Her Pleasure

by Niobia Bryant

  Luc set his elbows on the table before leaning over to Jaime. “I’m gone eat you on the ride home,” he promised for her ears alone.

  Jaime stroked his square jawline and softly giggled.

  “Really, y’all? Really?” Renee snapped.

  Both couples looked over to where she sat. “My date for the evening is the bag chair,” she said, waving her hand toward Jaime and Aria’s pocketbooks. “And everyone else is clearly in a pregame mode for sex tonight while I’m Only the Lonely. Real-ly?”

  “Uh-oh,” Luc said, before straightening up in his chair.

  “Last time I saw Jackson he said y’all was still kicking it,” Kingston added, putting his muscled arm behind the back of Aria’s chair.

  He was rewarded with one of Aria’s soft elbows jammed into his side.

  “What?” he asked in confusion.

  Renee arched a brow. “Really? Jackson told you that?” she asked, her tone deceptively soft. “And did he, by chance, Kingston, tell you that I ended things because his dick bends in the middle when it’s as hard as he can get it?”

  “Oh shit,” Aria swore.

  Jaime’s cat-shaped eyes went wide and round with shock.

  Luc covered his mouth with his hand—so he could be laughing or frowning. Who knew?

  Kingston’s eyes were on Renee and he seemed afraid to blink.

  “Huh? Did your best buddy Jackson tell you that, Kingston?” Renee asked. “Huh? Did he ask for your medical assistance, Dr. Kingston, to make it more like wood... than fudge?”

  “Great God,” Aria gasped.

  “No, ma’am,” he said to Renee, although he and she weren’t very far apart in age.

  “You do me a favor, Kingston, since you’re toting news like you work for TMZ. You tell Jackson’s snitch-bitch ass that in Grenada I met a man with a younger, harder, thicker, and longer—”

  “Whoa!” Jaime and Aria said in unison holding up their hands.

  Renee crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in her seat.

  “O-kay . . . so, there’s a cigar station upstairs,” Luc said, rising from his seat to look down at Kingston. “Maybe we should go check it out.”

  “Yeah. Yup. Yes. Yes,” Kingston stressed as he rose as well.

  The men headed across the restaurant to the elevator.

  “Renee. Renee. Renee. Re-neeee,” Jaime said with a wince as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “What?” she asked, relaxing her stance and reaching for her glass of non-alcoholic fruit punch.

  “Why’d you get so mad?” Aria asked. “You knew Kingston and Jackson were still friends and that they talked... the same way you talk to us about stuff. Right?”

  Renee shrugged.

  Jaime eyed her friend’s drink. “Is that alcohol-free?” she asked.

  Renee looked offended. “Being single won’t be enough to make me relapse,” she assured them of her recovery from alcoholism years ago.

  “You and Jackson are done?” Jaime asked.

  Renee nodded. “I need to get on with my life, and figuring out what it looks like these days,” she said, tapping the tip of a coffin-shaped nail against the cloth-covered table. “And I can’t do that with one foot stuck in the past.”

  “True,” Jaime said, thinking of her own quandary.

  Luc was in her heart, but Graham was in her head.

  “You know I’m going to hear about your fudge analogy again later, right?” Aria asked as she picked up a slice of honey-coated cornbread from the napkin-covered basket in the center of the table.

  “Seems to me Kingston should be more worried about fucking the hell out of you then what Jackson and I are up to?” Renee said with a slick side-eye.

  Aria’s mouth fell open and a piece of cornbread threatened to tumble from her tongue. Thankfully, she kept her decorum and swallowed it before responding. “Well damn, what got into you besides Jackson’s fudge?” she snapped.

  “I owed your husband that one,” Renee countered.

  Jaime nodded in agreement.

  “Okay, yes, you did,” Aria agreed. “All these years of marriage and he still doesn’t know what to chew and what to spit out? Damn.”

  “Are things—or his thing—back to normal?” Jaime dared to ask before a sip of water.

