I decided to switch gears and just have fun. The rest of the night went pleasantly. Donovan was a perfect gentleman the whole time. We quit talking so intensely and changed the mood to that of young folks having fun on a date. I liked that. We were still being incredibly open with one another.
I was ecstatic when Donovan took out his credit card when the bill came. He had no idea how much that meant to me. Not because I’m a gold digger by any means. It was that Donovan wasn’t a gold digger. As if I had any gold to offer him? Still, I needed to know if this guy had some genuine gentlemen qualities. That was what was most important to me.
We talked and walked all night. We didn’t shop. We didn’t need to. Just walking by his side and feeling his hand inside mine was a nice place to be. I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to be here much longer. My emotions couldn’t handle it, and it was slowly breaking me up inside.
Eventually, the date came to an end. I took Donovan back home to his house and I still hadn’t asked him yet why he didn’t have a car. Maybe there was a part of me that didn’t mind picking up this gorgeous guy and hauling him around town.
I was pulling my car into his driveway.
This is where it’s going to be weird. If he just steps outside and doesn’t say anything, what does he expect me to do?
I parked my Mazda all the way up on the driveway. Donovan looked at me and didn’t open his door. “You want to know something?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I think you’re a real cool chick.”
“A cool chick?” I said nodding.
“Okay... forget the chick part. I think you’re a gentle soul that reminds me of a couple of different people in my life.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
Donovan gave me a look as if to say why did you ask me that? Then he took a deep breath and squealed a tad. Again, with the squealing. I never had a guy squeal, ever on a date, for any reason whatsoever. While Donovan and Robert are having a squeal-off.
“You remind me of my mother. Not in a weird maternal way, but in her spark, in her eyes. She gave me comfort much as you do. She was a bit fragile just as you are.”
“Who is the other?”
“The only other person that ever reminded me of my mother.”
Then it dawned on me he was saying I reminded him of his first love.
“The woman from Italy?” I asked.
Donovan smiled. He nodded his head slightly to confirm my question.
Was he full of crap?
“Donovan!” I just came out and said, loudly. “Are you being truthful with me?”
“I don’t think I have ever lied to you about anything.”
“You don’t think?” I asked. “Do you lie that often?”
“I’m not really a liar, I omit details if I think it benefits myself or the person I’m talking to. For the most part, I always try to be as honest as I can.”
“Okay, let me ask a direct question, so there isn’t a way to omit any part of the answer.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Donovan said.
“The first time you kissed me was there any spark in the kiss from your end?”
“You questioned the authenticity of our first kiss?” Donovan asked.
“I don’t want to.”
“Sahara, our first kiss came from a real place. Just as all the rest of our kisses have.” Donovan looked at me as if he was being as real and honest as one humanly could be without being a sociopath.
“I want to ask you a question it is probably unfair if me to even ask it, but I’m laying it out there because it’s that important to me.” I paused and looked at Donovan and said. “Are you promiscuous?”
Donovan stared at me and laughed a little under his breath. I wasn’t sure what that response meant my curiosity didn’t last long when Donovan said.
“I don’t do that. I have never done that. I have been offered a lot of money to become a male escort multiple times and I turn it down every time.”
Donovan looked at me as if he was a saint for not sleeping with women for money.
“Why would you turn it down?” I asked. “I mean...I know why I would turn it down. I was wondering, what were your reasons?”
“I believe each time two people make love, even in a one-night stand or an agreement, as you were...that person is permanently imprinted on your soul. There is a closeness that happens between two people when intercourse happens. To participate in it frivolously is just irresponsible.”
I took a step back and tried to process what Donovan had just said to me. Damn, I wanted to be imprinted on his soul. This guy was saying all the right words and pushing all the right buttons and we were still sitting in the front seat of my Mazda.
“Would you like to come in?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean no. I want to, but I know I can’t. Not yet. I hope you understand.”
What was that?
“Can you at least get out, so I can give you a proper hug goodbye?” Donovan said in a cute way.
