To Break a Vow

by Chencia C. Higgins

  “Hey.” The sight of her had my mind unable to muster up any other greeting. Extending my hand, I offered it in her direction for a handshake, which she immediately grabbed and shook twice before letting me go quickly. Too quickly.

  “Hi, there. So, how long did she tell you it’s been for me?”

  It took me a second to realize what she was asking me, and I laughed when I got it. “Five years.”

  Her mouth dropped open in shock then she snapped it shut and shook her head, chuckling wryly. “That lyin’-ass, manipulative little leprechaun!”

  Amused by her response, I grinned. “So, what you’re saying is that it hasn’t been five years since you’ve had sex?”

  Bringing a hand up to the side of her face to shield her eyes from mine, she turned her head away from me and muttered, “I swear I’m gonna kick Toy’s ass for this!” When she dropped her hand, she faced me as if she hadn’t just been talking to herself. “Hell no, it hasn’t been no five-fucking-years! I have responsibilities and I take care of my business, but I’m also a grown-ass woman with grown woman needs that a B.O.B. can only handle for so long.”

  A Bob? Her usage of the acronym for her vibrator made me let out a bark of laughter. The last thing I expected to find when I followed Latoya through the hotel’s casino was a beautiful face and a good laugh, but Tonya was both funny and pleasing to the eyes, and while cute faces were a dime a dozen, I really liked funny.

  “So, anyway, sorry about this.” She waved a hand in the direction that the five-five tornado she called a sister had long ago disappeared in. “As soon as she disappears, you can go. You’re like the third guy she’s brought over here, and I’m wondering when she’ll take a hint. I had to tell the last dude that I was a categorical clinger and that I had already found his mama and sister—well, I called them my future in-laws—on social media for him to leave.”

  “Damn. She’s really tryna get you laid, huh?”

  She snorted into her glass. “She’s really tryna get her head knocked off her shoulders when we get back to our suite.” Her eyes swung my way instantly when I laughed at that. It seemed like my assumption that she wasn’t keen on Latoya’s self-appointed duty was a correct one. “All I asked for was a moment to wind down after hours and hours of scheduled bachelorette activities, and she takes that as a sign that I need to have immediate sex with a stranger. How does ‘Ooh, I need a break’ translate into ‘Ooh, girl find me a dick’? Something is wrong with that girl’s mind. It’s my fault, though; I dropped her on her head when she was a baby. Though in my defense, I was only two and it wasn’t a long fall to the ground, but it’s obvious that incident caused long-lasting trauma. It’s really a shame. I told my mama she needed to get a check for that girl.”

  Signaling the bartender, I ordered a pop and settled onto my seat. I was beyond intrigued by the beauty with the corkscrew halo and mud-brown eyes, and surprisingly, I wasn’t put off by her apparent diarrhea of the mouth, probably brought on by the slowly melting frozen drink she was babysitting.

  “Honestly, I’m not even all that mad at her. I mean, I am, but I understand. She’s focusing on me to avoid her own issues because it’s easier for her. I told that girl that she should pay me instead of that therapist but just like her mama, she don’t listen.” Tonya slid her eyes over to me conspiratorially. “She’s in love with a man she’s never met, but since that’s just downright depressing as hell, she’s decided to hook me up so she can live vicariously through me.”

  How I suddenly became interested in everything she had to say, including this random piece of information about her sister, could only be summarized in one word: Tonya. Something about this woman drew me in like a moth to a flame, and I found myself leaning on the bar with a raised brow as I asked, “They met online or something?”

  She shook her head, curls swishing around her shoulders. “No! That’s too easy. He has a podcast that she listens to religiously. Something about being indecent or something like that. He’s apparently celibate but reads letters and talks about sex all the time.”

  I nodded, knowing exactly the show she was describing. “That’s Loud & Lew’d, right?”

  She snapped and pointed at me. “That’s it!” Shooting me another sly look, she asked, “You listen to that show?”

  That was clearly a question within a question, and I felt the need to answer both. “I’ve caught a couple of the episodes, but I don’t listen regularly. I mean, he’s speaking to women mostly and the men they want who need help. And neither of those is me so…”

  With the message obviously received, Tonya flashed her eyes with appreciation before they fell to the bar where her drink had turned into a floating island, and for the first time since I’d sat down, we fell into silence. But surprisingly, I didn’t like it. I wanted her to keep speaking, to keep bathing me in that heavily accented twang that screamed southern born and bred.

  “Is this your first time in Vegas?” Eyes on her profile, I watched her cheeks stretch upward as she covered her grin with her glass, taking a tiny sip of the colorful, nearly melted beverage in front of her. High cheekbones and fat cheeks were just a sampling of what she and Latoya had in common. When she placed the glass back on the bar, she shook her head in answer to my question.

