Page 4 of Forbidden Surrogate

He’s all smiles, which bodes well for the conversation. He can’t ask me for anything more insane than taking care of Angela for… years? More than nine months? He never said how long, which makes every minute of putting up with Angela feel even more like a life sentence.

Angela bends her head and keeps cooking, waiting for our father to acknowledge her. I approach the door to greet the man himself, Leandro Taviani, the richest Italian man in Buffalo from good, northern Italian stock. He spreads his arms wide to greet me and I plant kisses on his cheeks before kissing his large, sapphire family ring.

I have one just like it that used to belong to him with an 'L' engraved on the underside. In this family, we hold onto tradition.

"That smells good," he says, sniffing out Angela's lunch within seconds. "You got Angela to cook. Excellent. Spare my hand the trouble of smacking her across the face."

They look alike, Angela and my father. They both resent the resemblance, but she has his brown hair and red cheeks in the winter. It's always cold out in Buffalo, even when it shouldn'tbe, and there always seems to be at least a foot of snow on the ground or falling out of the sky.

"Come sit, have some wine," I respond to my father's comment without taking sides, which could prove dangerous. "Angela says you have business to discuss?"

His body tightens as I mention my sister and business in the same sentence.

"Family business," he says. "Not... anything else."

I don't know if that makes it worse. What family business could he mean?

Chapter Two

Delphine

Buffalo has the most trash ass dating scene in all of America for black women. I said it! Oh, you think it's bad being in some broke ass bartender's nasty ass polyamorous harem in Washington, D.C.? You think scrapping for the last man without a drug charge in small town Mississippi is as bad as it gets? You are dead ass wrong, okay? The worst and I mean the WORST city to date as a black woman in America, is Buffalo.

I have no problem with the fact that the men are all built like plumbers who show their ass crack on purpose. I can ignore the fanatical obsession with a football team that always chokes in the damn playoffs. Hell, I might even get used to the constant snow dumping all over me week after fucking week.

But... The men are demons.

I don't care what anybody says. Demons are born and they run, don't walk, to Buffalo, NY.

This time, I've been knocked so far and so hard onto my ass, that I'm at some Italian dive bar. Drinking alone on a Thursday night. Ain't that some shit?

It's some BUFFALO NEW YORK shit, that's what it is.

The cutesy cocktail names just make my mood worse. "The Blizzard" is some variation of a White Russian, and I've had ENOUGH of White Russians. Or Ukrainians. Or whatever the hell that man was. Romanian? He lied about so much, he could have lied about that too.

The chipper bartender is working her ass off overtime for tips that will send me into further credit card debt. I work in IT at the library, so I can’t earn tips, but I wish I could earn a tip or two hundred considering how much time I spend explaining what a .PDF is to my elders.

I can’t bring myself to care about how much I spend tonight. I need the liquor to hit me like a bus and take me away from my sorrows and hopefully into the arms of a sexy man who owns his own HVAC business.

"You look gloomy!" she says in an annoyingly up-beat tone. "Is it because of the Josh Allen thing?"

There's always something with Josh Allen. If it's not his fragile throwing arm, it's the rest of the football team failing to support him while Patrick Mahomes comes flying down the football field towards the end zone.

"Yeah," I respond, lying through my teeth to avoid trauma dumping. "Football is just–”

"I met him once," she says. "He is the most down-to-earth guy. If it weren't for Hailey Bieber, I would have a chance with him."

He's married to another Hailee, but I don't bother correcting her.

"Anyway," the bartender says. "The music starts in twenty minutes so you can work out that Josh Allen energy on a hottie."

I shudder at the thought of another ‘hottie’. I get caught up too easily to cast my lot with ahotman. The ones who look like plumbers torture me enough. A man who has women throwing themselves at himcannotbe trusted.

"No, thank you. I've had enough hotties,” I say with a dramatic sigh that curls the bartender’s lips upwards. I’ve slipped from small talk into real talk before I realized what was happening.

Damn it. Bartenders are like therapists with quicker access to medicine. They have a way of dragging the tea out of me faster than boiling water over a tea bag.

"Oh? Bad breakup? Were they a Chiefs fan?" she asks, mentally counting the drunken tips she can extort from me, I imagine.

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