, is a man, is a man. If they don’t have sense enough not to stray, that isn’t Darry’s problem.
    Darry has champagne tastes because he has a champagne budget. His family comes from old money so he’s accustomed to a certain way of living and he definitely lives a life befitting the queen that he is.
    Darry and I work in one of Kansas City’s biggest banks where he’s a risk management executive and I’m a fraud investigator. Our departments are fairly close in proximity so we pop in and out of each other’s offices at least once a day. We have been BFFs and joined at the hip since he moved to Kansas City ten years ago. I love him dearly, but he’s determined to play matchmaker. I told him one time that he was not