by Shelly Ellis
“Well, I’ll leave you two to your dinner,” Mr. Theo said, pointing to the baskets at the center of the highboy. “Dee, I’ll see you around, son. Okay?”
“Okay,” Derrick said with a nod then watched as Mr. Theo walked toward the men’s room.
“He was so nice!” Morgan gushed, hopping back onto her stool. “Glad I got to finally meet him.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said absently, taking his seat. “Glad you did too.”
Derrick tried to enjoy the rest of his meal and Morgan’s company, but he couldn’t. His eyes kept drifting to the booth where Mr. Theo and Lucas sat, focusing on the back of Mr. Theo’s head and Lucas, who was so intent on chowing down on his basket of buffalo wings and waffle fries, he was unaware that Derrick was staring at them the whole time. But Morgan noticed the difference in his behavior.
“Are you okay?” she asked while sucking sauce from her fingertips.
He blinked, shifting his gaze away from Mr. Theo’s booth back to her. “Yeah, I’m good. Why?”
“Because I’ve basically been having a one-sided conversation for the past fifteen minutes. Something on your mind?”
“No. Well,” he glanced down at his wristwatch, “I should probably get our waitress and ask for the check. I’ve got to get in the office a little earlier than usual tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Okay, let’s get the check then.”
Ten minutes later they were walking to the restaurant’s doors when Derrick abruptly halted. Morgan realized he was no longer following her. She turned around and looked up at him in surprise. “What’s up?” she asked. “Forgot something?”
“Go ahead outside,” Derrick said, shrugging into his coat. “I just want to ask Mr. Theo a question right quick. I’ll be out in a couple a minutes.”
“Yeah, no problem.” She pushed open the glass door and stepped into the cold night, buttoning her jacket as she did it. After she did, he turned back around and headed straight to Mr. Theo and Lucas’s table.
“Mr. Theo!” he called out, making Mr. Theo stare up at him in surprise. “Lucas, hey! I just wanted to come over and say what’s up,” he said, thumping Lucas on the back. “I didn’t get a chance to earlier.”
“Well, hey, Derrick!” Lucas said, smiling and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Theo told me you were here with a friend and—”
“Not a friend,” he rushed out, quickly correcting Lucas. “Just . . . just someone I work with at the Institute.”
“Really?” Mr. Theo asked, biting into one of his waffle fries. “Y’all looked pretty friendly to me.”
Derrick’s brows lowered. His anxious smile disappeared.
So Mr. Theo had been thinking what he’d suspected all along.
“Yeah, well, things can look one way, but in reality, they’re very different.”
“That’s true,” Mr. Theo said between chews. “Melissa met her yet? Your coworker, I mean.”
Derrick shook his head. “No, no reason to. Anything about the Institute leaves a sour taste in her mouth, anyway. The less I talk to her about it, the better off she seems.”
Mr. Theo shrugged as he reached for another waffle fry. “It’s up to you.”
“Well, uh . . . I should get going. Morgan is waiting for me. It was nice seeing you guys.”
“Nice seeing you, too, Dee,” Lucas said.
Mr. Theo didn’t respond.
“See ya’,” Derrick said, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. He walked toward the restaurant door and had been about to push the door open, but paused when he heard Mr. Theo call out, “Dee! Dee, hold up!”
He turned to find Mr. Theo standing behind him.
“Can I talk to you for a quick sec, son?”
Derrick nodded. “Of course.”
“Look, you’re a grown man. What you do is your business,” Mr. Theo began.
He was giving him the same look he’d given him in the old days when he found out he’d broken curfew or gotten into a fight with one of the other boys at the Institute.
“And Melissa may not be talking to me anymore,” Mr. Theo continued, “but she’s still my daughter and she is still your fiancée. So whatever you’re doing with that girl—”
Derrick loudly groused. “Mr. Theo, there is nothing . . . I mean nothing going on between me and Morgan! I told you, she’s—”
“Look, just remember the last time we talked and what I told you. Figure out what you really want, and be willing to make the sacrifices to get it. But don’t lie, and definitely don’t try to have it both ways. You can end up hurting people. I speak from experience.”
