Free Hold Me in Contempt by Wendy Williams

but I thought it had something to do with intimacy. With being touched again. Moved from inside of my body. For all of her man trouble, Tamika explained it best. “It’s like finding the right dance partner,” she said one night when we were drinking wine on her front steps in Brooklyn. “Y’all step together. Y’all groove together.”
    â€œI came to your office twice today,” Paul said, looking up at the ceiling over my couch.
    â€œYeah, you shouldn’t have done that. Not the way everyone talks. They already think something’s going on. Easter Summer keeps sniffing around, asking questions. I think she’s—”
    â€œI’ve missed you. I’m going crazy,” he cut in.
    â€œPaul, we had to stop.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘Why’? You’re my boss. That’s why,” I said. “Don’t pull me back into this. I was doing well. It’s been two months. Let’s just move on.” I picked up my shoes and trudged to the bedroom to escape smelling him, looking at his body relaxed on my couch.
    I put the shoes in place and thought about how I was going to get Paul out of my apartment.
    Before, he’d broken me down without me even knowing it. I was so lonely. Soon I started responding to his texts. Then he showed up at my door with flowers one night. God, I was so stupid. But still, it felt good. Felt too good to be wanted. Sought after. Chased. He claimed the flowers were to congratulate me on some case I’d won. I pointed out that they were roses. Red roses. He laughed and kissed me on the forehead. “Maybe they’re about something else, then,” he’d said. Maybe that was when it all began.
    â€œYou’re so fucking sexy,” I heard Paul say from my bedroom door. “I never understood why you don’t believe that about yourself. Make a nigga get hard just looking at you.”
    I turned to look at him roll his eyes up my calves and over my butt. I loved that shit about him—how he could say something vulgar and make it sound so sexy.
    â€œFuck,” he said.
    â€œSo, that’s what you miss?” I asked.
    â€œYou know it isn’t about that. You know what it was,” he said, stepping into the bedroom.
    My heart quivered and I held my hand up fast to stop him from approaching me. If he took one more step, the sixty days I’d spent trying to erase whatever we’d been doing would die in the sheets on my bed. Paul was one of those brothers whose swagger made it hard to turn him down. Hard to say no to him. And he knew it, too. Licked his lips and grinned all day long. Said the perfect thing to make any woman melt. He used it everywhere. Even at work. When he walked by in the office, every woman stopped to take all parts of him in; even men looked to admire. I was determined to get off that train.
    â€œI already told you, yes. Fine. We did have a connection. You’re cool. We’re cool, but that doesn’t change the facts. You’re my boss,” I said.
    â€œI’ll quit.”
    â€œYou’re married.”
    â€œSeparated. And we’re talking about divorce.”
    â€œYou’re lying.”
    â€œYou’re beautiful.”
    I hadn’t noticed it, but as I was speaking, Paul was stepping in closer to me, and then he was directly in front of me. His cleft chin was dangling over my forehead like an apple I had to bite.
    â€œYou miss me?” he asked. “Just tell me.”
    â€œYes,” I said so softly, and then I knew I was failing at mission Get Paul out of Your Apartment and likely embarking upon mission Do the Wrong Thing Again.
    â€œLet’s not miss each other anymore,” Paul whispered seductively with his mouth so close to my ear, his breath sent butterfly wings down my spine and I was cured of pain. That’s what he’d been to me since Ronald was gone. Something like a cure. A healer. The