“Of course,” I said. I opened my door and got out and just walked over to Donovan. I knew I wanted to kiss him, feel, him, taste him, and love him.
Donovan and I embraced at the front of my car. I left my high beams on, so my car was blasting us with major headlight action. It was epic, like a goodbye scene from an old movie.
Donovan looked me in the eyes and said, “I had about as much fun as I’ve ever had on a date.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not. You are really fun to hang out with. Are you sure you don’t want to go inside?” Donovan pressed his body up against me. My back was now pressed up against the hood. I could feel him getting stronger as he pressed. It was good to know that he was sexually attracted.
Unfortunately, I was going to have to leave him to take a cold shower. I just couldn’t allow myself to be with one man and have strong feelings for another. That was why I couldn’t sleep with either Robert or Donovan. I held my ground and Donovan backed up when he sensed my hesitation.
Very inquisitive.
“Donovan, I need to go. I had a lovely time and thank you for paying for dinner.”
“Of course. I’m the man,” Donovan said.
“Yeah, Donovan, you’re the man,” I said, smiling.
“Donovan,” I asked simply. “Why don’t you own a car?”
Donovan froze for one quick moment, but long enough that I saw. It was freaky. It reminded me how weird that guy at the all-night market acted when he was under one of Paris’s spells. Paris’s spell was absolutely screwing with my head on a level that was slowly making me feel like I was going insane.
I repeated my question. “Why don’t you own a car?”
Donovan stared into my eyes and a tear began to drip as he stared without blinking. “I don’t own a car for a reason that I have never told another soul.”
I looked at Donovan and I had no idea if he would continue speaking. I was hoping he would. I was intrigued, to say the least. This was going to be deep and tragic. I felt a crazy story coming on.
“My dad was Rodney Haynes,” Donovan said.
“Why does that name sound really familiar?”
“He was one of top ten auto racing stars of all time.”
“How come you have a different last name?”
“Because my dad was a racecar driver when they were still trying to sell the sport to America and he changed his name so it sounded easier to say and more American. It just rolled off people’s tongues a lot easier, kind of like Fred Astaire instead of Frederick Austerlitz. Or Michael Caine instead of Maurice Micklewhite.”
I smiled and waited for more.
Donovan paused and I knew he was just trying to get ready to tell me the hard parts.
“The weekend before he died, I was ten years old, like I said. For some strong reason, I knew my father shouldn’t leave and race that weekend. He had a fever, and he needed to be checked into a hospital, not going to a racing competition. I ha
d never asked my dad for anything. I was always too afraid to. But not on that day. That day, I asked my dad not to go race. I was worried. He looked so pale and sick. I pleaded with him to the point that I was on my knees holding his leg, so he wouldn’t leave through that door. I knew it was going to be the last time I would see him.”
“How did you know that?”
“Something told me. I had always felt it was a power of some sort. You can call it God. But I was being prepared for what I was going to witness on my black and white TV set that I had in my room as a kid. That was where I watched my dad’s races, as he didn’t want to be worried about me sitting in front, in the stands. It was dangerous.”
My eyebrows raised a bit. I believed everything I was hearing and I knew Donovan was going to a dark place that I don’t think he had ever revisited since this had happened almost twenty years ago.
I practically held my breath, waiting for him to speak.
Donovan lips began to quiver. The tears kept coming and I felt selfish.
Or was I being selfish? He seemed to voluntarily want to tell me his deepest, darkest secret. But is he under a love spell or not? I knew in my heart of hearts that he was speaking the truth. I wanted to know everything there was to know about this man. And if it all turned out to be a fairytale, then so be it. Right now, he was making a believer out of me.
Donovan looked at me and simply said, “During the race, and going into the curve, my dad crashed into a wall. At first, they said he died on impact.”
“Was the crash because he was sick?” I asked.
“Being sick didn’t help, but racecar driving killed him. I saw the whole thing on TV alone in my room. Alone in my house. I saw the whole thing play out like a docudrama right in front my eyes. They wheeled my daddy out on a gurney right there on live TV. I didn’t even know if he was alive. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing his corpse on a gurney being dragged along the racetrack to get into an ambulance. Even as a child, it seemed over the top. Why did they have to wheel my dad along the race track in front of all of the people? Why didn’t the ambulance drive closer?”