He then thumped him on the shoulder and turned away, leaving Derrick to stare mutely at his retreating back.
Chapter 23
Ricky
Ricky hadn’t smashed this much in years, maybe in his whole life—certainly not with one woman, the same woman. But he and Simone were burning up the sheets on the regular in the past few weeks like two horny teenagers with no parental supervision. At his apartment in Brookland . . . at her efficiency near Eastern Market . . . while they were parked in deserted lots at one in the morning . . . in the back office at Reynaud’s after closing, they made love like their lives depended on it.
He got to know her body and her smell. He knew what she tasted like and what took her from a whimper to a soft moan to screaming out his name in ecstasy.
Of course, it was reckless. They shouldn’t . . . couldn’t be seen together. Ricky didn’t want to consider what the aftermath would be if Dolla Dolla found out he was screwing Simone. He also wondered what the other officers at Simone’s police department would say if they found out she was sixty-nining with the business partner of one of D.C.’s highest-profile criminals. But Ricky and Simone rarely spoke about the repercussions of what they were doing. Instead, they talked about other things.
When the sex was over and they stared tiredly at the bedroom ceiling, they would lie in each other’s arms and share stories about their childhood, past loves, and old favorites. He talked about things he hadn’t spoken about in years, including Desiree. He told her about teaching his little sister to ride a bike. He thought she would get good momentum by doing it on a hilly roadway near their old apartment. But soon, he’d figured out his mistake when his screaming sister almost rolled into oncoming traffic when she couldn’t brake. He’d had to rescue her.
“At least that time I saved her,” he muttered forlornly.
He told Simone about the blackberry cobbler his dead grandmother, Mama Kay, used to make every Christmas and how he used to pair it with vanilla ice cream. He was sure if ambrosia of the gods ever existed, it would taste like Mama Kay’s blackberry cobbler.
Simone told him stories, too. She shared one about a favorite pair of shoes she had when she was eight-years-old.
“They were pink, glitter jellies with little buckles on the side,” she told him. “I loved those damn shoes.”
She’d worn them all summer almost exclusively, and during the fall and winter with socks. When it was snowing outside, her mother had put her foot down and told her she wasn’t going out the house with those jellies, even if she had socks on. But Simone had snuck out the house and worn them anyway.
“I don’t know if you realize it, but I can be a bit stubborn when I want to do something,” she’d admitted.
“No, really?” he’d deadpanned, earning a thump with her pillow.
Simone said she had walked to school and arrived with toes almost blue from frostbite. The school nurse had called her mom and told her to take her to the doctor to get her feet checked out.
“That was the end of my jellies,” Simone had told him with an almost whimsical sigh. “Mama threw them in the trash after that.”
He listened to her stories with fascination, wanting to learn more about her. The sex wasn’t enough. He wanted to understand this woman who occupied so much of his thoughts. And with each story he felt like he was peeling away another layer of her. Simone was thoughtful but stubborn. Sh
e respected rules, but was also a risk taker. She fought to hold onto the reins of control in her personal and professional life, but a passion and fire burned inside her that refused to be contained—hence, her hooking up with someone like him. When they were alone, she was his total focus—but he wasn’t hers. Inevitably their conversations would always veer back to Skylar, a topic he wished they could avoid.
“Mama’s doctor put her on antidepressants. She’s taking Skylar being gone so badly,” she’d told him last week. “We’ve got to get her out of there, Ricky.”
We? When exactly did this turn into a “we,” he thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
Skylar wasn’t his sister. And yet, he found himself keeping an eye out for Skylar whenever he was summoned to Dolla Dolla’s apartment. He had even gone wandering down the hall in search of her after he’d made up a lie that he needed to use the bathroom. When he’d gone to another one of Dolla Dolla’s parties on his property in Virginia, he even tried to sneak upstairs again but he’d been stopped by T. J.
