Never Keeping Secrets

by Niobia Bryant

  Keesha eyed him head right past the confusion and to the grill.

  See, I got to handle this bullshit.

  “You and your silly bitch better give me fifty feet before both y’all corny asses get slam dunked in that pool.”

  Keesha felt like she could drown herself as her mother turned her verbal onslaught onto her stepmother. Why did I invite this bitch?

  Her eyes flittered about the faces of her neighbors and friends. Their eyes were filled with confusion, anger, indignation, and disgust. They had never experienced Diane or probably anyone like her.

  Keesha thought of the only people in her life who would have expected this and warned her against even inviting her mother to her home. Her party. Her life.

  But those friends were out of her life and had been for a long time. Toward the end there had been arguments and petty shit that led to silence about shit she couldn’t even remember. Shit she didn’t even care about anymore.

  Keesha’s eyes widened and she took a few steps back as she watched Corey go over to her mother and attempt to get her to sit her silly self down in her bright red strapless jumpsuit. Keesha’s eyes shot over to Corey’s side of the family. They were some Newark brawlers too. If Diane said something too shady all hell just might break loose.

  Keesha knew she should go out there and say something. Do something. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t deal.

  That familiar itch nipped at her. Not as strong as it did years ago, but still there. Still identifiable. Still needing to be scratched.

  Once a junkie, always a junkie.

  Keesha pushed away the urge, wanting her sobriety more than she wanted to use drugs to forget the fuckery unfolding before her.

  Thankfully Corey said something to make Diane shoot her father and his wife one last glare before she turned and walked over to where Corey’s cousin, Shawn, was serving up the liquor. The DJ turned up the soulful eighties music and the party soon resumed. The show was over . . . for now.

  Keesha wasn’t crazy. Her mother was still the talk of the party and still getting the long side-eyes and judgmental twists of the lips. And as soon as she stepped her ass out there all the talk, looks, and lip-twisting would turn on her. Fuck this shit all the way from here to there.

  Keesha turned, determined to head back up to her office to try and get some words on her computer.

  “Oh no you don’t.”

  She closed her eyes at the feel of Corey’s hand, the sound of his chastising voice, and the annoyance of his intrusion. Placing a fake grin on her face, Keesha turned to him just outside the spacious kitchen of their home.

  “Come on, baby. It’s straight,” he said, placing kisses along her jaw as his hands massaged her upper arms. “Come on out and enjoy the set.”

  His words, his touch, and his support caused her shoulders to relax as she stepped forward to press her face into his neck. She took a deep inhale of his spicy cologne before kissing his neck. Her lips tingled a bit from his salty sweat and she almost felt the chemistry they used to share. The undeniable thrill of loving the hell out of someone.

  Almost but not quite.

  It wasn’t as good as the blinding white of love and not as horrible as the darkness that leads to a couple never speaking again. Keesha and Corey were in that gray zone of not wanting to be there but not wanting to let go, either. And to her that gray zone was much worse.

  “Just let me write a little bit more and I’ll be back done,” she lied easily, already easing away from him.

  He pulled her back and held her chin with his hand to force her eyes to meet his. “If you’d fuck me more than you fucked that keyboard we’d be okay,” he said.

  Anger and a smart retort about that keyboard fronting the majority of their bills came in a rush, but Keesha swallowed it down and reached for humor instead. “You jealous of a keyboard?” she teased.

  Corey eyed her thick and curvy figure in the racerback maxi dress she wore. “These days I’m jealous of the seat of your panties for getting to be so close to the pussy.”

  Keesha saw the desire he had for her in his eyes. She was thirty pounds heavier than when they met and although the pounds were packed in all the right places, he never once complained. Never once. Stepping back close to him she pressed her lips to his mouth a dozen different times before she sucked his bottom lip softly.

  “Shit, I’m about to say fuck this party,” he moaned into her open mouth, his hands coming down to massage the flesh of her buttocks.

  “I’m about to say fuck me,” she whispered, tilting her head back with a sigh filled with the sudden pulse of her clit as she felt his hard dick press against her stomach.

  “Yo, cuz, this grill firing up.”

  They both looked at Corey’s cousin Shawn standing in the doorway of the open patio doors.

  “I don’t want to burn down the neighborhood,” Corey told her with one last firm swat to her ass. “Later?”

  Keesha nodded in agreement, watching as he turned to follow his cousin out the doors and over to the grill. She moved over into the kitchen and washed her hands at the sink, looking out through the slats of the plantation blinds at the backyard.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep audible breath.

  The feel of warm masculine hands on her hips didn’t surprise her at all. She hissed in pleasure and leaned back against his chest as his fingers eased inside the top of her dress to massage her breasts and nipples. “God, that feels good,” Keesha whispered up into the air, pressing her ass up against his hard dick as she worked her hips back and forth.

  He sucked at the back of her neck as he rushed to work her dress up around her waist. His fingers trembled as he pulled her black cotton thong to the side. “You think I was gone let that ninja get my pussy?” he asked.

  She shook her head no as she felt the thick and heavy weight of his dick being rubbed up and down the crevice of her buttocks.

