Mrs. Kim downstairs was all grins when I dropped Jada off. All her kids were grown and living on the other side of the world. She’d bring Jada up in the morning with her clothes and hair smellin’ all like that spicy cabbage and red curry paste she called kimchi. Mrs. Kim barely spoke English. She’d frown and say, “Oh un huh,” to everything, like me telling her Jada’s feeding schedule for the fiftieth time. I knew she was giving my baby Korean food on the low. Jada always had the worst diapers after a day with Mrs. Kim. But free babysitters are hard to come by and she’s right here.
It was too cold for me to think about dressing any cuter than some dark blue jeans that had me looking like that Atlanta housewife with the big ol’ big ol’ booty. That show was my favorite guilty pleasure. I threw on a tan and dark brown turtleneck with matching dark brown boots and I was ready right as Bear texted to let me know he was outside. I was quiet when we just so happened to pass the court where Dontay said he’d be. All my life functions went on a temporary pause. I could only see a handful of guys in sweats and hoodies; none of them looked like Dontay. I was on the brink of being pissed all over again until I saw my car parked off to the far side of the court. If that wasn’t some kind of agonizing relief I didn’t know what was.
I tried not to look into it too much.
“You okay? Storie told me what happened. Maybe he’s gonna surprise you when he gets off work.” Bear reached over and gave my leg a consoling pat.
Chills ran down the back of my neck before he pulled his hand away.
“Okay, Bear, tell me, would you ever buy jewelry for another woman, forget Valentine’s Day, and then go play basketball with a bunch of sweaty dudes if you were surprising someone?”
He stared at the road making the “guy code” confusion face. That’s the face dudes make when they know you’re right but guy code prevents them from admitting it.
“It’s all right, don’t hurt yourself. At least it looked like he might be at the court we just passed.”
“Oh, well yeah, you’re good. You should have told me you seen him over there. We could have stopped by so I could have gave him a quick gut check about what day it is.”
“Hmm,” was my response.
“Hmm what? You saw him right? Because back in the day . . . Never mind.”
He got that stupid guy code look again and my mood instantly darkened. “Bear, back in the day we what?”
“Nothin’. Let’s go holla at him right quick.”
We hit a quick U-turn. I tried to make myself say no but checkin’ on Dontay was exactly what I wanted to do. We pulled up behind my car and I held my breath while my eyes roamed over the guys on the court. Not one of them was Dontay.
Chapter 16
Eva Girl Code Against Guy Code
“Girl, don’t look like that. He might have walked off to take a piss or get a Gatorade.” Bear had the heat turned up to walking in the Sahara Desert in a sauna suit. That fool is probably out with his real love. I had no choice but come out of my coat. Should have pulled that spare key out and took the car on his MIA behind.
“Damn, Eva, you get some work done? I mean you’re looking real bountiful up top these days. I’m just messing with you. I haven’t seen you since what, since we came to the hospital?
The good thing about having a baby was that I went from a B cup to a full D and those ultrasounds with a full bladder make you work until those Kegel muscles are built up like Popeye’s forearms. I’d gotten my shape back but my hips were thicker and all my shirts fit a lot snugger now.
“Gonna have to start call you Top Shelf Diva or something.”
I punched him in the arm. “Whoa, ho, don’t make me pull out the nickname list. You know Storie tells me everything, Papa Pump, oh wait, Dick Slater. I think we need to get you a Dick Slater T-shirt made. I bet you still have those wrestling action figures, too.”
We laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.
“Oh you went way back. That’s all right; watching wrestling was like the poor man’s karate. I was learning vital survival skills with that.”
We stopped at the ABC store and Bear bought enough stuff to last a couple of house parties. He held the door open for me, something Dontay rarely did, not even when I was holding Jada. Storie was my girl but she was definitely being selfish when it came to Bear. She had a really good one, but if you asked her all her men were good ones. The only thing that made them all stand apart was their dongs and which one she wanted as her flavor of the week. My eyes kept drifting to Bear’s crotch to see if there was an outline. He was supposedly really long and thick and . . . Lord, she’d given me way too much information. I couldn’t think about Bear like that; it was wrong on so many levels. Now I could think about Enzo, one of the other guys she was always creepin’ with. She’d describe his johnson and you’d think she was talking about a five-course meal. It was juicy and with a big old mushroom tip that she’d go into withdrawal from not having.