“I’m sorry for you,” I said.
“Later, they said he actually died in the ambulance. If that was true, the little stunt the network pulled for a dramatic effect, that he had died on impact, was purely about the television ratings and to make a big show of it to the people in the stands. The traumatized people. Wheeling the gurney down the track just might have been the seconds and minutes he needed so he could have...lived. I don’t want to drive a car. I don’t want to own one. I’m kind of traumatized by the entire scene as it played out. I don’t want history to repeat itself.”
I took in a big breath and let it out. “Where was your mom?”
“She was down the street with the neighbors. The neighbors usually got together and grilled in the front yards and watch the race together, with a TV pulled outside and plugged into a long extension cord. My daddy was really good. He would win or be in the top just about every time he raced. It was a guaranteed show. He was like the folk hero of the neighborhood, before, and after, too.”
“You really loved your father?” I said to Donovan.
“He was the only dad I had, and I knew he wasn’t always right. But he did take me fishing and we played miniature golf once. He called me princess the whole time, to tease me, but at least we did something together.” Donovan stopped talking and took a moment, then he said, “I clearly remember him once telling me that he loved me.”
“When did he do that?” Again, I was feeling so selfish for asking, but I had to know.
Donovan smiled at me as if this was going to be a different kind of memory. Maybe a happy one.
“I was six years old and I got real sick. Strep throat.”
Okay. Maybe not.
“I was going in and out of consciousness on the hospital bed. I heard my dad tell me very clearly that he loved me and he needed me to live so he could have his little buddy back. I opened my eyes and I looked at him and my father, for the very first time, gave me a loving smile. No teasing or calling me princess or cowgirl for being too handsome. He finally called me ‘Donovan.’ And he said he loved me. I had to practically be on my deathbed for him to call me by my real name.”
“I don’t know what to say. That’s one of the most wonderful, yet heartbreaking stories I’ve ever heard.”
Donovan paused and I got the same feeling that he wasn’t done speaking about his father dying. He hadn’t told me about his mother. I was thinking I’d wait for that story until he was ready to share that. I wasn’t going to ask. Not right now.
“I found out every detail about his death from a TV set. As if I was watching someone else’s life. I couldn’t believe it was my dad. My life, too, because he was secretly my hero, you know?”
“Yes, I can see that. Did your mom finally come home and comfort you?”
“Yes,” Donovan said. “Oh, my God. I can’t do this...” He looked like he was in physical pain as he talked to me.
“I mean it. You don’t have to say anything else. I’m not asking you to.”
“I need to tell you. I’m not sure why but I feel incredibly compelled to tell you.”
“But you have never told anyone else?” I asked.
“No. I think it’s time, though.”
“Why now?” I asked. “Why now, with me?”
“I trust you. It’s the way you look at me. It’s as if you see me for the man I am on the inside. Not just for the man I am on the out. I have never told anyone what I’m telling you.”
I was so morbidly interested, I couldn’t stop now. I also knew I didn’t want this guy to get so broken that he couldn’t function. I thought he needed to let this out. I didn’t even want to know what he was trying not to say. All I knew was, he needed to tell someone. And I was the one who was here, so that someone was me.
“Donovan, as much as I want to know more because you have already told me so much, I think...maybe I’m supposed to hear it. I think it will help you. I meant every word,” I said.
Donovan leaned his back up against his garage door. I could see him remembering what happened. He said, “I had found out by the news around 4:00 in the afternoon that my father had died. As I said, my mom was watching the race down the street at her friend’s house. Actually, they were my parents’ best friends. She usually did that when there were Sunday races.”
He seemed stuck on that.
“And then what?” I asked, trying to get him to tell me the rest.
“Once I heard on TV that my daddy had died, I just walked aimlessly outside. The whole neighborhood was out in the yards talking and just looking at me as if I was the ghost of my father. No one came up to me. The neighbors went to each other, but no one felt the obligation to come over to the ten year old who had just seen his dad die on TV.”
