Playing the Hand You're Dealt

by Trice Hickman

  We made love right there on my living room floor. It was hot, steamy, and passionate. I had wanted him so badly that my emotions led me to reach for what I had desired since that hot August day at Spelman eleven years ago. And while it hadn’t unfolded like the idyllic, tender moments I’d envisioned for our first time, it was everything I had hoped it would be, and more.

  My only regret was that even though I was on the Pill, we should have used a condom. Pregnancy was one worry, an STD was another. But when I had the only man I had ever wanted in a position I never thought would come, clean medical records had been the last thing on my mind. So after Ed retrieved his overnight bag from his truck and we ventured upstairs to my bedroom, I told him that I had taken an HIV/AIDS test six months ago during a community education drive back home. “I’m negative, and before tonight I haven’t been with anyone in eight months,” I told him.

  Ed looked at me curiously, as if my STD status hadn’t crossed his mind. But in the spirit of mutual disclosure he shared with me that he’d tested negative back in the spring during the citywide HIV/AIDS awareness testing that his organization, 100 Black Men, had sponsored.

  After our awkward sharing of medical records, we settled into bed. We were both exhausted, but we were also too excited to close our eyes, wanting to continue our long-awaited moment.We talked for the next two hours about the eleven years of secret desire we’d shared, and laughed about the fact that until I moved here, neither of us had been sure if the other was truly interested. He also admitted that mild jealousy had played a role in his behavior at the restaurant. “I just wanted you so much,” he said.

  Now, lying next to Ed, snuggled against his warm, naked body, I tingled inside. “Do you want coffee and a bagel?”

  “Not this morning. I have everything I need right here.”

  I loved hearing him say those words.

  “How long have you been up?” he asked, stroking the outside of my thigh.

  “A while.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  I smiled. “Last night.”

  I felt Ed’s hand move up to my left breast, cupping it as he planted a soft kiss on the ball of my shoulder. “I love the way you took control,” he breathed into my ear, gently tugging on my lobe with his teeth. “But now it’s my turn.”

  With gentle ease, Ed rolled me onto my back, ready to take me on another journey into bliss. I moaned and delighted in the way he sucked my right breast while delicately tweaking the nipple of my left between his thumb and forefinger. He took his time making his way down my body, kissing each exposed inch of my skin until his head rested between my legs. Just as I thought he was going to pleasure me, he paused for a moment, as if studying a map.

  “I’ve been waiting . . . wanting you for so long,” he said as he ran his finger over my growing wetness. “So beautiful,” he whispered.

  My body tensed with excitement when I felt him touch me in the place that until last night I’d only fantasized about. With soft and careful attentiveness, he swept his finger back and forth over my tender opening, watching me as I squirmed beneath his expert touch. Slowly, he spread my lips, slippery and wet, before covering me with his warm mouth.

  I could feel his hunger and desire to please me. He perched his mouth at the base of my engorged clit, sucking and softly tugging at it as his tongue probed me. “Oh, yeah,” I moaned.

  “You taste so good,” he breathed, sucking me deep into his mouth.

  My hips bucked forward and I arched my lower back as he devoured me—as though taking small bites of an apple. His tongue was skilled, fluid, and precise. He worked with determined concentration, testing different angles of pressure until he found the one that made me cry out so loudly I was sure I could be heard at the coffee shop around the corner. I gripped my fingers at the back of his head and pressed his mouth close against my heated flesh. I loved the sight of him gently lapping between my legs as the morning sun flooded the room.

  After he brought me to orgasm with his loving tongue, he moved up, kissed my stomach, journeyed to my breasts, and then found his way to my lips as our bodies moved in unison below. He reached over to the nightstand for a condom, slipped it on, and parted my legs with his knee. He looked into my eyes as he entered me, slowly, and with a hint of restrained force. “Mmm,” I moaned.