“Nah, nigga,” T. J. had sneered, blocking his path up the stairs, “paying customers only.”
Ricky had rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Well, how much then?”
T. J. had laughed coldly. “Too much for you!”
He’d told her the next night in bed what had happened, how T. J. had turned him away.
“We just have to try something else. Another chance will come along,” she’d insisted. “I know it will.”
“I’ve looked for Skylar. I’ve asked about her. Even when I tried to get her to leave, she wouldn’t do it! What more can I do?”
“She wasn’t thinking straight. You said so yourself that they keep her locked in that room, strung out on who knows what! She didn’t realize what she was saying!”
“Simone, come on! She—”
“Ricky,” she’d said, clasping his cheeks and gazing into his eyes, “please don’t give up. You’re all I’ve got!” She’d given him one tantalizing kiss then another. “Don’t give up, baby. I need you,” she’d whispered as she wrapped her hand around his dick and kissed him again, sliding her tongue into his mouth. He instantly hardened in her warm palm. “If anyone can do this, I know you can.”
Sucker, he’d thought with disgust even as she began to stroke him and he closed his eyes, letting the blissful sensation take over him. He was officially a sucker—a slave to the pussy.
Months ago, he had warned Jamal against something similar, about being brainwashed by his girlfriend, Bridget.
“No pussy is worth half the shit she makes you do,” he recalled lecturing his former friend.
Ricky found great irony in the fact that he was doing a lot more for Simone than Jamal had ever done for Bridget. Jamal wasn’t risking his life for his girl, while Ricky ran the serious risk of catching a bullet to the head if Dolla Dolla figured out what he was doing. But for Simone, it was worth the risk.
He realized now that when men like himself did stupid things for a woman, it wasn’t just for a “piece of ass.” He could get that anywhere. No, if you were willing to put your life on the line, you did it for something of higher value, you did it for love.
He could admit it after a few months of knowing her; he was in love with Simone, though he would never tell her that. He also didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d probably never run into her sister again since Dolla Dolla seemed to be going out of his way to keep her under lock and key now.
That’s the thing about love, Ricky realized. You could love someone so much that sometimes you wanted to protect them from everything—including the truth.
* * *
Ricky stepped out of the elevator doors and walked down the carpeted hallway to Dolla Dolla’s apartment on Wisconsin Avenue. He hadn’t told Simone he’d gotten the text from the drug kingpin about an hour ago, ordering him to come here tonight. He knew she’d be on edge until she heard from him, until she discovered whether he’d seen her sister again.
When he approached the door at the end of the hall, he rang the gilded button, listening to the chime of the bell on the other side of the door. He patiently waited for the front door to open. When it did, he saw one of Dolla Dolla’s bodyguards, Melvin, frowning down at him quizzically.
“What you doin’ here, Ricky?”
“Dolla called me and told me to come here.” He paused and leaned to look around Melvin’s wide shoulder. “He’s here, ain’t he?”
Melvin nodded his bald head. “Yeah, he’s here. But he’s asleep.”
Asleep . . . or passed out, Ricky wondered.
Dolla Dolla had been partying pretty hard lately, doing rails of coke, smoking weed, and drinking enough alcohol for three men. He was in a celebratory mood, though Ricky wasn’t quite sure why. Ricky suspected that all the partying was starting to catch up with him, though.
“You sure he told you to come here . . . tonight?” Melvin asked again.
“Yeah!” Ricky loudly grumbled. “Can’t I just wait for him, Mel? If his ass wakes up and I’m not here, he’s gonna be pissed—and I don’t wanna get cussed out.”
Melvin nodded, opening the door farther and waving him forward. “Come on, man. Just wait for him in the living room, I guess.”
Ricky made his way to the living room, like Melvin said, descending the stairs.
“You okay in here by yourself?” Melvin asked.
Ricky nodded absently. “Yeah, I’m cool. I’ll keep myself occupied. Don’t worry about me.”
Melvin nodded then walked off, strolling down the corridor and disappearing into the one of the rooms.