  “This is my third time here.”

  “Ah, you’re practically a local by now.”

  She laughed lightly. “Not by a long shot; I’ve rarely left The Strip on each visit.”

  With my arms folded in front of me, I leaned on the bar top and canted my head to look at her. Her eyes were constantly moving, flitting from her drink to the couple at the end of the bar then back to her drink before venturing up to the mirror behind the bar, which reflected the entire casino floor. I wanted her eyes on me. I wanted to see the flare of attraction that swam in their citrine depths when I’d first walked over to her. An inexplicable feeling began to bloom in my chest, and I was seconds from following the impulse.

  “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done here?”

  A ghost of a smile quirked at the corners of her lips as her eyes finally found their way back to me. They held for five seconds, not nearly long enough for me to get my fill of them, before falling to her drink. Slowly, she shook her head.

  “Got married.”

  My brows rose, and that impulse inside of me flared. “Do tell.”

  She had my full attention, and I twisted on the cushioned stool, positioning my knees on either side of her body and purposefully inserting myself into her personal space. The more we talked, the closer I wanted to be to her.

  “Ugh. Do you really want to hear this? Talking about exes isn’t the best foreplay.”

  My grin was wide and indulgent. I was impressed and decided right then that I would be following through with that incessant impulse. “Is that what we’re doing? Engaging in foreplay?”

  The fingers of one hand tightened around the stem of her glass as the digits on the other grazed the base of her throat and she bit her lip to hide her embarrassment. When her eyes met and held mine, I felt a strange sense of pride.

  “Isn’t it?”

  It was a challenge. We both knew why her sister had approached me and, even if she had no initial intentions on following through, after two hours of conversation, it became an unspoken acknowledgment that we would end up in bed together. She intrigued me and I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d still do so once our clothes came off.

  Nodding in concession, I fanned my hand in front of me. “Tell the story.”

  “Why?” She punctuated her question with a nibble on her bottom lip, unconsciously broadcasting her nerves and making me all the more curious about the details of her confession, as well as the taste of that lip.

  “I want to hear it.”

  “But why?”

  “I want to know everything about you.” It was a truth I saw no reason to conceal, but that quick, inward gasp from her made the revelation more rewarding than what a set of casual words sh
ould have been.

  “That’s—okay.” Her eyes bounced around before settling on her nearly empty glass. “We were inseparable all through high school, and when we turned eighteen, he asked me to marry him. Both of our parents were against it, but I was in love and no one could tell me anything. We flew to Vegas during spring break and he had a friend of one of his cousins book us a hotel since we were underage. Elvis officiated and we barely left our room the rest of the trip. We came home, graduated, and moved into a shitty off-campus apartment near Franklin—the local university where we were both enrolled. Everything was good for that first year; we were both in school and making decent money in between financial aid refunds. I worked full-time at my family’s business, and he was a server at a local restaurant and we were good, but when I got pregnant after our one-year anniversary, everything changed. He started to stress about every little thing, and the pressure from his parents to drop out of college and get a job with benefits didn’t help at all. I was four months pregnant when he asked for a divorce and seven months along when I became a single mother-to-be.”

  Damn. I was volleying between empathy for two kids who weren’t ready to be adults and swelling with admiration at the strength she obviously possessed. Just looking at her I would have never guessed she’d experienced something so unfortunate at such a young age. She also didn’t look old enough to be anybody’s mama, but I knew the beauty that was black girl magic. They aged backwards.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Which part?”

  “The divorce.”

  She tilted her head, eyes lifting to the ceiling as she no doubt did the math in her head. “Uh…eleven years?” It sounded like a question but I knew she wasn’t asking me. “Yeah,” she continued, “Wisdom turned eleven last month, so that’s right.”

  “Wisdom?”

  A bright smile lit her face and when she aimed it at me I was engulfed in warmth. “That’s my baby.”

  “It’s a good name.”

  “Thank you. He’s a good boy.”

  Silence once again fell over us but it wasn’t awkward. Without her mouth moving, I was able to catalog her features undistracted. I observed her as she used her straw to stir her now settled drink and take a long pull of it, hitting the bottom of the glass before sitting back on her stool and casting playful eyes in my direction.

  “Well, now that I’ve probably given you the shock of the night I might as well turn your question back on you.”

  An anticipatory grin happened upon my face, and I knew I was smiling with my teeth when her eyes locked on my mouth. She licked her lips, seemingly entranced by the golden slugs on my bottom canines.

  My mama always told me and my brothers that everything happened for a reason and this was a perfect example of that. Not every woman I’d been involved with liked my golds, but Tonya had mentioned that she was from Houston—a land rife with iced out grills and the legendary Johnny Dang—and I knew that she could accept them, at the very least. From the hungry look in her eyes, she more than accepted them.