  We both let out soft cries of pleasure as he carefully eased his way farther inside me until I took in every magnificently thick inch of him. He was large, in length and in width, surprisingly more than I’d imagined. Yet, his size felt just right inside me. He filled the empty space that had been waiting just for him, making love to me, purposefully, and without inhibition. “I love you, Emily,” he whispered into my ear.

  “I love you, too,” I panted, engulfed by his soft kiss and smooth strokes.

  He increased his rhythm as the next orgasm inside me began to form with a pleasure so great it was nearly indescribable. He must have known what I was feeling because he smiled, then plunged deeper inside me, opening the door to a blessed euphoria I didn’t think possible. It was so intense, so powerful, and so all-consuming. I shut my eyes, opened my mouth, and let my body succumb to it. Ed did the same. I felt him bury his head against my collarbone as he made one final thrust before letting out a slow, pleasure-filled moan.

  We lay there—still and breathless, completely and blissfully satiated. This was what I had dreamed our first time would be.

  We showered together and then returned to my bed. I rested my head on Ed’s chest as he stroked my shoulder, applying light pressure for a gentle massage. “Mmm, that feels good,” I purred.

  “I’m glad.”

  I looked past the box of Trojans and over to the alarm clock. It was still early, barely nine o’clock.There was a full day ahead, and it suddenly dawned on me that once Ed walked out of my door he would return to a life that didn’t include me. He was in tune with my thoughts, and he could feel my mood turn.

  “Emily, what’s wrong?”

  I mumbled into his chest. “What time do you have to leave? You’ve been gone since last night and she’ll wonder where you are.”

  Though it wasn’t the first time that Brenda had crossed my mind since Ed walked through my door, it was the first she’d come up in our conversation. I hadn’t asked any questions last night about how he was going to explain being away from home, or even how he left the house in the first place, I was just happy that he was with me. He had an overnight bag, so I knew he must have given Brenda some kind of explanation for his absence. Now, lying in my bed, on soft, wine-colored sheets, after making beautiful love, I wanted to know. Besides, we had to acknowledge the other side of our paradise, the side that was surely going to raise the hell we had tried to avoid for eleven years.

  “I told Brenda that I was going to hang out with Ross, and not to expect me back until today.”

  “Oh.”

  Hearing him say her name while lying in my bed sounded like glass shattering on the floor. The thought of what I’d done made me feel ashamed. In just one night I had become one of those women who other women sucked their teeth and rolled their eyes at—a home wrecker, a status I had feared and must now claim. I was the other woman. The younger other woman at that. It was a category far worse than all others in the breaking-up-marriages department.

  I shouldn’t have expected to feel anything different from the guilt that cloaked me. I knew this would be my lot if I had an affair with Ed, so I had to accept it. I took shallow breaths, thinking that after each time we were together I would have to watch him shower away our sex before he returned home to his wife. I thought about the secret phone calls we’d have to make, and the lies we’d have to tell if we wanted to see each other. I thought about the fact that there wouldn’t be many occasions, if any more at all, that I would be able to wake up beside him in the morning light.

  “Emily, are you okay?”

  “No.”

  He stopped stroking my shoulder and brought me up to his face so
he could see mine. “I want to share my life with you.”

  “But you’re married.”

  “And that can be remedied.”

  Slowly, I pulled away from him, sat up in my bed, and reached for my robe, which lay on the nightstand at my side. I remembered something that Samantha told me Tyler had said when they were dating. “A woman should never have a serious conversation with a man while she’s naked because men will say anything when they’ve got ass in the palm of their hands.”

  I knew that Tyler was right, and I wanted Ed to have a clear head when we discussed the future of our relationship. “Let’s get dressed and go downstairs so we can talk.”

  I poured us glasses of orange juice, and then we went into the living room. I purposely sat at a small distance from him on my couch and began to speak. “What’s the next step for us?” I asked.

  “I think the answer is obvious,” he responded in his always confident tone. “We want to be together, so now it’s time to make it happen.”

