Threefold: Part 1

by Shanicka White

  One Week Later

  New York Fashion Week was a success. I didn’t embarrass myself on the runway and I networked to the max. I signed two on the spot contracts for two different campaigns and my agent was able to set up a meeting with Juicier, a hot new makeup line based out of London. She was pitching me for their new spokesmodel.

  “You’re gonna book it for sure. The lady I was talking to, Rachel, she’s the director and she loved you. She kept mentioning how good you looked in the pieces every single time you walked and you know I already had your full portfolio on hand. Please, they know they need some more melanin over there at “Juicier”.” My agent made air quotes around the company’s name. I laughed at her usual sarcasm. I’ve been modeling since I was 16 but Nichelle had been my agent for the past four years. To me, she was hidden gold. She’s biracial but when we met, she had the mentality of Diddy in 1994, she was hungry for success. When I signed to her, I was her first and only client but something made me trust her vision. Turns out, everything that she said she’ll do for my career she’s topped and I couldn’t be more grateful. I considered Nichelle a good friend of mine even though she was 10 years older than me.

  “I’m so glad this week is over to be honest. I love what I do but fashion week was stressing my edges out. I feel like I can finally exhale”. I said as we walked out of Spring Studios and into the cool Manhattan air. I was waiting for my car to come around, holding a few of the items I got to take home with me from tonight’s show.

  “You’re coming out with me and my cousin tonight, right?” I asked her.

  “Are you talking about your cousin Brooklyn? No thank you”. Brooklyn was my cousin on my mom’s side, my mom was originally from New York and only moved to Chicago for my father. Most of her family still lived in New York.

  “It’s her birthday. You need to let some steam off Nich! We been going hard all week, come on”.

  “Nia, the last time I agreed to go out with you and your cousin I ended up in a 24 hour holding cell”.

  “But you lived, you lived to fight another day”, I joked, quoting Friday. Nichelle laughed.

  “I’ll pass, I have a date with the jacuzzi”.

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. We’ll celebrate later then?”

  “Yep. And I’ll have Amy ship all of the clothes and makeup you received this week to your place in Chicago”. Amy was her assistant.

  I hugged her and jetted off to my hotel. It was around 7pm when I made it in. Brooklyn was supposed to come by with some of her friends by 9 but I knew she wouldn’t get here till damn near 11 so I decided to take a quiet relaxing bath in the large jacuzzi bathtub.

  As soon as I sunk my aching body into the inviting water, Monti called my phone. I placed him on speaker and leaned back, closing my eyes.

  “Hey, you” I said, happy to hear from him.

  “My beautiful supermodel. How did your finale go?”

  “It went great. I landed a few campaigns and Nichelle set up a meeting with Juicier for a possible spokesmodel contract”.

  “With who?” He sounded perplexed and I realized he wouldn’t know a damn thing about makeup lines.

  “It’s a popular makeup company babe”.

  “Okay. Well, they obviously need you to bring the heat because I never heard of them and I know everything. Tell Nich to make that happen ASAP”, he joked.

  I smiled; Monti was always rooting for me. We chatted a good while about my week and his.

  “So, you won’t be home when I get there Sunday?” I asked.

  “I’m catching a flight tomorrow morning to meet my dad in Cali so we can finally finalize the contracts for the LA condominiums. These are the same contractors from Dubai I told you about, if everything goes good on the west coast, we’ll no doubt land the international one”. I was proud of Monti for sure but with every major contract he got the less and less I saw him and I was starting to feel lonely. Is this what married life would be for us?

  “You work so hard babe and its definitely starting to pay off. You know I’m in your corner but don’t forget you have a relationship that could also use your effort and time”.

  “I know. I’ve been neglecting you and I’m kicking myself every day for it. Just stick with me, I need you more than you know”.

  “Baby, I’m not going anywhere. When will you be back home?”

  “I might be in Cali till Tuesday or Wednesday”.

  “Wednesday?”

