All I Want… Is You
Curtis Alexander Hamilton
A debut novel
Kemi-Ka
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is for sale to adult audiences only. It contains substantially sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers.
Copyright © 2011 by Curtis Alexander Hamilton
All rights reserved.
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Cover Design by Shangaleza Burns-Curtis
Published by Kemi-Ka Publishing, LLC
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-98295774-5
for My Beloved
I’m waitin’ here just to please you…
All I want is you – All I want is you…
All I want is you to love on me…
~Meshell Ndegeocello, from Soul Searchin’
All I Want… Is You
~Derrick~
“It’s over.”
I looked at the phone as if it would infect me with an incurable disease.
“What do you mean, it’s over?”
“I need something different, Derrick,” she explained. “What we had was good, but we want different things now.”
The voice over the phone, the one that just a week ago was singing in high octaves how much she loved me while I was digging in her “good pussy”, now sounded like poison, making my ears bleed.
“You’re really serious? Yeah, this is a joke,” I spat. “You want to make me beg to keep you and what we have or something? Yeah, that’s it, that’s got to be it.”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she replied. “I’m not the woman that I was a couple of years ago when we met. Our dreams are different now. The paths that we’re taking are, too.”
I knew where this was going. She wanted to throw the “marriage and kids” thing in my face again.
We’d been arguing about that the last few weeks, but it seemed like she was almost adamant about it the last few days, nearly popping off an ultimatum.
But it was deeper than that.
She’d upgraded on me, I felt it.
“I know this isn’t easy, but hopefully we can still be friends, baby,” she had the nerve to say.
Friends? Really?
Naw, that shit was the final straw. I ain’t nobody’s emergency option.
She was not taking any more power from me.
“You’re right, this is over, and we can’t be friends,” I felt the need to man up, knowing inside my heart was breaking. “And don’t call me baby, you’ve lost that right. In fact, lose my number and don’t call me anymore.”
That was three months ago.
Oh well, shit happens.
But damn.
This shit doesn’t happen to me. I’m Derrick Morrow.
Still, how could I have been so blind?
I mean, she sent all the signals.
The new provocative clothes and lingerie…
Going out to the club with the girls (at least that’s what she told me).
The change in her sexual appetite…
Shit, I would have seen it all coming, if I’d stuck to the rules and stayed on my game.
But my nose was too wide open in thinking that she was the “one” for my instincts to warn me.
I made sacrifices for this relationship, more than my fair share. But I guess that wasn’t enough for her.
I gave up big money about a year ago; some overseas photo shoots that would have made me a superstar in the fashion industry. Being an up and coming photographer, you just don’t turn down jobs unless you have a damn good reason. I thought that she was that damn good reason.
That was my first mistake.
Hindsight is 20/20, and sometimes it can have the eyesight of an FBI sharpshooter.
I should have known she was pulling away from me, but I had fallen victim to the spell that love had cast over my heart.
A heart I thought I’d protected.
Cupid’s a dead motherfucker, as God as my witness.
But being the logical thinker that I was, I had to be honest with myself and check my own ego at the door. Maybe I set myself up for this fall.
After all, I was a player, and the number one rule was to never fall in love until they fell in love with you.
I thought I had that rule covered.
Boy, was I wrong.
Okay, I did still have a few of my girls that I still had in my corner, and some still even made passes at me. But all of them knew who she was, and for the most part, they were okay with that.
As far I was concerned, I was still a player, and I knew my game was still on point. The way I saw it, it was her loss, regardless of the fact that she was worth me letting all of the extra pieces of ass fade to black in order to make her the center of my universe.
The moral of the story… never make someone a priority when they see you as nothing more than an option.
The trouble was, I didn’t make sure I was only an option.
That was my second mistake.
There was no room for strike three because I got tossed out of the game for arguing the call.
Stacy Kent was everything that I thought I wanted in a woman.
Ambitious…
Aggressive…
Sensual…
She knew what she wanted and how she was gonna get it.
But she did have her downside.
That damn hindsight thing again.
She was never very affectionate, nonchalant at times, and the words “I love you” didn’t really have the same effect. I tried to convince myself that none of that mattered because I loved her.
All of my folk had a fit when they found out. My boys, Omar and Brian, couldn’t believe that I’d chosen Stacy in the first damn place. In their eyes, there were other women in my “harem” that were better, much better than Stacy. Toni, my best friend, never liked her, and looking back on it now I saw the reasons why.