  “Wait a minute. It’s not his thing that’s the problem. Kingston is still delivering wood. Thankyouverymuch. It’s the lack of time,” Aria rushed to explain. “Not erection.”

  Jaime bit back a chuckle. Aria really was funny without trying. She did not let her Ivy League education keep the Newark out of her.

  “And no, not yet,” she added with a suck of her teeth.

  “Sanders hit me up on Facebook,” Renee revealed, with her eyes suddenly twinkling with glee.

  “Who?” Jaime and Aria asked in unison.

  “Chocolate Angel.”

  Jaime and Aria shared a look.

  Renee shrugged.

  “I thought that was a vacation fling,” Jaime said.

  “A hit it and quit it,” Aria expanded.

  “Maybe it’s time for another vacation,” Renee said. “Just a little refresher course. He’s game if I am.”

  “Does he want to come here?” Jaime asked.

  “No,” Renee said after a pause that felt meant to tease them.

  The waiter came back to their table. “Would you ladies like to see the dessert menu?” he asked.

  Jaime looked down at her half-finished plate of stuffed pork chops and braised collard greens. “No thank you,” she said, picking up her phone from the table. “I am stuffed.”

  Renee looked up at him and eyed his engraved name tag. “I will, Colin,” she said with a sultry smile as she extended her hand. “What to do suggest?”

  Jaime had been catching up on Graham’s Instagram from her fake account when the huskiness of her friend’s voice caused her to look up with her brows slightly creased. Welp. He’s not gay, she thought as he gave Renee a lingering look.

  “Do you have fudge on the menu?” Aria asked.

  Colin eyed the women as they each snorted with laughter. “We have a fudge brownie a la mode,” he said.

  Aria turned to Renee, barely able to hold in her laughter. “What do you say, Renee, do you want fudge, or have you had enough?”

  Jaime felt for the young man as he looked on innocently.

  “No more fudge,” Renee said, fluttering her fingers at Aria as if to shoo her. “Do you like sweet things, Colin?”

  “Jesus,” Aria drawled.

  “I suggest the sweet potato pie,” Colin said.

  Deciding to mind her business as her friend stepped fully into her cougardom—or pre-midlife crisis—Jaime returned to Graham’s feed. There was a time-lapse photo of a sketch he was doing of a ship during the Atlantic slave trade. She double tapped it to give it a “like”.

  She had convinced herself that she followed him on social media to keep up with his career and his career alone. It was conceivable since he rarely posted himself. Only his art. His one true love.

  She exited the app and then lightly tapped the corner of her phone against her chin. “This was nice,” she said, before sitting her device face down on the table. “We need to do this again... if you and Kingston can make up.”

  Aria chuckled. “Got my man all shook up and shit,” she teased.

  “Kingston and I are fine,” Renee assured them. “And I agree this was fun. Maybe next time I will be dating—”

  “An adult, hopefully,” Aria inserted.

  “And,” Renee continued. “I can bring him along.”

  Aria raised her glass of wine. “And I much prefer Luc to Pleasure.”

  “I will toast to that,” Renee agreed, lifting her glass of fruit punch as well.

  Jaime didn’t join them and instead settled her chin in her hand as she stared at them. “I’ve said it a dozen times over the years and I’ll say it once more—because I’m not sure why my relationship with Graham is stuck in your craw—neit
her of you knows enough about him to continuously judge him,” she said, her annoyance clear.

  “What little we know of the manwhore is enough,” Renee said.

  “Amen to that,” Aria agreed.

  They touched glasses.

  Ding.

  Jaime nodded as she reached for her glass and took another sip. “It’s a good thing everyone’s past and secrets aren’t out on front street to be judged so easily,” she said. “Glass houses and all that. You know?”

  She thought of Renee’s affairs and Aria’s scandalous sexual past.

  Renee and Aria frowned.