I need to get my mind off the random johnsons and on to the one in my house that I hardly liked. Shoot, he’d better hope I don’t find one to replace him.
“Eeeh, my twin, I’ve missed you,” Storie squealed and ran to grab me up in a hug as soon as I walked in.
I always felt a tug of envy whenever we were all together.
“Are you ready to get wasted, boo?” She laughed.
I hadn’t drunk since before Jada but I nodded and smiled. “I’m so ready to get wasted. But not too much. I’m goin’ to first service tomorrow.”
Storie responded with an exaggerated finger down her throat and gag. “Can you stop being a Jesus freak and just be a regular freak with the rest of us heathens for one day?” she whined, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me until we were both giggling.
“I am a freak for my God and that is it. Wait, that don’t sound one bit of right,” I said while fighting back a smile.
We started off with vodka shots while Vaughn showed off his bartending skills trying to make us some blue motorcycles. I tried to call Dontay again but his phone was going to voicemail. It was two forty-five and he usually worked from three until midnight. I was hoping he was actually at work.
“You better not be over here callin’ that idiot during our Valentine’s celebration.” I snapped the screen off on my phone setting it on the glass coffee table. I chewed the inside of my cheek debating on even mentioning the basketball court, but if I didn’t there was a good chance Bear would bring it up and I’d have to hear her mouth. My recap was four shots long and since neither of us had eaten we were feeling every single one.
Storie put on her serious face. “Well now that we got that out the way, this is your mission should you choose to accept it. I’m gonna have Bear call some of his boys over and every time you mention he we will not mention anymore, you will take a shot.”
“Mission accepte . . . Wait, do you mean every time I mention Jesus or Dontay?”
“Shot! Dontay, girl, why would . . . Never mind. Drink the damn shot, Anna Mae.”
By the time Bear’s friends showed up with pizza, more liquor, and Red Box movies I would have paid one of them to feed me pizza in my sleep. Guys only hang out with guys who are of greater or equal sexiness. There was Mateo, John, and Enzo. I reached under the couch cushions and pinched Storie’s butt when I heard Enzo’s name. It was mushroom dong in the flesh. She was messing with one of Bear’s homeboys and yes, it was so so wrong but I could see why. Enzo and Bear both towered over the other two. If either one put you on their shoulders you’d probably come down with a nosebleed. Aside from their height they were night and day. Bear was clean shaven and lean with creamy dark skin. Enzo was motor oil gold with a rugged beard and a little bush of hair peeking out the collar of his shirt. Enzo looked like he could ride the hell out of a bike. Or a woman. After looking at him I already knew I wasn’t about to remember anyone else’s name. From the way the other two trailed behind Enzo and Bear they became Shadow and Shadow Lurker.
After a few drinks
Enzo got bolder than a fat-tip Sharpie. I somehow wound up on his lap and Storie was surprisingly quiet, which meant she was jealous. Lighten up, girl; you can’t have all the fun. I hadn’t even planned on doin’ anything more than flirting but her stank attitude was irritating me.
The rest of the guys sounded occupied yelling and carrying on with their game of pool. They’d escaped to the little den Bear called his Bear cave that extended off the back of the kitchen. We, well he, talked all over the Fast & Furious 6 movie we were supposed to be watching, while I fantasized. Enzo was twenty-whatever; I accidentally replaced the number with how many ways I wanted him to make me cum. He had a brother or maybe a sister, I thought, and he was half black and . . . well I knew he was mixed.
My fingers gave the thick nape of his neck the same slow, loving devotion that an obsessively compelled neurotic would pay to stroking a kitten. All thoughts of Dontay evaporated the second my own kitten got bumped awake. Enzo smiled and I blushed at what I knew was a big ol’ mushroom pokin’ me in my butt. Storie should have never relayed that little bit of information. He made big, sweeping circles rubbing my back trying to coerce me to move closer and I leaned my ear closer to his mouth.
