Be with Me (Strickland Sisters Book 3)

by Alexandria House

  “Damn,” Zo said. “I don’t know who’s worse, y’all two or Ryan and Angie.”

  We broke apart in time to see Angie and Ryan approaching the table. They’d arrived before us but both quickly excused themselves to the restroom after we made it. As they took their seats, Angie looked flushed and Ryan was wearing a huge grin on his face as he buttoned his tuxedo jacket.

  “Y’all been screwing in the bathroom?” Nicky said, rather than asked. “Y’all nasty.”

  Angie shrugged and stuck her tongue out at Nicky. “Hater.”

  “I am a hater. Damon over here talking about I gotta wait till we go home,” Nicky said, giving me a frown.

  “Which bathroom y’all use? It’s got a lock on it?” Zo asked, with a serious look on his face.

  “My pregnant ass is not having sex in a public restroom at an event sponsored by a charitable organization I’m a member of!” Renee said.

  “Damn, it ain’t like you’re that pregnant. Shit…” Zo mumbled.

  “Your mom is here!”

  “At her own table!”

  “Okay, but what if I pass out? You gonna carry me all the way back here to our table?” Renee asked.

  “You think I won’t?” Zo replied.

  “Pass out?! Shit!” Nicky and Angie shrieked out of sync, echoing my thoughts.

  Zo shrugged with a smirk on his face.

  “Y’all have no idea,” Renee muttered.

  “All right, fine, we’ll wait. But I’ma tear your ass up when we get home, so you better get ready,” Zo said.

  “I stay ready,” was Renee’s rebuttal as she kissed Zo.

  “That’s why I love your ass,” he replied.

  I chuckled. “Y’all wild over here. Never thought a charity ball could be this lit.”

  Angie did a little bounce in her seat. “You know us Stricklands love to entertain.”

  “All right, keep bouncing and shit and I’ma hem your ass up right here, make use of this long-ass tablecloth. I’m tryna behave since your folks are supposed to be coming, but you know how I roll,” Ryan warned.

  Angie’s eyes widened as she took a sip of her water.

  “Daaaaaamn,” Nicky said.

  Then a sly smile spread across Angie’s face, and she bounced again.

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Keep playing.”

  “We finally made it!” Mrs. Strickland sang, putting an end to the craziness as everyone at the table greeted her and her husband.

  Mr. Strickland pulled out her chair, and as she sat down, kissed her on the lips so long even I felt a little uncomfortable. Yeah, the whole damn family was nasty as hell.

  We all settled at the table, made small talk until the program began, sat through speeches and presentations, ate dinner, and as we all waited for Mint Condition to perform, I noticed Nicky’s attention was on a table across the room. I hoped she wasn’t looking at some man, because I didn’t mind getting ignorant up in there. I knew it wasn’t Law and Order, because Nicky had told me he and his family had another event tonight. There was some political thing going on that she would’ve had to attend, too, if she hadn’t left him. But either way, whoever she might’ve been staring at could get these hands.

  I guess Angie noticed too, because she said, “Nicky, what are you staring at?”

  “That ho’ over there in the Fashion Nova gold dress with that cheap-ass weave,” Nicky replied evenly.

  “How you know that dress is from Fashion Nova?” Angie asked. My question was: what is a Fashion Nova?

  “Because I lost my dignity one time and actually perused their website after Amber Rose advertised it. You know she’s my spirit animal. But that shit is just too cheap for my taste.”

  Angie rolled her eyes. “Well, I kinda like Fashion Nova, and I will never understand how you manage to be broke and bougie at the same time.”

  “It’s a rare and unique talent only a few of us possess,” Nicky retorted. “I’ll max out ten credit cards before I’ll buy cheap shit. I have standards.”

  “Riiiiight, so you’re staring at her because of her dress?” Angie asked.

  “And hair?” Renee added.

  Nicky shook her head, her eyes still on the woman. “No…I’m tryna figure out what’s wrong with her damn eyes.”

  Angie squinted across the room, and said, “Something’s wrong with her eyes? They look normal to me,” echoing my thoughts.

