BWWM Interracial Romance 5: Love After Halftime by Elena Brown

 
    Marlene Rhodes sat at her desk, grading exams for her Feminism in Chick Lit class and sighed, reaching for her cup of coffee. Finding it empty, she glanced up from her desk to find the sky outside the high windows had changed from gracious mid-afternoon light to the hard orange-blue warning of evening falling.
    She chuckled and peered at the stack beneath her current exam: only eight more to go. She stood and stretched, debating whether or not to walk down the hall to the faculty break room and get a refill or use the lack of caffeine as a challenge to finish grading her exams before she “rewarded” herself with a fresh cup.
    Marlene was always challenging herself like that. Her life was one of discipline, order, and routine. Well, it had to be. After her father’s scandalous affair, her mother’s bitter divorce, her father’s messy remarriage and subsequent filing for bankruptcy, Marlene had learned that giving in to impulses could only lead to ruin – hence her rigidly structured life.
    Gritting her teeth, she sat back down and promptly attacked the term papers. She was halfway through the rest of the stack when the clattering of high heels in the empty hallway announced one of three things: a wayward co-ed wanting to learn after hours, a very well-dressed janitor… or her best friend and recent divorcee Tina Hinkson.
    “You forgot, didn’t you?” Tina scolded from the doorway, waving a fresh cup of coffee in her hand.
    “Forgot what?” Marlene asked, even as she suddenly remembered. “Oh honey,” she said, standing from the desk. “I… I’m so sorry.”
    She wrapped Tina up in a warm embrace, always worrying she’d smother the poor white girl. Tina was so tiny and, well, as a size-16, Marlene wasn’t.
    “I just can’t go for Girls Night this week.”
    Tina slumped into one of the student desks and frowned. “This makes three weeks in a row, Merl,” she said, using her nickname for Marlene. “And before I bullied you into it last time, we’d gone almost a month!”
    “It’s mid-terms,” Marlene argued, waving her hand at the stack of papers on her desk. “And besides, I still have to log all these when I get back and I haven’t done laundry and…” Marlene’s voice trailed off, watching Tina’s face. She felt bad lying to her friend, but how could she tell Tina the real reason she couldn’t go out with her.
    Marlene sighed and bit the bullet. The poor woman had just been through a divorce and, having gone through that with her own mother years earlier, Marlene knew how much Tina needed a friend right. “All right, girl,” she teased, waving her ebony hand toward the coffee cup and earning a squeal in reply. “Hand it over and I’ll let you bribe me for a night out at Sullivan’s.”
    “Only if you commit to three drinks,” Tina negotiated playfully.
    “Two,” she said, snatching the coffee cup. “And no conga lines this time!”
    Tina clapped with newly empty hands and stood, twirling around the room in a black mini skirt and bling tank top, already decked out for the night.
    In comparison, Marlene felt dowdy in her gray slacks and matching blazer.
    “Come on, come on then,” Tina teased from the doorway. “Happy hour’s starting any minute.”
    “I just have to drop these off at my office first,” Marlene said. “Meet me down in the car?”
    “It’ll be out front and running,” Tina promised, leaning in for a sisterly kiss on Marlene’s chubby cheek before drifting away in a cloud of perfume and anticipation.
    Marlene gathered her things and did put them in her office, but that was where the truth ended. Glancing down the hall to make sure Tina was gone, Marlene dialed a familiar number and bit her lip, nervously, as she waited for a reply.
    “Please go to voicemail,” she murmured, “please go to voicemail, please… Oh, Joe!” she said pleasantly when he answered, despite shaking her fists at the missed opportunity. Why she hadn’t texted him, Marlene had