Storie sucked her teeth and hopped up bumping the coffee table spilling our unfinished shots from the last round. She grabbed her coat and jetted for the front door. Shock, complete and absolute shock, was the only thing my half-drunk mind could muster. Enzo dumped me on the couch like we weren’t just having what I thought was “a moment” and went running off behind her. I crossed my arms and stared at the television playing like I was severely insulted. I seriously didn’t want to be the one to tell him his woman was with her other man. Storie didn’t walk across the stage at graduation because she beat Tisha Lesner into the hospital just for starting a rumor. Nope, I wasn’t about to be spreading real business.
“Damn what’s wrong, Eva? Dontay still ain’t hit you up? Girl, it’s just a phase.” Bear asked as he strolled into the living room.
I perked up like we were on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. “You said the forbidden word. You’ve got to take a shot.” I poured and handed him what I’d learned was a double. He needed to play catch-up anyway. As an afterthought I poured myself one more, hoping it would burn away the sadness that seemed to come up with Dontay’s name. I tossed it back fighting my gag reflex and then coughing like crazy as it tried to burn its way back up. Everyone else made that mess look so easy. The devil was a liar.
When I could breathe again I looked over at Bear. “Do you ever feel like you don’t know Storie? Like she’s changed or she’s a completely different person from when you two first got together?”
He made the man version of the duck face, pursing his lips to one side of his face and then the other. He’d been doing that goofy mess ever since we were little.
“No. I know Storie inside and out to the point where I can say that I actually get bored sometimes. I mean, she’s not a very complicated person, Eva. Now you on the other hand—”
“Me?”
“Yes, you; you seem like this perfectly evolved stranger. You used to be so cool. I mean cool for a chick who wasn’t housebroken. I remember a story about you peeing in my bathroom sink and all.”
I gasped. “Whoa now, that’s not fair. Dontay told you that? He ran up in the bathroom to take one of those long as sin camel hump horse pees. I had a baby pressing on my bladder, jerk.”
“Would it be wrong if I said that’s what I like about you?” Bear replied in a low voice.
His words sounded playful but his tone sounded like we’d had too much to drink and he was going in a very strange and very wrong direction.
“So you have a pee-pee fetish?” I teased, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Bear was off-limits and I was not going there. Storie would murder him if I told her what I thought he was hinting at and then she’d probably stab me too.
“No, more like I had a Eva fetish.” He did a mock Southern girl voice. “But Eva was in love with Jesus and was gonna marry Jesus and had a Jesus ring and was even gonna pray to have a miracle Jesus baby.”
We both cracked up laughing. My sides hurt; that’s about exactly what I’d said to any Negro who tried to talk to me before Que and Don—
My punishment wasn’t a shot this time. Bear’s lips made me feel hotter and tipsier than all the liquor in the house combined. He tasted forbidden. It was this indescribable honeyed sensation. I was licking a nine-volt battery drenched in cinnamon-apple butter and the jolt ran from the tip of my tongue up to the tips of my ears. The more my brain tried to ping on how wrong this all was the more electrifying it became. I could barely catch my breath from all the shocks running through my body.
Is this what it’s like when he cheats on me? All this wanting and feeling, is this why he does it? It was probably wrong or unnatural for me to be thinking about Dontay with another woman. But wondering about him only made me want to put it down one hundred times better. Disappointment hit me like a tidal wave when he stopped. I sighed. Maybe one of us needs to show some common sense.
“Come with me,” Bear stated holding out his hand.
There was a small break in the lust fog and I looked around suspiciously. His Bear man caveamajigger had been awful quiet all this time. “Where are your boys? Shadow and Shadow Lurker?”
“You talking about John and Mateo? They left; they parked on the side of the house by the Bear cave. Went out that way.”
Bear led me into the darkness of his man cave with black carpeting and matching leather armchairs. He sat me on the edge of the pool table. I pushed the bright red three ball across the black felt fabric toward the eight. They clinked and separated.