  “How do we do that? How can we be together without hurting people?”

  “We can’t. People will get hurt. That happens in life.”

  I had to believe that this was the pragmatic lawyer side of him talking, the one driven by facts and rooted in what was tangible and what could be proven. It was a proven fact that people got hurt all the time, but that it would be at my hands was still hard for me to accept.

  “Emily,” Ed continued. “We avoided this for eleven long years because we knew that people . . . that Brenda and Sam would be affected, so we never acted on our feelings. But in the meantime we suffered, or at least I did,” he said, shifting his position on the couch. “I suffered every time I saw you, secretly wanting to be with you but knowing that I couldn’t. I suffered every time I heard Sam tell me about a new guy you were dating. I suffered when I saw you at your mother’s funeral and I couldn’t be the shoulder you cried on. I’m tired of suffering. I’m ready to start living again, and I’m ready to do it with you.”

  I felt everything he felt, and I told him so. Now it seemed things were simply a matter of logistics.

  “I’m going to divorce Brenda,” he said. “I know one of the best divorce lawyers on this side of creation. I’ll meet with him tomorrow and spend the next week or two getting my ducks in a row before I serve her with papers.”

  “She’ll be devastated.”

  Ed shook his head. “Not for the reasons you think. She’ll get over it.”

  I didn’t want to delve into the complexities that spurred his comment, so I focused on what I understood. “What about Samantha? She’ll have a very hard time dealing with this.”

  “Maybe in the beginning . . .”

  “You think she’ll accept this . . . us?”

  “What other choice does she have? Sam loves both of us, and after she gets over the initial shock she’ll be happy for us.”

  I looked at Ed as if he’d lost his mind. How could he possibly believe what he was saying? Were we talking about the same person? Samantha, the ultimate daddy’s girl. His daughter was more territorial of him than Brenda had ever been. She was loyal and protective of him, just like she was of me. He wasn’t her father, he was her daddy, and I wasn’t her friend, I was her sister. I knew she would see our being together as a serious violation of the bonds she had with us. At that moment, I became more concerned about my potentially shaky relationship with my best friend than I was about being the home-wrecking other woman. “Samantha will freak out,” I said. “I just know it.”

  “Sam’s excitable, but she’s not unreasonable. She’s in a good relationship now, and she’s coming into a good place in her life. She can handle it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Ed moved in closer and took me into his arms. He pulled me on top of his lap and held me in the same position I boldly claimed last night. “What matters now is that I love you, and you love me. The rest is immaterial.”

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “No, but for now I want to enjoy what we have, what we’ve waited so long to feel.”

  Gently, we kissed, our tongues darting, circling, and commingling inside each other’s hungry mouths. I could feel the moisture between my legs return and the familiar rise of Ed’s well-endowed manhood awaken under the weight of my hips. I smiled, slid my knees to the floor, and unzipped his pants. When I took him into my mouth, we both forgot about hurt, divorce papers, and everything else except the feeling we were sharing, right here on my cozy chenille-covered couch.

  Chapter 27

  Samantha . . .

  A Chance at Redemption

  Life was throwing me curveballs, and over the past week I’d hit every one of them as I rounded the bases. From my surprise reunion with Tyler, to moving into my new house, to my debacle of a birthday party last night. I had managed to dodge the pitfalls. But even with all the unexpected twists and turns, nothing could have prepared me for the giant fastball that came out of nowhere and hit me square in my head when I woke up this morning and saw my mother’s number flash across my cell phone.

  Tyler and I were lying in bed when we heard the loud chirping of my phone. I fumbled over to my nightstand and looked at the caller ID. “Oh, shit,” I cursed.

  “Who is it?”Tyler asked with concern. I knew he was worried that it might be some mess surrounding Carl. Before we fell asleep last night, he told me that he was extending his trip a few extra days, just to make sure I was safe.

  “It’s my mother,” I sighed.