  “Naw, that bitch got stare-itis or something. She been staring at Damon all night, eye-humping him, and I’m tryna decide if I need to go over there and help her eyes find themselves.” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, what I gotta do? Hang a sign on him that says, ‘Property of Nicole Strickland’ to keep these thirsty chicks from blatantly eye-hustling my man? I’m beginning to feel disrespected.”

  “Nicky, they probably don’t realize he’s your man, and come on, you know my brother, Damon, is a good-looking guy. Women are bound to notice him,” Angie said.

  Angie had barely finished her statement when I asked, “Huh? She’s been looking at me?”

  Nicky turned to me, opting to answer me instead of Angie. “Mm-hmm. Her eyes been on you all damn night. You know her?”

  Here we go with this shit. “Hell, no.”

  “Oh, damn. Here she comes,” Ryan mumbled.

  I closed my eyes for a second, praying this woman wasn’t really coming to our table.

  She did.

  Fuck.

  I really didn’t know her, but that wouldn’t matter to Nicky. She only needed half a reason to act a fool and embarrass the whole table.

  “Hey! Damon, right?”

  Who the hell is this woman? I slowly nodded, cutting my eyes at Nicky. “Uh, yeah. Do I know you?”

  “Yes! Ashley Tatum. We went to high school together. We were in the same graduating class. You don’t remember me?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t.” Turning to Nicky, I added, “You remember her, Nick?”

  Nicky shook her head, her skeptical eyes glued to the woman.

  “Uh, Ashley, you remember Nicole Strickland, right? She went to school with us, too. She was in our class,” I said.

  “Nicole Strickland? Little Nicky Strickland? Oh, wow! Of course I remember you! I see you still have that body I always wished I had. I was chubby back then, wore those horrible glasses.” She let her eyes settle on me again. “I see I’m not the only one who’s changed. Ivy told me you were some kind of handsome now, and she didn’t lie,” she gushed.

  Shit. She had no way of knowing it, but Ivy’s name was a major trigger for Nicky. As soon as Ashley said it, I could feel Nicky’s eyes burning a hole into the side of my face. Plus, her obvious flirting was not helping the situation at all.

  “Is your weave synthetic?” Nicky asked, as if she was inquiring about the weather.

  “Weave?” Ashley questioned, sounding genuinely confounded.

  “Yeah, weave. I mean, that can’t be your hair. It looks so…” Nicky’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling like she was searching for the right word. “Plasticky.”

  Ashley’s mouth fell open as she reached up and patted her head.

  Both Angie and Renee gasped.

  Ryan said, “Wow.”

  Zo shook his head.

  I didn’t have the heart to look in Mr. and Mrs. Strickland’s direction to see their reaction.

  “Uh…everyone, this is Ashley, right?” I said, trying to avoid the impending cat fight. Ashley nodded, returning her attention to me and smiling brightly. “Ashley, this is Nicky’s family.”

  Everyone greeted her except Nicky, who was again staring at me, so I said, “Good seeing you, Ashley,” as a way of dismissing her before some real shit got started. Nicky didn’t mind fighting, actually enjoyed it, but who felt like dealing with that shit?

  “Did you know Ivy was here?” Ashley asked.

  Before I could say no, Nicky said, “Yeah, did you know that, Damon?”

  I turned and gave her a confused look. “How the hell would I
know that when I’m up under your ass twenty-four-seven?”

  “Oh, there she is! Ivy! Look who I found!” I glanced up to see Ashley waving Ivy over to our table and wondered just how awkward it would look if I snatched Nicky up and left right at that moment. But that wouldn’t work. It would make me look guilty of some shit I didn’t do, like messing around with Ivy, a woman I hadn’t given a single thought to, and Nicky would never let me live it down.

  “Hey!” Ivy chirped. “Damon, I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “Yep,” I said, draping my arm across Nicky’s shoulders. “Been busy.” If I had to, I’d throw Nicky’s ass on the table and screw her in front of everyone to keep the peace.

  “Oh,” she said, letting her eyes slide from me to Nicky. “Wait! You two? Wooooow. I heard about the wedding being canceled. So, this happened after that?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but Nicky beat me to it.