  “You want this dick?” he asked thickly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  His hand to the back of her neck roughly guided her to bend down over the sink. She rose up on her toes and arched her back as the moist tip of his dick probed her pussy from behind. “Hurry up,” she gasped.

  Behind her he bent his legs to a squat and worked his hips back and forth to fill her inch by inch with his dick. “Aww shit,” he gasped, reaching on either side of her body to grip the edge of the counter as he fucked her from behind with fast and furious pumps intensified by their betrayal.

  Keesha opened her eyes and lifted her head to look out the window at Corey flipping ribs on the grill. And they remained locked on him even as she bit her lip with each forceful thrust. Even as she felt her climax build and cried out as forceful spasms racked her core, she kept her eyes locked on him.

  Her lover’s finger moved up to massage her nipples as his body stiffened. “Get this nut.”

  Keesha reached behind him to grab the side of his clenched ass as she worked her hips, drawing all of his release from him until their thighs were wet. “Damn,” she gasped, her heart pounding and her steps unsteady as she backed him off of her and let her dress fall back down around her ankles.

  She heard the zip of his jeans as she left the kitchen. “Go back outside. I’ll be out in a little bit,” she said over her shoulder, sparing Corey’s cousin Shawn one last look before she dashed up the stairs and into the master bedroom.

  She rushed through a douche and a quick ho bath at the sink, not wanting Corey to wonder why she took a shower in the middle of their barbecue. Not wanting Corey to know that she stopped fucking him because she was fucking someone else. Not wanting Corey to know that she betrayed him with a man he considered as close as a blood brother.

  After pulling on a fresh pair of underwear, Keesha went back down the stairs and finally joined the party. She ignored Shawn’s look of satisfaction as she walked over to Corey and took his drink from his hand to taste.

  What the fuck have I got myself into?

  Chap
ter 7

  Danielle (née Cristal)

  “Thank you again for joining my cohost Danielle Johnson and I during our first week. We’ll see you Monday night for a new edition of The A-List.”

  “Good night everyone,” Danielle said, looking into the camera with her million-dollar smile and easy-breezy stance that was anything but.

  “We’re clear,” someone yelled out in the studio.

  The smile faded and Danielle playfully pinched the hand of her cohost, Kent Yarborough, as her assistant made her way over to her. “Have a good one,” she said.

  He starting loosening his leather tie and reached up to muss his slicked back blond hair until it stood up in funky spikes. “You too,” he said with a wink.

  They shared a little look as they both stood still while their mic packs were removed. Danielle wondered if he too was fighting the urge to hug her. This was huge for both of them. Major league. They both had just begun as the co-anchors of the nightly entertainment show after a nationwide eight-month search. He had been a current events reporter on a small station out of Little Rock and she had been working at a local cable station in New York. Danielle had to fight not to twerk her ass because she was so happy about the new gig. Today marked the end of the first full week on camera but in the months since she first snagged the job she had already done one-on-one interviews with Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington, tried on three racks of clothes and dozens of shoes for the show wardrobe, and did the red carpet for the movie premiere of a new, sexy Michael Ealy flick.

  This was a long way from her days on WNYP, a twenty-four-hour local cable station out of New York. A long way.

  “What else do I have to get done today, Ming?” Danielle asked her assistant, accepting her cell phone from the young woman as they strode out of the studio and toward the elevators.

  “That’s actually it for today. You’ve gotten some more flowers and welcome gifts that I left in your office. Also, invites came in for dinner parties that you’ll need to go through and decide which ones to attend. Lastly, I wanted to show you I updated both your website and your Wikipedia page,” she said, handing over her iPad.

  “I’ll check it on my computer upstairs . . . in my office,” Danielle said with satisfaction. Her mind was stuck on “. . . you’ll need to go through and decide which ones to attend.”

  She bit back a smile, completely amazed at her life.

  It was everything she ever dreamt of and more. Well, almost everything . . .

  They rode the elevator upstairs in silence and Danielle pulled out and unlocked her cell phone and quickly updated her Twitter and Facebook accounts:

  Just wrapped up my first week of taping #TheAList. Still feel like I’m floating on clouds. #blessed.

  In just the days since her announcement as one of the new co-anchors her follower counts had almost tripled.

  “Do you want to order lunch or are you leaving for the day?” Ming asked, her thumb poised and ready over the touch screen of her phone.

  Danielle stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor, which housed the wardrobe and makeup department. She kept the doors from closing by holding her hand out to fool the sensors. “You go on up ahead of me and order me some tempura. Please,” she added, not wanting to come off with a bad attitude.

  “No problem.”

  Danielle removed her hand and smiled as the doors closed her part-time assistant off from her. She walked down the narrow hall to the oversized room housing the wardrobe for all of the female correspondents for the network. She smiled and spoke to anyone who crossed her path.

  Danielle had gone through too much to make it this far and she was determined not to mess it up with a bad attitude. “Thanks again, Justin,” she said to the slender-hipped stylist.