  She felt so protective of Graham because she knew his story and she ached for everything he had to overcome. And to see him thriving in his career, having left the sex work behind, she was proud of him, even if the future they hoped for together didn’t manifest. They had both evolved, and some of the past they shared played a role in that. And maybe the space they gave each other to heal also led to the room to grow.

  For damn sure I am not who I used to be . . .

  Aria held up a hand. “Wait, the last time we discussed Graham you were riding him just as hard,” she said, her tone suspicious and accusing.

  Renee nodded in agreement. “Especially after he screwed Jessa,” she added.

  “That didn’t happen,” Jaime said before she could stop herself.

  “And how do you know that?” Renee asked, sounding more like a mother than a friend.

  “Jessa lied,” was all that she said.

  The men returned and she was thankful as that line of questioning faded away.

  It was at that moment that Jaime acknowledged the shift in their friendship, and she wasn’t quite sure if it was just a divide forming between them or a relapse of her old self. She hadn’t shared her secret about Graham, and she doubted at that moment she ever would. The one lesson they all could take from what happened with Jessa Bell all those years ago was to not give anyone the ammunition to judge or destroy you.

  Because friends could become foes.

  * * *

  Luc glanced at his watch.

  It was coming up on four in the morning. He was beat and ready to go home, climb in bed, spoon Jaime, and sleep through the morning. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the view of the security cameras in the apartment. Everything was still and quiet with darkness broken up by small pockets of light throughout the condo. In their bedroom, Jaime was fast asleep on her side with a hand resting on his pillow. He chuckled when she released a little snore.

  “Okay, Kevin, let’s get a playback,” he said to the sound engineer as he turned off his phone and set it back down on the armrest of the leather sofa where he sat.

  “Right up,” the man said as he began to punch buttons on the digital mixer.

  Luc stood up and motioned for Zhuri to come out of the booth. He eyed the petite woman with a bright pink curly ’fro and skin as dark as midnight whose voice seemed bigger than her slight frame. And she was a dynamo, able to sing opera, pop, soulful R&B, and even rap. She played five instruments and wrote her lyrics. She was poised to be the next Alicia Keys or John Legend—with the right positioning, marketing, and rollout. In the music business sometimes talent wasn’t enough.

  “I think I got it,” she said, her voice raspy.

  “I hope so, the meeting at the label is at one,” he said.

  Her eyes played out her nerves. This was her debut album, and everything mattered.

  Luc hugged her to his side. “Listen, talent isn’t the issue. It’s how much talent you have and how to find your voice in the market that is filled with plenty of talented people,” he said trying to reassure her as he had a thousand times since a video of her went viral.

  “I trust you, Luc,” she said, before taking the seat next to Kevin who used that as his cue to let the music—her music—fill the room.

  That made him happy. He was a label head still acting as A&R and he knew it, but there was no one’s ear he trusted more than his own.

  He closed his eyes and slowly began to get lost in the bass blended with a playful piano riff as she sang about heartbreak. He had so much banking on her and securing his new label, so when she hit a raspy riff, then went low and then easily transitioned to a high note, the chills he felt made him emotional.

  Failure was not an option.

  He came from nothing. His grandfather had to die for him to even get a foothold in a country where there was no easy path for men like him. He had to use his grief and misery to find hope and fuel his dreams. He pressed his hand to his chest where a tattoo of his Pop-Pop was over his heart.

  And when she eased right into the pocket as she sang about being hurt but overcoming, Luc looked over at her with pride. The song ended with notes from the piano. “That’s a hit, Zhuri,” he said.

  She smiled. “We got it?” she asked, sounding hopeful, happy, and sleepy.

  “Most definitely,” he said. “I think it’s the first single. It most captures who you are. The thing about your talent is its broadness, but we want to make sure to stick to the right path where your creative voice—what best represents who you are—is heard throughout.”

  Zhuri yawned as she nodded in understanding.

  “Alright that’s it,” Luc said, feeling a yawn of his own coming. “Zhuri, see you tomorrow at the office. One sharp. Kevin, get that to me.”

  “Right away,” the sound engineer said.

