The Lies: The Lies We Tell About Love, Life, and Everything in Between

by Christina C Jones

  I sucked my teeth, batting away his hands. “Kiss my ass.”

  “Maybe next time,” he retorted, and I shook my head.

  “There won’t be a next time,” I called to his retreating back – a declaration he honored with the only response it probably deserved: a laugh, as he flipped on the light to the bathroom, and disappeared inside. A throb between my legs made me squeeze my thighs together again, and I let out a long, contented sigh.

  A muffled buzz sounded through the apartment – the dryer reminding us that Kyle’s clothes were dry, and he could go. He needed to go.

  I got up and crossed the room, moving the curtain aside a bit to peek out of the blinds. Outside, the storm had calmed, and there was no more rain pounding against the window.

  He could go.

  That would kill any potential awkwardness after what we’d just done. That was the part I’d conveniently ignored, though we’d teased about it. How would our get-togethers look, how would we interact if our whole group met up at the bar?

  Would it be weird now?

  Or later?

  What if we kept doing this, and then for some reason, had a falling out?

  Shit.

  Maybe I should have thought this through a little more.

  Maybe… it shouldn’t happen again.

  Those thoughts slipped right out my mind as Kyle’s arm slipped around my waist, pulling me back against him. He was still hard.

  His mouth went to my shoulder, pressing a kiss there before he moved to my neck, sucking and biting. When he moved back, I could hear the rip of a condom wrapper– opened with his teeth, since his other arm was still around my waist. After a moment, he grabbed my hands, planting them against the windowsill as he bent me over.

  I moaned, soreness forgotten as he sank inside of me.

  Okay.

  Maybe… just this one more time.

  {two}his side

  “Hey. Wake up. You gotta go.”

  My eyes didn’t even open as I groaned, grabbing the wrists that went with the soft hands pressing insistently on my chest. She let out a little yelp as I tugged her down to press against me, then flipped us over so that I was on top.

  Then, I opened my eyes.

  My gaze went first to the delicate, old-school style alarm clock on the night stand. According to what I could tell in the dim light, it was just after five in the morning, which was why the sun was barely up. Then, I turned to her, noting her wide-eyed expression first, then the fact that at some point in the night, she’d put on clothes.

  “My mother is coming,” she said, I think. I was more interested in the movements of her soft, pink lips than the words they were forming. “To drop off my son before school. You can’t be here.”

  Instead of responding to that, I used my mouth to kiss her neck, and she let out a frustrated groan. That turned into a moan that turned into a whimper.

  “Kyle,” she whined, trying fruitlessly to free her hands from my grip. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Why do you have all this shit on?”

  I ignored her question, switching my grip so that one of my hands was holding both of her wrists. I needed the other to pull off the panties she had no reason to be wearing.

  “You’re not listening,” she said, snapping her legs together before I could get them down over her knees. “We don’t have time.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What time are they coming?”

  “So you did hear me then.”

  “What time are they coming?”

  She sucked her teeth, then cut her eyes to look past me, at the ceiling. “Like 6:15.”

  “Then we have time.” I dipped my head to pull her earlobe between my teeth, making her squirm underneath me. “Unless you just don’t want to.”

  She responded by unclenching her legs. “I’m pretty sure that’s the last condom I have,” she said, nodding toward the nightstand. She was right. We’d started with three.

  I sat back on my knees to pull her panties off, then gripped her ankles to hold her legs up in front of me as I pulled them apart. “Then I guess you’d better stock up for next time.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” she shot back, pretty brown eyes watching intently as I kissed her toes. She smelled like brown sugar and vanilla – now I remembered her slipping out of bed after that last time, saying she was getting into the shower.

  I moved down her calf, up to her knee, positioning myself between her legs. “In that case, we’ll save this last one for when you change your mind.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked, sitting up on her elbows.

  I licked a trail down her thigh, right to the sweet spot in the middle. Her back arched up as I covered her swollen clit with my mouth and sucked, pulling a sharp gasp from her throat. With my head situated comfortably between her legs, I looked up, meeting her hooded gaze.

  “My shit is sore,” I shrugged, then hooked my shoulders under her thighs, spreading her wider. Her bare pussy was right in my face, looking and smelling like caramel cake for breakfast. “I know yours is too. So…” I licked her, right up the middle, letting my tongue linger and play with her clit before I kissed it. “I’ll leave you with this instead.”

  She said some shit that I – 1, wasn’t trying to hear, and 2,turned into an unintelligible jumble as my mouth descended on her again. Her hands tangled in my locs, shamelessly keeping my face buried between her legs as I devoured her. Eventually though, she started trying to run from me – couldn’t take the stimulation. But that only made me grip her thighs tighter, bury my face deeper, slurp harder, not caring at all that her overflow of juices was getting up my nose.

  I felt like I was right where I belonged.

  “Shiiit,” she moaned, her voice trembling like she was on the verge of tears. She nearly came up off the bed when I pushed my fingers into her, searching out that little spot that had made her lose her mind so many times last night. She came as soon as I touched it, with a series of hoarse whimpers before she basically melted back into the pillows, spent.