“What about um . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say my best friend’s name.
“Oh yeah, y’all’s girl code right?” Bear responded, sliding my turtleneck over my head. “You weren’t gonna tell me about her and it’s cool.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself and kisses on my neck and my shoulders stole my breath. I closed my eyes trying to ignore the thoughts spinning along with my head. This was sin on top of sin compounded by betrayal. Storie was my girl, Dontay was my man, I was Eve, and Bear . . . Bear was the apple.
“Eva, you don’t think I don’t know she’s with my boy? We boys damn near brothers. He wasn’t about to smash my girl and not tell me. I was the one who gave him the okay. I just let her think she was running that. Like I said, I know what she’s gonna do before she does it.”
And that was it. I was biting, scratching, and clawing at my apple as the rest of my worries fell away with our clothes. He bent my knees pressing my legs up toward my stomach with one hand. I almost came up off the table when I heard what I thought was a hornet or a bee. His mouth closed over my clit with his tongue vibrating up and down, and around it until I was buzzing on the edge of heaven. He paused just long enough to take his tongue ring back out.
My human blanket covered every square inch of me. He felt like flannel sheets fresh out the dryer with his wide tongue licking all my senses on fire. I didn’t know it was possible to want someone as bad as I wanted him and I told him just that.
We were anxious and feverish. I wound my hips toward him trying to get back to the edge of the cliff he’d just yanked me off of. We offered what the other felt was missing at home. I nibbled his shoulders, dragged my nails across his ridiculously perfect ass. If all this were mine I wouldn’t be going anywhere with anybody.
“Mmmm,” I moaned, and he growled when he sat himself at my opening; it sure felt all the hell like a mushroom tip to me. I turned into a human cage, wrapping my arms as tight as I could around his neck and my legs around his waist. Oh please forgive me. I wasn’t sure whose forgiveness I was asking for in that small window of guilt but the line had already been crossed; scratch that, the line had been completely erased.
I bit his lips, then kissed and sucked the spots I was mean to. Bear eased himself forward going inch by agonizing baby anaconda inch like he
was snaking a damn punani drain. I wasn’t anywhere near mentally prepared to be stroked like that. This nigga went deeper and was more precise than one of them grandfather clocks that dinged out the hour all loud and long. All I could was bury my face into his neck and gasp. I was on some for real Lois Lane clinging to Superman flying over the city, praying he’d go ahead and drop me off the edge of that cliff he showed me earlier.
Bear crashed into me over and over, perpetual motioning all his bad but so so good sexual energy into me until the nerves in my palms were throbbing. As the saying goes when you don’t know what to say or what to pray . . .
“Jesus,” I whispered through clenched teeth unsure of whether I was calling on Him, praying to Him, or just out of words all together.
The pool table rocked and I ain’t never felt a good so good that tears ran out the corners of my eyes. I begged him to let me go, make me cum, drop me, and throw me off the mountain. I’d never felt that with Dontay, not with his quick super-fast jackrabbit strokes. Bear roared his way to the top like he’d just lifted an entire car off all four tires. It was powerful and sexy and it shattered me from the inside out.
Mission control; come in, mission control. Is there any damage? Neither one of us moved for a minute; my brain was trying to assess the condition of my body. My butt was stinging from rug burns from the table, and my legs felt slick and shaky.
Bear smiled down at me. “Explain to me again why you ain’t mine?”
“Because you—”
We almost broke our necks as our heads whipped in the direction of the living room. Enzo and Storie were back.
Chapter 17
Dontay The Price of Fayme
“Oh bookie-boo, thank you so much for gettin’ my feet done.” Fayme smiled over at me from the vibrating massage chair.
I picked the nicest shop I could find and treated us both to pedis. Real talk, I liked to get my dogs rubbed and massaged all over. There’s nothing worse than climbing in bed with somebody and you couldn’t sleep because their heels were scratching up the front of your shins all night. Or someone told you to stop moving your feet because the scratching sound they made across the sheets was too annoying. That’s exactly what Fayme said the first night we met up.
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