  “No. Before,” she said.

  “Before?” Ivy asked, her voice raising an octave.

  Nicky nodded as she scooted closer to me, conspicuously sliding her hand up my thigh. “Way before. Years before.” And then her mouth was on mine, kissing me so deeply, my dick damn near jumped out of my pants.

  “Damn, y’all,” Ryan said.

  My eyes were glued to her when she ended the kiss, so I barely noticed Ivy and Ashley leaving our table as the lights began to dim, signaling the beginning of the show. My eyes darted over to where her parents were sitting. Nicky didn’t care what anyone thought of her, but I had mad respect for her mom and hoped she didn’t think any less of me because of what had just occurred. Thankfully, her parents had disappeared. A quick search of the dimming room put them at another table engrossed in conversation with a couple that looked to be around their age.

  As Mint Condition took the stage—Stokley’s ass could still sing, by the way—I pushed the fact that Nicky had basically just marked her territory—me—in front of her family out of my mind and buried my face in her neck, whispering, “I’ma wear you out when we get home.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “You better.”

  27

  I was so happy for Damon, deliriously happy for him and extremely proud of both him and Theo. They’d left for LA that morning to meet with Karyn McNooner about her acquiring the rights to their digital comic and adding it to her new online comic platform, Southside Strips. Damon wanted me to travel with him, offering to buy me a plane ticket, but I knew I’d be a distraction he didn’t need. And besides, we’d been going strong in our little love bubble for nearly three months, and the mature, rational side of me felt we needed a breather, a little time apart. But the sex-crazed, Damon-crack-fiend, madly-in-love side of me was slowly unraveling without him, and he’d only been gone a few hours.

  I dropped him off early that morning, and my stomach jumped hurdles as I walked back into the quiet duplex, his scent permeating the air. It took me a couple of hours to get my mind together enough to send an email to a website designer Angie referred me to as I continued working toward making NLS Social Media Management legit. Then I checked all my clients’ accounts for DMs or comments that might’ve needed to be acknowledged. I ate lunch, watched a movie on Netflix, and spent the better part of the evening lying in bed staring at the ceiling, decided to skip dinner, and was falling asleep when Damon called.

  I damn near knocked my phone on the floor trying to snatch it up from the nightstand to answer it with a breathless, “Hello?!”

  “Why the hell are you out of breath?” was his greeting.

  “Uh, I was trying to catch the phone, almost dropped it.”

  “Oh…well, I made it. Me and Theo getting ready to have dinner with McNooner and her business partner. The change in time is already messing with me, but it’s all good. What you been up to?”

  “Not much. Missing you.”

  “You could’ve come with me. I wanted you to.”

  “I know. Just didn’t want to get in your way.”

  “You could never do that, baby. Ever. Gotta go. I’ll hit you back after dinner.”

  “Okay. Love you, Dame.”

  “Love you, too, Nick.”

  Hearing his voice helped me fall into a peaceful sleep, so peaceful that I woke up in a panic the next morning when I realized I’d missed his promised call. Since I knew his meeting was that morning, I opted to text him.

  Me: Hey. So sorry I missed ur call. Was asleep.

  Damon: It’s alright. I figured u fell asleep. Bout to go in this meeting. Will call later.

  Me: K

  The day dragged on as I fought the desire to call or text him, confident he’d contact me as soon as time permitted. But I was so anxious, I couldn’t concentrate on any tasks that might’ve made the time pass more quickly. I spent the better part of an hour trying to choose what I’d wear to pick him up from the airport the next day. I wanted to wear a short dress that I could go commando in without him readily knowing it. Once that task was over, I was left with nothing but a profound sense of loneliness as everything in that duplex apartment reminded me of him. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t stop thinking, and as the day progressed, my thoughts became increasingly worrisome as Travis’s ominous warning blared in my mind.

  Karma is a bitch.

  The only way karma could hurt me was if I lost Damon. Having him after a lifetime of loving and wanting him, then losing him? That would destroy me. Everything else, I could get over, but finally opening my heart and then having it crushed again? That would end me.