But I made my choice, I had to live with it, and that was what I told my friends, my mom, my brother and my sister.
Again, charge this shit to the game.
So, once my heart mended, I made myself a promise that I would let the chairman of the board make the decisions for me from now on.
Ladies, if you don’t know who the chairman of the board is, ask your man, or ask a man that you’ve been intimate with. Chances are, you’ve had more than a few conversations and “meetings” with him, and depending on the man, he goes by many names.
But, I digress.
It’s funny how many times you hear the words “I told you so” when you fuck up. But I ignored all of them, well, almost all of them, except for my brother, who I felt had it all.
Great career.
A fine ass, intelligent, business-savvy wife.
&nbs
p; Three beautiful kids.
A house in the upper middle class section of Highland Park, not too far from Chicago, Illinois.
I thought that since he had made mostly the right choices (I’m not a fan of Chicago, but that’s me), listening to him would get me to where he was at 33 years old. He even told me a few years ago that it would have been best to get the “Southern Playalistic” out of my system before I settled down, just like he did.
Nope, I thought I was ready at 26.
But the partner I thought I would be able to put those plans into motion with had plans of her own.
What is it they say about the best laid plans?
Oh well, it was time to start fresh, and since ‘99 had just come and gone and we were into the new millennium, now was as good a time as any.
“Yo, D, we heading to Kaya, you down?”
It was a chilly January evening when Omar called me wanting to find out if I was up to run the clubs, since we both had the day off tomorrow. It figured that he wanted to go out more now; he’d picked up my old habit of picking up a new harem every few months or so, and this time of the year was feeding time.
You see, at the beginning of the year, I usually scooped up around four or five women, depending on my mood and what I had a taste for, and then let the war of attrition bear out who the weakest links were until one remained. I had no problems getting back to that plan, but there was no motivation anymore because I was still healing from Stacy. I was too tired to have strength in numbers because at this point it would take too much out of me, so, I agreed to go with Omar, but if anything hit my radar, I decided I was going to be picky.
Very picky.
“Come on, Derrick, I’ll even come by in the Escalade and grab you. You ain’t even gotta drive tonight. I got a sweet tooth for some chocolate, and Brian’s coming, too. It will be like old times, bruh.” Omar made a very strong case, and I couldn’t argue.
“I’m down, bruh, I’ll see you at my place in 30.” I told Omar.
“Alright, bet. See you in 30.”
I hung up the phone and my mind began to think back to what my father told me when I was in high school and I lost my first love.
My father was old school, last of a dying breed of players from the 60s and 70s. You know the ones that had a ‘mistress’ that the wife knew about, but as long as he was taking care of home, the wife didn’t care too much about who else he was fucking with.
He saw me trying to look like I wasn’t crying in my bedroom after the ‘love of my life’ decided that she just wanted to be friends.
“Son, it only takes 30 seconds to get over a girl,” I could still hear him laughing as he said it. “You lose one, pick up a few more. It ain’t nothing like new pussy to help you forget.”
I took that lesson and ran with it for as long as my heart and body would let me. For a while, it worked, and I didn’t have to worry about my heart being broken until I felt like I wanted to bother with it.
Pops said it took 30 seconds.
Well, it takes a lot longer than 30 seconds.
But like he told me, the best way to forget about the last one is to pick up on the next one.
One thing was still for certain…
Even if I could forget about the last one, it still hurt like hell.
~Derrick~
Club Kaya was the spot on a Friday night.
The ladies were looking everywhere from classy to trashy, and no club was immune to having them all in between, even Static. All flavors were on full display, from French vanilla and caramel, to mocha latte and chocolate.
The brothas were at the bar, trying to spit game at any female that would pay attention for more than five minutes, after they bought her and her girls drinks.
It wasn’t like the ladies weren’t feeling it tonight, but they were too busy trying to get the bartender’s attention and sweet-talking them into giving up free drinks for a peek or two, and if the women were adventurous enough, perhaps a quickie in the bathroom or something like that.
And of course, some of the hottest DJs in the ATL.
Omar, Brian and I stepped into the spot, checking out the scene to see what faces were in the place.
Brian was the light skinned pretty boy between the three of us. He and I balled against each other back in the day in high school, and when we ended up playing together in college, we managed to find out that we had a lot in common and stayed tight ever since. He was around 6’3”, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he was thin and wiry as hell, but the ladies seemed to love that shit. He decided to roll casual, just in case he decided to put in some work in the DJ booth tonight.