  He and his team of four wardrobe assistants were cataloging the racks of clothing. “You’re welcome,” he said, his short and spiky hair dyed a deep shade of purple. It perfectly matched his own quirky style that was a mix of ’80s punk and some futuristic vibe that scared the shit out of Danielle when they were first introduced. “We got in some really cute dresses for the Teen Choice Awards but we can worry about all of that Monday.”

  “Perfect,” she said, walking over to one of the small dressing rooms designated just for her use.

  Danielle rushed out of the bright yellow-and-white striped sleeveless dress she wore. She left it over the back of the makeup chair and sat the pair of five-inch straw-and-gold stilettos in the seat. Her bold pieces of gold jewelry were next. All of it was designer and expensive and not hers.

  But Danielle was used to nice things of her own. She had always worked—and took on wealthy sponsors—to make sure she could purchase the very best. That was back when material things mattered over love. BM and then AB (Before Mohammed and After the Breakup with Mohammed). He was the defining point in her personal history.

  She paused for a moment and got so lost in the memory of him. He had never moved back from Jamaica and she had never accepted his calls . . . or e-mails . . . or texts. The last time against the wall had been the last time....

  Danielle’s eyes glazed over and she bit her lip at the memory before pushing it away. Mohammed was her past. Her career was her future. She wanted more for her life and she went after it.

  Her eyes locked on her reflection in the mirror.

  She quickly got dressed in the linen pencil skirt and silk tank she wore that morning with her five-inch cork heels. Being sure to grab her phone she left the dressing room. Her steps paused as she looked at the rack holding nearly a dozen garment bags. She made her way toward it, feeling more boldness to explore since the long and wide room without walls was now empty.

  “Amazing,” she whispered, reaching out to touch each of the garment bags and trace her manicured finger over each of the designer names. “Thank you God for my blessings.”

  Danielle wasn’t religious. She wasn’t even that spiritual. But in that moment she closed her eyes and released a long stream of air that was a tactic to beat off the emotions that flooded her. The past that continued to shadow her.

  Being poor, without parents, and shuttled from foster home to foster home with a few trips to group homes in between was a lot for any child to bear. A lot. It had a way of stripping a child of hopes and dreams.

  For the first time ever she believed dreams were possible.

  But it still hurt she had absolutely no one to share it with. No one.

  Stiffening her back and swallowing a sigh she left the wardrobe room and made her way back to the elevators. She was glad to make it back to her office on the floor housing the offices for the various correspondents of the shows produced by Network New. Around the perimeter were the small offices with windows for the TV personalities and in the center clustered in cubicles were the non-production personnel.

  Ming was on the phone in her cubicle right across from Danielle’s corner office—which was the same size as the rest of the offices, but with an additional window. Danielle loved it like it was more than that.

  “Your lunch is on your desk,” Ming told her, covering the mouthpiece of the handset.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed before walking into her office.

  She closed the door and leaned back against it, her eyes taking in the beauty of Los Angeles. Everything about it was so different from the East Coast but she was learning to like it and once she truly learned to maneuver the congested traffic she would love it.

  Kicking off her shoes she sat down in the chair before her desk, and pushed into the corner directly under each of the windows on both walls. She tucked her bare feet underneath her as she clutched the edge of her desk and rolled the chair forward to grab a disinfecting hand wipe from the tube on the corner of her desk to cleanse her hands. Her stomach growled at the thought of her food.

  Knock-knock.

  “Come in, Ming,” she called before she filled her mouth with a bite of chicken tempura that was sinful.

  The door opened but the beautiful and s
izable floral arrangement Ming carried completely covered everything but her lower body. Danielle’s mouth opened in surprise and pleasure as she moved aside her lunch to make room for her to sit it on her desk.

  “I did a squat to pick it up to protect my back,” Ming said dryly, pushing her spectacles up on her nose with her index finger.

  Danielle laughed as she dug the tiny envelope out from the colorful variety of roses, lilies, orchids, and sunflowers. She pulled the card out and her eyes went from curious and pleased to hesitant. As she leaned to take in the sweet scent of the flowers her thumb moved back and forth softly over the slashing signature of Omari Knight.

  Missing your face around the building.

  TV does you no justice.

  Call me—O.

  She thought of the handsome man she met earlier that year in the elevator of the apartment she kept in New Jersey. He was a computer software engineer and way sexier than the sound of his career choice. Still, no matter how bangable, Danielle was not looking for what he was looking for, which was a relationship. She didn’t have the time for it.

  The daily phone calls.

  The checking in.

  The mind games.

  The expectations.

  The disappointments.

  And on top of that, long distance drama as well?

  “No, hell no,” she said, leaning forward to drop the envelope and card in her wire trash can.

  Still as she ate her lunch her eyes kept drifting back to the arrangement. He really is one fine motherfucker and he always . . . always smells so damn good.

  Danielle cut her eyes down at the card and envelope sitting propped against the inside wall of the can. She used her tongue to pull a piece of meat from in between her teeth as she wiped her fingers on a napkin. While arching a well-shaped brow she reached down and picked up the card, sitting it on the edge of her desk. And then in the corner pocket of the blotter on her desk. And then down into the side pocket of her tote sitting on the floor.