  I started wondering how long it would be before he found a woman more suitable for him, one who’d never played with his heart, one who didn’t have a list a mile long of former lovers, one who didn’t almost marry another man right in front of him just to spite him, one who didn’t have to reap so much sown shit.

  Someone other than me.

  Someone better than me.

  As the day wore on and hours passed with no word from Damon, I told myself to leave the house. Angie and Ryan were predictably out of town being Internet stars, but Renee was home, and visiting Little Zo never got old. Or I could go see my mom, but I’d be running an even bigger risk of catching her and Daddy into something now that they were officially back together. Thanks to my ho’ days, I didn’t have friends. Maybe I could drop by Aunt Monda’s and kick it with her and Onika, hold baby Tia. I quickly dismissed that thought, because if I stayed there too long, I was going to get high, and marijuana would only enhance the negative feelings I was experiencing. Getting high always made me think deeply, and I was already doing enough of that.

  So I crawled into bed and held Damon’s pillow to my heart, didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. All I could do was watch the phone and lay in bed missing my Damon, hoping he wouldn’t stop loving me.

  *****

  I woke up in the middle of the night with my pearl throbbing—no, it was pounding, and my whole body felt warm and tingly. Did I have a dream so intense and vivid that it affected my body this strongly? As slurping sounds became evident at the same time as the mouth attached to me down below, I wondered if I was still dreaming. It didn’t help that my eyes were closed, so I opened them to see Damon’s head between my legs and knew that in his absence, I had completely lost my damn mind.

  Then I decided to give in to the fantasy and enjoy it. If I had gone crazy, at least I could get a good orgasm out of it, so I threw my head back and moaned as the imaginary Damon went to work. It wasn’t until after I’d hit my peak and he lifted to kiss me that I realized it wasn’t a dream or fantasy. Damon was home.

  Damon was home!

  My heart stuttered at that realization.

  “You just let any dude come in here and eat you like this?” he asked, his voice husky.

  I shook my head, tried to catch my breath. “I knew it was you.” In dreams or reality, I definitely knew his touch.

  “How?”

  “No one else can do that, or anything else, the way you do. What are—”
<
br />   “I missed you, couldn’t wait until the morning to see you. Took an earlier flight, took an Uber home, and when I came in and saw you sleeping, I felt like I needed to thank you again, and again, and again…”

  “For what?” I asked.

  He reached over on the nightstand and grabbed his wallet, pulled something out of it, and held it before my face. My mouth dropped open at the six-figure check endorsed to him from Southside, Inc.

  “Theo got one, too,” he said.

  “Damon! You signed a deal with her?”

  He nodded with a huge grin on his face. “Yep. This check is for the rights to the chapters that’re already up on our site. They’re gonna move them to the Southside Strips site. And we also signed a contract to keep creating content for the strip. Those payments will be made quarterly. Baby, these contracts are sweet, too. The lawyer Zo put me in contact with out there says they’re among the best rights contracts he’s ever seen. We’ll still get royalties from any animated or live action series that’s developed and a percentage of any money earned from feature-length films. McNooner really believes in Foreign Son, says Theo’s artistic talent paired with my wit are a winning combination, that she’s never seen such potential. Baby, you have no idea how good it felt to be validated like that, to hear those words coming from someone like her.”

  “Dame, I am so happy for you! And I’m so happy you’re home! I was going crazy missing you, waiting for you to call. I was gonna jump your bones in an airport bathroom when I picked you up, but this is even better.”

  “Yeah, Theo wanted to kick it, celebrate out in LA, but the only thing I wanted to do was get back home to you.” He grabbed my face and stared into my eyes. “I love the shit out of you, Nick.”

  I smiled as every ugly doubt about us melted away. “I love the fuck out of you, Damon.”

  28

  I’d never seen her laugh and smile so much or seem so happy. She was relaxed, something she seldom was when we weren’t home alone, but I guess it was because she didn’t feel like she had to be on guard here. I was related to nearly everyone in the room, so she didn’t have to worry about anyone eye-humping me, as she’d put it.