Omar was on the other end of the spectrum, the dark chocolate one among us, but he was also the shortest. He always felt that he had to overcompensate for his height because the ladies were always checking for me or Brian, at least that’s what he always felt, and tonight was no exception. He came out in some crazy ass bronze concoction to show off the contrast in his skin tone.
I read somewhere that dressing in certain colors directly reflected the mood that you were in. Tonight, I would guess that black was appropriate for the mood I was in. I really didn’t want to be bothered, but at the same time, I would have gone crazy at home, and I knew it. Yet another oxymoron that I didn’t feel like explaining, so, I already had it made up in my mind that if a woman approached me – and they would, trust me – with the “why aren’t you smiling?” questions, I would just tell them I just got off work.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am not exactly model material, I just take pictures of them, but I know I’m easy on the eyes, and from the looks I was getting from the women that were trying to get my attention, it was going to be a very interesting evening.
I just hope that they don’t catch attitude because I’m not falling all over myself to get between them thighs and shit. It’s not my fault that I deal with beautiful women on a daily basis, so I can get it whenever I want to bother, and tonight, I really wasn’t trying to bother, unless the convo was just that stimulating.
Just as expected, my boys dropped me like a bad habit and started on the hunt in the club, picking up the vibe on the dance floor at moment’s notice. That shit didn’t take long at all, as one little cutie with hazel eyes and a blonde weave grabbed Brian and pulled him on the floor so quick that I didn’t get a chance to blink twice.
A chocolate honey over in another corner of the spot was already in full flirtatious mode, blowing kisses and licking her lips in Omar’s direction like he was the next Denzel or something, and he was off in her direction just as quickly.
Hell, I couldn’t blame them. If I was in a better mood, I would have done the same thing to
them. But I was hoping that my boys would have had my back for at least a half hour before pussy would be on the menu.
I barely got ten minutes.
Sitting at the bar, I was watching my boys have the time of their lives. I was good with that, because someone needed to have a good time. I flowed with the music, zoning out for a minute or two, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a thick little brown skinned sexy walked over and sat next to me.
I didn’t pay attention to her at first.
The way that she let the skirt rise up, showing off her legs, she wanted to make sure I would be soon.
She smiled at me.
I winked at her.
She shifted her body towards me, crossing her legs to close in the space between us.
I exhaled.
This was about to be an encounter I really wasn’t trying to have right now.
“So, are you gonna buy me a drink or what?”
I felt the headache coming on, which gave me the immediate sign that she wouldn’t be worth the trouble. “You can’t come better than that?”
“Well, excuse me, I’m just trying to get to know you,” she retorted, tapping her finger on the counter top as if her routine had worked countless times before.
I wasn’t the one for tired ass
lines and routines, and if she had kept her mouth shut, she could’ve gotten sum.
Why she decided to try me I’ll never understand.
I needed change from this dyme.
“The conversation is free, luv, but the drink is optional,” I fired back. My headache was getting worse, and I’d only had one drink. “Is this how you approach men that you are interested in? If so, you can blaze because I’m not hearing it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, maybe I had you confused for a baller, instead of these other busters up in here tonight.” she twisted her lips and moved away from me, trying to sway to the music.
Whatever.
Next.
On second thought…
This little girl needed to be set straight.
“You must be kidding? Listen, miss, you may be fine and all, but the game is weak, and calling me a buster instead of finding out my actual name lets me know that you need to get back to the lab and work on your people skills some more.”
Just then, Kristen, one of the models at the job, walked up on us. “Hi, Derrick, I see you’re busy as usual. Do you think you can find a spot on the dance floor with me?”
All of a sudden, the woman that not ten seconds ago thought I was a ‘buster’ began to light up as if my name rained money from the heavens. It’s funny how that happens when the models you work with are recognized. “You’re Derrick Morrow? I mean, really?”
“Wow, D, you really should get out more,” Kristen winked at me. “Girl, this man is magic with a camera, I can tell you that much. Which reminds me, are you going to be at the Pleasure album release party this weekend?”
Pleasure was a hot new girl group that just went Gold last week. I did the album cover for them and took care of some other promotional work.
“Oh, absolutely, Kris, I will see you there,” I answered as she took my hand to lead me to the
dance floor.
I guess baby girl wasn’t having the side step on her, because now she wanted to all but serve her ass up on a platter for me.
“I’m so sorry, I should have… can we start over? I mean, you’re a cutie and all, I really would like to know you better,” she started flashing her light brown eyes at me.
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