I was absolutely mesmerized by what Donovan was saying. “Would you like to go to your living room?” I said. This guy was being way too honest for it to be weird.
“Why would we do that?” Donovan asked.
“So you could sit down and possibly get a Kleenex and a glass of water.” Damn, I was sounding like a mom. I wanted to make it clear we were not going to sleep together. Even though I was going inside, I knew there wasn’t much hope for me if I walked into Donovan’s darkened house at one o’clock in the morning. I could almost hear the farewell trumpet of From Here to Eternity playing on the way in.
I went in anyway.
I sat at the end of his couch. Donovan went into his kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and grabbed a paper towel to wipe his eyes.
“Would you like something to drink?” Donovan asked from the kitchen. I knew he was trying to regain his composure.
“Like alcohol?” I asked.
“No, like water or iced tea,” Donovan answered.
“Do you have alcohol?”
“Sahara, I’ve got half-consumed bottles of wine in the cabinet.”
“No
, thanks,” I said. “I don’t want the alcohol scraps of your one-night stands of the misspent days gone by.” I gave Donavan a wink to let him know I wasn’t being harsh. I was being funny, or at least, trying to be.
“You really think I have slept with gobs of women. I actually know my exact number of woman I’ve been with. Do you know your exact number of men you’ve slept with?” Donovan asked me.
I started counting my love affairs of days gone by in my head really fast. When, I realized I was already at twenty before my college senior trip to Cabo and that had been eight years ago. I had stopped counting and decided that twenty-three was a good number.
“How many men have you slept with, Sahara?”
I looked at Donovan and in my mind I was thinking twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty-three, and I said, “Thirty-eight.”
What the hell did I just admit out loud? Why would I give him my honest answer because Cabo was a long two weeks of free loving in the spring of 2005?
“Wow, that’s a lot more than I thought,” Donovan said.
“Thanks,” I said. Now I felt like a loose Lucy. This conversation just might guarantee me getting out of here, sex-free. “Okay, pretty boy, what about you?”
“Please don’t call me that,” Donovan said.
I immediately felt awful because I remembered how hurtful he said his father was about his masculinity, especially calling him princess.
“Okay, how many?” I asked.
“Fifty-two.”
“Fifty-two? And you act all high and mighty when I said thirty-eight? Fifty-two is a lot.”
“The percentage of women I walk away from is nighty-five percent.”
“That’s insane. Does that mean you have had over a thousand women throw themselves to the point you knew you could have had sex?”
“I’m not proud of it. Well, maybe just a little. But I take pride in not sleeping with just anyone.”
It was hard to believe that he didn’t ask out three women a week, the way he had asked me out the first time at the gym. “How old are you again?” I asked.
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“How old were you when you had sex for the first time?”
“Eighteen.”
“Okay, that was eleven years ago, so that leaves about four or five girls a year. That’s not that insane for a guy who looks the way you do. I think you would have said a number in the 300s.”
“Seriously?” Donovan asked, disgusted.
I nodded because I was being completely honest.
“Wow, you thought I had a lot more and I thought you had a lot less.”
“A lot less?” I pretended to sound insulted. I wasn’t sure to be flattered or disgusted. “So, anyway,” I said. “How did we get on this horrible subject?”
“I think you asked me a question.”
“How come I answered first?” I asked.
“Because I am that good,” Donovan said.
“It’s getting late,” I said, trying to free myself from the sexual clutches of Donovan, before I threw myself at him. “I think I better leave.”
“We were talking about the day my dad died,” Donovan said.
“I don’t want to make you relive the pain. We don’t have to talk about it anymore tonight,” I said.
Donovan looked at me and gave me a strong stare with his beautiful brown eyes. “Okay,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he repeated back to me.
I walked out to my car and Donovan walked me out. He gave me a hug and a kiss on the forehead
“Goodbye, Sahara.”
“Goodbye, Donovan.”
Chapter Twenty-eight