| Straight: Serial Stories: The Shades of Passion Chapter 8 (1/6) |
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Janace did not tell Archie that she actually had a well-established history of being involved with black men. Unlike some white women after they had lengthy exposure around black men, her clear business professional’s diction never gave Archie any hint that Soul had been very prominent in her life. She had decided on dating white men after she and Darnell Kennerson went their separate ways back in nineteen ninety-eight. She met Ethan Franks, the man whom she followed to Greenville in two thousand and three. He was a chemical engineer at Mauch Textiles, and it appeared that he would offer her a sense of stability and respectability that any woman would desire. However, their plans for the future went awry after she revealed to Ethan of her past with black men. He confided to his family about the revelation, but his family strongly urged him to end the relationship for fear she would bring shame to their son by eventually finding her way to black men. Who knew that she would? Maybe there was some truth. But the giddiness that was detected in her voice from the morning conversation with Archie had nothing to do with his playful challenge whether she had decided on coming back to black for good. And it certainly had nothing to do with Archie’s effective use of his dick as added incentive. It actually was a matter of nostalgia. Janace always liked her men tall and extremely dark skinned – Archie’s presence at Jake’s party evoked memories of her first taste of ebony with Talmadge Etheridge, whom she shared with him that they had lost contact after he enlisted in the Marines. She had gambled that her intuition would be correct that Archie could also be the man that treated her very close to the way Talmadge had done during those young, impressionable years. She liked Archie’s choice of Anthony’s Downtown because it was a scene that she was entirely comfortable with – albeit it catered to an upscale black clientele. She had longed to hear soft, soulful jazz and feast on some real Southern cooking as opposed to the stodgy ambience of some of the wine-and-cheese places that she and Ethan frequented. If there was one thing she had wanted to do before it was too late in life, she wanted to learn how to cook many of the dishes that many of the black men in her life had loved eating – for starters, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, collard greens, cornbread from scratch, fried fish and homemade peach cobbler. She never got a chance as a teenager to ask Talmadge’s mother, Ernestine, how to prepare some of those dishes that she remembered eating the one time she was invited for a summer cook out at their place. Archie’s years at the car lot transformed him into a punctual person. He called Janace from his cell phone around eight fifteen to inform her that he had just turned off the Pelham Road exit (fifty-four along I-85) and was headed her way. He made sure that all he had to do was head toward down town, and he would find the apartment complex to the left. “When you come in, make sure that you go past the rental office. Once you get past the rental office, look for your first building to your right and that |
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