  He and Zhuri left together discussing their big meeting the next day.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Sinclair.”

  Luc stopped and looked back. “Good night, Daniel,” he said to the twenty-something young man sitting at the front station of the studio with his schoolbooks spread out before him as he worked his shift.

  A far different picture than when Luc first saw him a year ago when he stopped at a red light and saw him sleeping in a glass bus stop shelter with his head atop his knees that were pulled up to his chest. Luc had gotten him the job at the studio and advanced him money to get a small apartment. Now Daniel was in college and living up to everything he promised Luc he would do with the help he offered him.

  With one last smile and a nod of encouragement, Luc left the building and made sure Zhuri was safely in her ride before he climbed into his vehicle. He checked his email and then opened the file Kevin sent as he connected his phone to the Bluetooth system. Driving through the near-empty streets of New York with one hand, he lightly pounded his free one against his thigh as he listened to the song again and sang along with it. Off-key and not caring. He kept it on repeat, fighting off the fatigue that made every move feel weighted down with sandbags.

  When he finally crawled into bed, Jaime moved closer to him and pressed a hand to his bare chest. He covered it with his own, thankful that his days of being alone and coming home to an empty bed were over.

  Chapter 7

  One week later

  6:08 AM

  Jaime sat on the side of the bed alone. Luc was in the Hamptons at a gathering for music representatives at the home of a retired executive still respected as a mentor in the music industry. He would return later that night. She wore one of his monogrammed dress shirts and when she raised the collar to press it to her bare face the scent of him clung to it and caused an ache deep in her belly. Although she missed him over the last couple of days, she was glad for space. It was needed more than ever.

  I need to clear my schedule.

  She picked up her cell phone but set it down again at the early time. She looked down at her bare feet and wiggled her toes with their white-painted nails that matched her fingers. She’d gotten a mani-pedi at the salon downstairs just the day before.

  Time for a color change. Maybe a glossy black.

  Fuck it. Who cares?

  Jaime released a breath and stood to walk over to the window and look out at the city awakening as the sun rose in the sky. It appeared white amid the deep oranges and yellows of the skies above steel, concrete, or glass-front buildings.
It was the money shot that many New Yorkers paid the cost to live high above the streets below to see when they rose from their privileged beds every morning.

  Her reflection was pensive in the mirror as she released a breath that fogged the glass. With a sigh, she turned and pressed her back to it. Across the divide, her eyes fell on the sketch still above the bed and now seeming to mock her. Jaime frowned and pushed off the glass to storm across the polished floors. She stepped up onto the bed to walk across it until she and her likeness were eye to eye.

  Jaime released short panting breaths, feeling bereft and adrift.

  Making a fist, she swung up above her head until she felt the hem of Luc’s shirt raise against her thigh, she felt the need to destroy it. She closed her eyes instead and let her fist softly land against the glass before she splayed her fingers to press against it.

  I can’t.

  It is too beautiful. It is skillful and masterful. It is my very essence.

  Having it hanging above the bed I share with another man is wrong.

  That also was true.

  Jaime dropped to the bed and buried her face in the pillows as she brought her knees up to her chest. She smelled Luc either on his shirt or the sheets. Tears rose, beginning with a slow fall and then swiftly escalating to sobs that racked her body.

  8:01 AM

  Jaime dialed her office and then placed the call on speaker before setting the phone on the top of the dresser.

  Brrrnnnggg. Brrrnnngg. Brrrnnngg.

  In the large frameless mirror above the furniture, Jaime pressed her fingertips to the puffiness beneath her eyes before she smoothed her eyebrows and then raked her fingers through her bob. “Get your shit together,” she told herself.

  How?

  “Good morning, Jaime Pine Design. How many I help you?” Katie answered the line.

  “This is Jaime. I need all my appointments rescheduled for the day,” she said, opening the top drawer to eye all of her silk and lace panties perfectly folded. She selected a black one and bent slightly at the waist to pull them on under Luc’s shirt.