  I grinned as I came up from between her legs, wiping my face with the back of my hand. My dick had been hard since I woke up, but it got even harder as I took in the sight in front of me – Brandi’s sexy ass, legs still spread wide open, shirt hiked around her hips, chest heaving as she recovered from her orgasm.

  Her eyes were closed, but sprang open when I put a hand on her knee. “Hey,” I said, chewing at my lip for a second as I considered how to make going at it one more time – even though I’d just made a case against it – sound like a good idea.

  “Put the condom on,” she said, before I could even get anything out. “Now.”

  I didn’t give her a chance to second-think it. I grabbed the condom from the bedside table, and a few seconds later I was sinking inside of her, groaning a little as her body contracted around me, pulling me deeper.

  She was doing that shit on purpose.

  I’d joked with her about those three strikes making me fall in love, but goddamn. What was happening between us right now was all lust, but fooling around with Brandi could have me something like hooked.

  She was bad as hell – long legs and thick thighs, fat ass, skin the same color as the brown sugar she smelled like. Pretty ass face, with plush lips and big brown eyes. She closed her eyes, losing herself in what we were doing, hooking her legs around mine as I drove into her. So damned tight, and wet.

  I grabbed the hem of her shirt, pulling it up. Immediately, her eyes snapped open again, and she grabbed it too, tugging it back down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you naked,” I grumbled back, frowning.

  She frowned right back. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Maybe not to you.”

  “Exactly. So the shirt stays on.”

  I stopped moving. “What changed between last night and this morning?”

  “The sun came up,” she snapped.

  “And?”

  “And, I had
a kid when I was a teenager, Kyle. Stretchmarks in the dark look a whole lot different than stretchmarks in broad ass daylight.”

  My frown deepened. “You think I give a damn about some stretchmarks?”

  “Yes, actually,” she nodded. “I do.”

  “I don’t,” I told her, uncurling her fingers from the hem of the shirt, and tugging it up over her breasts before she could protest about it. My mouth on her nipples, and dick buried to the hilt killed any arguing she wanted to do. “You look good as hell,” I growled in her ear, then moved back, my hands wrapped around her ankles as I spread her wide.

  “You feel good as hell,” she moaned. Her mouth stayed open, face twisted like she was in pain, but the steady stream of “yes, yes, God yes, pleeease,” from her lips told a different story.

  I grinned as I plunged into her, dropping my grip on her ankles to grab her waist instead. Jagged lines of slightly darker brown crisscrossed her stomach and hips, and I’d already seen the ones on her ass. But just as I told her – I didn’t give a shit. She was bad as hell, period. She just happened to have a kid. Stretchmarks came with the territory.

  “So do you,” I grunted at her, as I moved my hands up her body to palm her breasts. I felt the pull in my stomach, the tingle in my balls that said I was I close to exploding, but I needed her to get there first.

  My thumb on her clit got her there in no time, and I let go too, slamming into her so hard and deep that I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d gotten stuck. I stayed on top her, laying my head on her chest, pulling one of her nipples into my mouth as I closed my eyes.

  “Uh-uh,” she murmured, shaking my shoulder. One little glance at the clock, and I already knew what she was about to say.

  “Now, you really do have to go.”

  &

  I cranked up the music on my headphones as I pulled out my sketchpad and went to work. It was late in the afternoon now – hours since I’d left Brandi’s place to get home, where I’d showered and gotten ready for the day. Physically, I was tired as hell, but I wasn’t complaining.

  The sketching was all I would get around to, and then I was calling it a day. That was one of many perks to come with working for myself. When I was exhausted from all night sex, I could just take the damn day off.

  The basketball I was working on today was for a teenaged hooper out in Oakland who loved the beach. A birthday gift from her parents, who couldn’t take her as often as she wanted to go, but wanted to bring it to her. This one was on the house, something I did a few times a month through Ballistic’s website, lottery style. My pricing wasn’t accessible to everybody, and I understood that, but that didn’t keep me from wanting my work in the hands of kids whose parents maybe didn’t have it like that. The lottery worked that out for me.

  I sketched out every ball on paper first, on a template I’d created. After that, I colored the template – a framed copy went out with the ball – and then attached it to a model that was the exact size of the ball I’d be painting. I worked with the two side by side.

  But, today was just for the sketching.

  The storefront was taken care of, so I put my pencil to the paper and lost myself in it, tuning everything else out. It was nothing for me to spend hours and hours absorbed in a sketch, if I wasn’t interrupted. Often, that was the case, but today… it wasn’t.

  I damn near jumped out of my skin at the feeling of a hand on my shoulder.

  Alarmed, I turned around, looking right into familiar dark eyes, framed with thick lashes. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her go-to “I’m running late for work so let me do something” hair style.

  Had she been running late this morning because she was up all night fucking too?

  I didn’t even bother taking my headphones off. I turned back around, hoping she would take the hint and just leave, but knowing that she wouldn’t.

  “Are you serious with this?” she asked as she pulled the headphones off, tossing them, still blasting, onto my work table. She crossed her arms as I turned back around, paying her a bored expression. “Are we going to actually talk, or act like children about it?”