  His face looked a little relieved, but only slightly. “Are you going to answer it?”

  I paused for a second trying to decide whether I wanted to have my day ruined now, or put it off until later. My life had always been full of bad decisions that resulted from my inability to deal with situations in a mature manner, but now I was working toward being a better me, so I decided to bite the bullet and answer my phone. “Hello, Mother,” I said in a flat tone, bracing myself for bullshit.

  “Good morning, Samantha . . . um, how are you feeling?” she asked nervously.

  Something was wrong. I could feel it. Mother never wanted to know how I was doing and she never sounded nervous, practically jittery, so I proceeded with extreme caution. “Could be better, but I won’t complain.”

  “Listen, I, um . . . I feel bad about what happened last night.”

  I sat straight up in bed like someone had just thrown ice water on me. Tyler sat up beside me looking alarmed and mouthed, “Is everything okay?” I hunched my shoulders because I didn’t know for sure, but I listened as Mother continued.

  “Samantha, I spent a lot of time thinking, all night, as a matter of fact.There are moments that make us reassess our lives, and what happened between us last night made me do that.”

  You mean the way you slapped the shit out of me? I wanted to say, but was too stunned to speak because I couldn’t believe my ears. I listened to Mother explain how she regretted the way our relationship had spiraled down to nothing short of hateful contempt. And while she didn’t acknowledge responsibility for being one of the major causes of our mother/daughter demise, she said that she wanted us to make amends, starting today. “Can you come over this afternoon?” she asked. “I was hoping we could have a late lunch or early dinner and celebrate your birthday again.”

  I nearly peed in my panties. “She wants to have lunch,” I mouthed to Tyler, who was still looking on with concern. I didn’t know what to think. Naturally, I became suspicious of her real intentions. Mother always had an angle for everything she did, and now I had to find out what it was, and because I was a straight shooter, I just put it out there. “I’ve heard everything you said, but honestly, I don’t trust it because I don’t trust you.You want me to believe that after thirty years you’ve all of a sudden had an epiphany? All because you and I had a squabble, which we’ve been doing all my life?” It was the Sabbath, and I knew God would appreciate me keeping it real, especially since I’d held back the profanity that
leapt to my tongue.

  Mother let out a loud sigh. “I don’t blame you for having reservations. I guess I haven’t been as supportive as I could have been. But, Samantha, I tried, in the best way I knew how.”

  She sounded genuinely hurt, and I’d even go as far as to say remorseful. I thought about what she had said, that she had tried the best way she knew how. It was as if someone had placed a mirror in front of my face and let me listen to my own words. It was the same way I felt about CJ. I had neglected my son in an effort to protect him from me. It suddenly dawned on me that maybe all these years my mother had been emotionally unavailable for the same reason.

  Mother sniffled, and then paused as if trying to hold back tears. “Please, Samantha. Give me a chance to make things right between us. I don’t have another thirty years.”

  My heart softened. The new me was willing to give her a chance. “Okay, I’ll come over this afternoon.”

  After I hung up the phone, I rehashed our conversation with Tyler.

  “Sounds like miracles do happen,” he said in amazement.

  “Yes, you and I are proof of that. I trust what we have. I know this is real. But my mother . . .”

  “At some point you’ve got to let go of the anger and fear.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “You have another chance, one that many people wish they had.Your mother is still here, and you can turn things around.”

  “So you think I’m doing the right thing by going?”

  Tyler nodded. “Yes, I think you should go see her.”

  I showered, combed my hair, applied my makeup, and searched through my closet trying to decide what to wear. I was a little nervous about seeing Mother, but I wanted to look good, even if I didn’t feel it. Finally, I slipped into my favorite pink dress and fastened the posts of the elegant David Yurman pearl and platinum earrings that Tyler had given me for my birthday. I decided to go bare at the neck, opting to cap off my accessories with a pair of beautiful bone-colored Gucci pumps.