Ricky looked around him and sucked his teeth. He could be home right now in bed sleeping, maybe even sleeping next to Simone, but instead he was here waiting for a grown ass man to wake up from a nap.
He strolled to one of the sofas—a chinchilla-covered piece that looked vaguely like a decapitated Muppet—and sat down. He glanced at his wristwatch. He’d give it an hour. If Dolla Dolla didn’t wake his ass up by then, then he was leaving.
Ricky settled back onto the sofa and pulled out his cell phone. He brought up one of his sports apps and started to check the basketball scores, but paused a few minutes later when he heard a thump behind him. He turned slightly to find someone standing in the kitchen. One of the stainless steel doors to the industrial-sized refrigerator stood open and Ricky could hear someone rummaging around the shelves, like they were looking for something. Slowly the door closed, revealing a young woman ripping open a pack of deli meat. She shoved one slice into her mouth then another, gobbling them with a ravenous zeal, like she hadn’t eaten in days. Ricky stared at her in shock.
“Skylar?” he called out to her.
She jumped at her name, almost dropping the package of deli meat to the tiled kitchen floor. She stared back at him mutely.
He didn’t know it was possible but she actually looked worse than the last time he’d seen her, a couple months ago at Dolla Dolla’s fight night party. She looked skinnier; her cheek bones were more prominent and her eyes were more sunken. The luster in her skin was gone. Her hair was matted to her scalp. She looked like she’d aged about ten years.
Seeing her made him stick to his stomach. She reminded him so much of Desiree, of the last day he’d seen her alive.
“Skylar?” he said, rising from the sofa and walking across the living room to the kitchen.
She didn’t recognize him from the last time they’d spoken—or at least, if she did, she didn’t acknowledge it. As he drew closer, she took one hesitant step back, then another, almost bumping into the refrigerator.
He glanced over his shoulder, on the lookout for the bodyguard or Dolla Dolla himself. He saw neither of them so he rushed toward her.
“Come on! Let’s go. I can get you out of here but we’ve got to do it now,” he said, reaching for her.
She shrank back. “No! No! I don’t want to go with you!”
“Skylar, listen to me. I’m a friend of your sister’s . . . of Sim
one’s. She sent me to look for you. She asked me to bring you home.”
“Simone?” she repeated through dry, cracked lips. She blinked up at him. “My . . . my sister, Simone?”
“Yes, your sister Simone has been looking for you for . . . for months. She figured out what happened to you and asked me to look for you here. I can take you home, but you have to leave now. You understand me?”
He glanced over his shoulder again when he thought he heard footsteps. Luckily, no one was standing there. He yanked the package of deli meat out of her hand and tossed it onto the kitchen’s marble island. Ricky did the math in his head, calculating how much time they had, how much of a lead he had to give her before he told one of the guards that he’d seen her run out the door. He figured she’d need at least five minutes in her dazed state, maybe a bit longer to make it downstairs and out the door before Dolla Dolla’s bodyguards ran after her.
He grabbed her shoulders.
“When I open the front door, run to the elevator down the hall. Take it to the first floor and go through the lobby, straight to the revolving doors. Don’t stop for anybody. You hear me? I’ll call an Uber now and have him pick you up at the corner of Friendship and Montgomery. It’s only a couple blocks from here. The driver can take you to—”
“I’m not going anywhere! I like it here,” she said, cutting him off and making him furrow her brows.
“What the hell do you mean you like it here?”
He looked her up and down with a mix of disbelief and disgust. Maybe Simone was right. Maybe her sister had been brainwashed.
“Skylar, they’re not treating you right. They’re not feeding you! Look, I know you’re scared to leave, but when you get home, your sister will make sure you’ll—”
“I don’t want to go home to her! I don’t want to go home to Mama either! They’re always telling me what to do,” she mumbled petulantly. “They treat me like a baby. But he doesn’t treat me like a baby.” She gave a smile. “He treats me like a woman. He says I’m sexy. That he can get me in videos with Lil Yachty and the Migos. He said they like girls like me.”