  “Chill. I’m doing this for us remember. I want to take care of you long term and keep you comfortable. All you gotta’ do is give me five babies and cook me Poulet Yassa two times a week”.

  I laughed, “I got you”.

  He let out a deep sigh. “I miss you, Nia. It’s been too damn long since I’ve been inside of you. That’s where home is”. His baritone voice slithered around me like an expensive silk scarf. My bath water had gotten cooler than it was 15 minutes ago but my body temperature was rising by the second. Monti was always on road which meant our sex life was neglected.

  “I want you so bad”, he whispered. “I miss sucking on your nipples and kissing down your body.” I bit my lip while my fingers slipped underneath the remaining bubbles, right into the warmest part of me. When he did make time, Monti always did my body damn good. Not only did he have big dick energy but his artillery was straight from the Motherland. He was so damn freaky and demanding and his favorite thing to do was eat me out eagle spread on our large African Blackwood dinner table with his seat pulled up like I was Thanksgiving dinner. Since we couldn’t get to each other physically, Monti Face Timed me and we sexed each other over the phone until we both exploded. I watched as his dick jumped while he made a creamy mess, moaning his name like I could make him appear.

  “Je te veux plus que tout” he said with a thick French accent. I want you more than anything.

  “Je suis fou de toi aussi”, I replied to his native tongue with ease. I’m crazy about you too.

  “I’ll see you next week. I love you”. He was smiling in the camera, proud that he could take me there.

  “I love you too. Goodnight”.

  A few hours later me, Brooklyn and two of our friends, Timothy and Alisha, stumbled out of a bar and onto the New York streets. It was almost 2am but the city was still just as alive as we were.

  “You ain’t have to go in on that man like that and get us kicked out the bar. All he did was tell you that you had something on your chin”, Alisha said to Timothy.

  “And then said the third one down”, he replied. We all cracked up laughing as we walked down the street.

  “So y’all just gone laugh at a muhfucka, huh?”

  “Aww Timmy, that waiter was just mad you curved him. I know you are not about to let that snaggled tooth ass boy mess up your mood”, I said and wrapped my arms around him.

  “His teeth did look like they could eat an apple through a fence”, Brooklyn said.

  “I’m good y’all. Shit, I might be a lil’ fluffy but that ain’t never stop the cash or dick flow, ayee!” Timothy said.

  “Ayye!” we screamed, hyping him up.

  “For real though, I’m starving. We need to find some food ASAP” I said.

  “We know you only eat grass and poppy seeds, girl all you gotta do is find a park and have at it”, my cousin tried to clown me.

  “Oh, so we body shaming me now?” I faked mad. She hugged on me.

  “You know I’m playing with you. My cousin is a whole supermodel out here, sprinkling all kind of black girl magic on these pasty white girls!”

  “Period”, Alisha said.

  Brooklyn, Alisha and Timmy were my day ones. I was born on the southside of Chicago but New York is my second home. My mom comes from a big family, they were spread all over The Bronx, and of course Brooklyn which is where most of my summers were spent and where my modeling career started. My cousin’s mom and my mom were sisters and we were only a year and a half apart, me being older.

  Since all the bars
were closed, we finally found a hole in the wall strip club that was still serving chicken wings and fries.

  After finding a table in the crowded place Timothy went to the bar to order our food and get more drinks. I didn’t want any more liquor until I got my order of hot wings. I had been on a strict diet for the last two months because of Fashion week so I was ready to treat myself.

  “Wayment, since when did strip clubs let men walk around in leopard print g-strings?” Brooklyn asked. We all looked around and saw not one titty in sight.

  “Girl this is a gay strip club! Timmy ass probably led us here on purpose” Alisha said. The only females in here were us three and a bartender that looked like Rosie O’Donnell, we spotted Timothy near her and it look like he caught on way before we did because he was shaking ass all over some white man who looked like he couldn’t handle it. When he finally came back with our food he also brought shots and hurricanes.