  I frowned. “Wait, let me get this right – instead of talking about the shit before it turned into a misunderstanding, like an adult, you want to call me childish because I’m not really trying to hear it now? That’s really… not surprising, in the least.”

  “Kyle, I know you’re pissed—”

  “I’m not pissed.”

  “But you’re not talking to me.”

  “Because I don’t want to talk to your ass,” I said, shrugging. “The situation between us is what it is. This is what it’s been since before KJ was even in the picture, to be honest. You’ve been full of shit Audrey, and I’m not really trying to entertain it.”

  “Wow,” she scoffed, tipping her head to the side. “I’m full of shit?”

  I raised my eyebrows, and nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t stutter.”

  Her nostrils flared, and I could practically see the wheels turning in her head, trying to figure out how she was going to fire back. We did this all the time – the back and forth was such a mainstay that I wasn’t even sure I liked this woman anymore, and I was positive she felt the same about me. But she was the mother of my child, and at some point … I’d loved her.

  I didn’t take that shit lightly.

  “Fine, Kyle. Maybe I should have talked to you about—”

  “Hold up, maybe?”

  She blew out a frustrated sigh. “You know what I’m trying to say!”

  “Nah, that “maybe” shit is a foreign language.”

  “I should have told you I was getting serious with somebody, damn! Is that what you want to hear?” she asked, tossing up her hands.

  I shook my head. “Nah. What I want to hear is, “I should’ve told you I was fucking our son’s pediatrician, Kyle, my bad. If I was gonna have him face deep in my pussy one day, and have you in there the next, that’s the type of shit I should’ve let you know before you took our son to check on his cough and had you acting all cordial with this nigga.” That’s the shit I want to hear. Forget a “maybe”, have you lost your mind?”

  “I told you KJ was fine!” she defended, stepping closer. “I’m his mother, you should have trusted me instead of taking him to the doctor without saying anything!”

  “My son woke up sounding like he was going to hack up one of his damn lungs, Audrey. The shit didn’t sound “fine” to me, so I took him to the damn doctor.”

  She sucked her teeth. “He’d already been seen by his doctor – how do you think I knew he was fine? It’s bronchitis, probably picked up at school. He needed rest, and fluids, which we were already doing. He’s too little for them to give him anything.”

  “Yeah, but I bet the good doctor stuck some shit in you though.”

  Immediately, her finger came up. “Alright, you’re not gonna sit in my face and disrespect me.”

  “When did facts get disrespectful? I’m being rude to your ass, not disrespectful, it’s different. And you deserve it, because that shit was foul.”

  “You act like I knew you were going to take him up there.”

  I hooked my hands behind my head. “He’s a kid, Audrey. They get sick, you take them to their doctor – you should’ve pre-empted that shit. All you had to do was let me know, and instead, I get in there and this nigga talking about “Yeah, I told “Audy” last week that the cough would wax and wane”. I’m like, “oh, she didn’t mention bringing him in,” and this dude looks me in the face and tells me he told you the shit over dinner. You got me looking like a damn dummy!”

  “I’m sorry!” She threw her hands up. “I don’t know what else you want me to do, or say. But it’s not like we were together like that. We both knew what it was!”

  “I had made dinner reservations for us, for last night. At Scales,” I elaborated. Her favorite place. “Had to do that two weeks in advance, to get that spot. So… did we both know what it was, Audrey? Did we really
?”

  Her mouth dropped open at that revelation, and I shook my head. I’d meant to take that shit to the grave. After a moment, she bit her lip, then closed the little space left between us. She took my face in her hands, and instead of shaking her off, I let her, looking up to meet her eyes.

  Even though she was on my shit list at the moment, I couldn’t help noticing, admiring – she was bad, and always had been. Velvety mahogany skin, regal features, slim build, with nice little curves that I’d gotten very familiar with in the ten years I’d known her.

  Familiar.

  A term the two of us had gotten…too familiar with.

  “So… that’s why you’re upset about this.”

  “I’m upset because you roasted my ass for a whole year about a similar thing, but then you live by different rules.”

  She nodded. “That’s fair. But I still say you wouldn’t be so pissed if you were doing what we said we were going to do. Kyle… we agreed we couldn’t keep doing this. This on again, off again thing –”

  “Isn’t healthy, we’re too old for it, KJ doesn’t need to see it, blah blah. Yeah, I know all that. I don’t need you to remind me.”

  “But you made Valentine’s Day reservations for us Kyle, and if I know you like I think I do, there was a gift involved too.”

  “I was just trying to do something nice for you. I bet Dr. Polk ain’t take your ass to Scales, did he? Probably some stuffy ass bougie fake French spot. He seems like that type of dude.”

  She dropped her hands from my face. “I’ll have you know, we had a great date on Valentine’s Day.

  “But you weren’t at Scales listening to Logan Lewis on the keys while you ate crab legs, were you?”

  Shaking her head, she laughed. “No, I was not. But it was still nice. It was different. It was nice to do something different. With somebody different.”

  I clapped my hand to my chest. “Damn. Right for the damn kill shot, huh?”