  “Turn the fuck uuuup!” He yelled into our faces and turn up we did. We shaked ass for the ’99 and 2000’s, the entire floor by our table was covered in money and all the strippers flocked to us. I never seen so many chiseled asses and penises in my life and I’m not sure if I ever want to again. It was definitely a one off experience for me.

  “I gotta peeee”, I told Brooklyn. I felt like I couldn’t get any drunker and was ready to call it one.

  “Hold up, I’ll come with you”.

  We navigated through the crowded club still moving to the music and Brooklyn was in front of me pulling me through the thick crowd. When I suddenly stopped, she ended up yanking my arm so hard I stumbled into someone, knocking the drink out their hand.

  “Ant, ant bitch. You gone have to buy me another one!” The Latino dude screamed in my face like he wanted to fight.

  The commotion caused attention and the man who had me frozen in my footsteps looked my way, I quickly turned around and tried to pull Brooklyn towards the bathroom.

  “Wait hold up, watch the way you speak to my cousin...what? I don’t care where you from I’ll kick another hole in your ass!”

  While Brooklyn took her earrings off, I couldn’t help but slyly glance back over to the man sitting comfortably in a dark corner booth. He looked away from our ghetto scene as if he dismissed it entirely. His broad frame was more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, his tie was undone and draped around his neck while his white business shirt was half unbuttoned, revealing chest hair. A male lifted his head from underneath the table, wiping his mouth while on the other side of him another leaned in to give him a kiss on the mouth. My mouth hung open in complete disbelief.

  Strong hands on my shoulders took me out of the moment. “Alright, break it up, you two are out of here”. Security practically hemmed us up and threw us out for the second time tonight.

  “Can’t take you bishes nowhere”, Timothy sarcastically said as he and Alisha met us outside.

  “Shut up”, she said. “You knew what you were doing when you brought us here”. Him and Alisha walked ahead of us while Brooklyn grabbed my arm so I could stop walking.

  “Ummmm what was that back there? I was getting ready to throw hands on your behalf and you stood there like a deer in headlights. I know you drunk but damn cousin”.

  “That’s my bad, I saw someone I knew, that’s why I stopped”. Her eyes got big.

  “It was Free, wasn’t it? I knew it, them chinky eyes and that curly hair, the nigga prettier than me. Damn! It’s always the fine ones trapped in the closet. I mean, if I were you, as fine as he is, I’d work with it, you know. It could be a lil’ freaky—“.

  “Brooklyn!” I almost had to scream to shut her up.

  “It wasn’t Free”.

  “Okay, well don’t leave a bitch in suspense, who was it?”

  Chapter 3

  I was sick. Physically sick. The stress from fashion week plus whipping and running the streets with my friends wore my body out. I had been lying in bed since I got home Sunday afternoon, feeling like total shit. And what’s worse, Monti still hadn’t made it back to Chicago to even take care of me. He was supposed to leave the west coast by Wednesday at the latest and it was now Friday. I hadn’t heard from him since I landed, every time I called his cellphone his calls would automatically forward to his assistant. I decided to stay at my own apartment rather than the penthouse me and Monti shared. I kept the lease and still paid the rent on the cozy, two bedroom in Hyde Park just in case I needed to get away and be in a space that was only for me, times like this. The penthouse was too big and inaccessible from the outside; besides, I was pissed at Monti, the last thing I wanted to do was be around his essence.

  When I had returned home from the airport a beautiful bouquet of white Lillie’s in a gorgeous vase was waiting in my foyer.

  You’re more than what I could have ever hoped for. I am so proud of you.

  Love, mom.

  Saturday after trying Monti’s phone for the 50th time that day, I laid on the living room couch with an itchy throat and fever. A Thin Line Between Love and Hate was playing on cable and the character named Brandy was giving me life.

  “See, that’s what you get, she told yo’ ass not to come around with all that goofy shit and what you do? Put on a damn clown suite, now look at you, hanging off a balcony like you deserve”, I talked to the TV and dry coughed. Suddenly my phone lit up and start vibrating on the coffee table, displaying a number that wasn’t Monti’s.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey noodles”. The voice made my eyes pop open, only one person called me by that nickname.

  “I thought I blocked you”, I said.

  “You know me better than that. I heard you were sick”.

  “Who told you I wa— Ma.” I answered my own question out loud. My mother and Free always kept in touch regardless of his status with me. She loved him like a son which made sense since at one point during our high school years, Free had lived with us.

  When I was 16 I couldn’t care less about getting good grades or even attending class for that matter. I was a real fuck up when it came to school, I ditched all the time, hung out with the wrong crowd, smoked weed and even secretly dated a man 10 years older than me. I wasn’t sleeping with him but I did allow him to explore my teenage body in other ways. My experience with that man is so ironic. I met him one summer in New York, he was a legitimate photographer and he loved to take professional photos of me. He was the first person that told me I had potential as a model but I didn’t take him serious at first, I just thought he was kinky. I was a 5’8, walking stick figure and never got any play from the boys at my school, so model what? Eventually his portfolio of me landed into the right hands and he marketed me as his ‘young muse’. From there, I got my first few print jobs and I’ve been riding this wave ever since.

  Meanwhile, Free was top of his class. He transferred in my sophomore year and was a year ahead of me. He was smart as hell, fine as hell and he was athletic. Standing at 6’3, he was hard to miss with his chocolate complexion and eyes so chinky he looked like the original Asian. His hair was bushy and curly but he always kept it in a low ponytail, honestly the man was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I always told him the modeling world was his for the taking but it just wasn’t his calling.

  My junior year, around the time they start shoving college down your throat, my advisor made it mandatory I get a tutor after failing math class the year prior. Free was tutoring at the time for extra credit and we just happened to be paired. We always had our sessions in the library but that day it was closed due to a snowstorm, so we went to my house. I remember being so preoccupied that day, texting my photography boo who had told me last minute he moved to Los Angeles, I was devastated. Brooklyn knew all about my secret involvement and kept her ears to the streets, it wasn’t long before I found out the reason he moved was so he could build a life with his new wife, he was engaged the entire time. I was so heated and distracted I wasted my strawberry milk all over Free’s white polo. My mom insisted she wash it even thou
gh he protested and I lent him one of my large pajama t-shirts while he waited. Next thing I know she was randomly inviting him for dinner but she didn’t tell me why until he left. She told me she had given Free his shirt fresh from the dryer, walked off but quickly back tracked to ask him if he was hungry, that’s when she caught him in the midst of changing. Large bruises were all over his torso and back. I asked her to drop it but my mom is the nosiest person I know, I knew she wouldn’t. At first Free lied to us and said it was the result of a street fight but eventually he told us the truth, he stayed in foster homes and had been placed in one where he basically had to fight to survive. My mom also has the biggest heart in the world, with no hesitation she offered him the third room in our modest three bedroom house of course with my dad’s permission. This memory is so distant, I guess because it was the last year my father walked the earth. Pancreatic cancer.

  Free made a point to be present at the time, he pulled conversation out of me on purpose just so I could hear my pain out loud and answer to it. Even still I was so lost without my daddy, I dropped out my junior year and took on modeling full time, my mama was pissed but shit, I was barely coping. Me and Free became exclusive and moved in together, he basically became my best friend. We ended up having so much in common, he made me laugh a lot, he made me think a lot. He took my virginity and introduced me to intimacy and self-healing. Days I would confuse up from down he used to help lead me back to my path then let me ride him all night as a therapy session. Some nights I used to unleash everything and cry while he dicked me down and he would talk me through it, making me cum to a resolution both physically and mentally. Honestly, the boy fed my soul and I fucked with him heavy. Unfortunately, our passion made us crash and burn, betrayal being the main cause.