  “What was my question, again?”

  She smirked, eyes lifting to mine. “What’s the craziest thing you ever done in Vegas? I’m assuming this isn’t your first visit to this city.”

  I’d been waiting on this. “You’d be right; this isn’t my first visit to Sin City.” My cheeks were still lifted but my tone was serious as I held her gaze. “The craziest thing I’ve ever done here was ask a woman I’d just met to marry me.”

  Her eyes widened and jaw loosened. “Wow! How long ago was that?”

  I grabbed her arm, twisting her wrist until the face of her thin, silver watch was visible. “About thirty seconds from now. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-si—”

  She yanked her arm away from me as realization lit in her eyes. “Wait. What? You’re not serious.”

  I continued counting down the seconds in my head. “This is going to sound crazy—”

  She held a hand up. “Wait.”

  “And I know we just met—”

  Both hands were in the air. “Hold on a second!”

  “But will you marry me?”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “Today.”

  “Today?!” She screeched, and I nodded in response. “It’s like…four in the morning.”

  “This morning, then.”

  Her eyes were wild. “We just met.”

  “I said that already.”

  “This is crazy.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I said that, too.”

  She peered up at me, eyes rapidly moving around the room, landing on me then flitting away quickly. “You’re not—this isn’t just about sex, is it? I mean, I know that I implied that I wasn’t about that fucking strangers life, but I thought it was clear that under no circumstances were either of us ending up anywhere but in bed together tonight. Having lots of sex. So much sex. Like, just to be clear, you don’t have to propose for me to fuck you.”

  Sliding off the stool, I moved to stand directly in front of her. “The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were special. After hearing you speak it was solidified. My gut is telling me that there is something about you; that I need you in my life, and my gut—my intuition—is never wrong.”

  Her eyes searched mine, and I waited patiently for her to come to a decision. This spontaneity was nothing new for me. An idea would come to me and I’d follow it without hesitation, but I knew that inclination was unique to me. Some people needed to analyze things—rolling them over in their head and weighing the pros and cons—to help them figure the right course of action. When Tonya bit her lip and sighed, I had no idea that pure satisfaction could be summed up in a sound and yet hearing it float out of her mouth made my stomach lurch with excitement.

  “Your question is crazy but my answer is even crazier.” She shielded her face from me and muttered, “Toy’s gonna kill me.” Straightening, she smiled. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Chapter Three

  When Your Tolerance Is Too High To Blame It On The Liquor

  Toy’s scream nearly burst my eardrum when I asked her to be a witness. I watched from my perch at the edge of my bed as she stormed around our room in the hotel suite we were sharing with our youngest sister, Tasha, ripping through her suitcase, holding up articles of clothing for inspection and discarding them on the bed next to mine when they didn’t pass muster. It hadn’t taken me long to find her after I agreed to Jereth’s proposal. Instead of traipsing about the hotel in search of another prospect for me—as she told Jereth she would do—she’d been glued to a slot machine with a handful of three-digit payouts sticking out of her closed fist. Anticipating a less than excited response to my news, I’d brought her upstairs to enlighten her in the comfort of our almost soundproof suite.

  “You were supposed to get dick, not a husband!”

  My chuckle was surprisingly light and devoid of the paranoia that agreeing to marry a stranger should have brought on. Thank God I’d had the foresight to get her behind closed doors; I could only imagine the shock on the faces of innocent bystanders as she shouted that out loud.

  “Technically, I only got a fiancé.” For now. The added words went without saying, but I might as well have said them aloud.

  Narrowed dark-brown eyes, nearly identical to my own, sliced through the air and landed on me. “And technically, I ought to beat your ass for stressing me out this way! I brought that man over there to talk you out of your panties, not talk you out of your hand in marriage!”

  Just the thought of handing Jereth my panties had my face warm. I’d never seen a man so fine. Tall, dark and handsome—just how a good man should be. His smooth, mahogany skin that reached to the top of his sexy-ass bald head, those almond-shaped, chestnut-brown eyes, those tight pants displaying a sizable package and even tighter butt, and those slugs! The Lord knew I loved a man with gold teeth. I might not have been raised in the hood but the hood was in me, and the moment I saw those slugs I was rea
dy to slide him my panties and tell him to handle up, modesty be damned.

  “Jereth said that he had turned down your proposition of sex with me. Which, by the way, remind me to fight you for that. You really had me out here looking like a whole-ass prostitute with a pint-sized pimp.”

  Rising from the suitcase, she whipped around to face me, the sew-in she’d had installed just before this trip fanning around her shoulders elegantly. Her stylist, Keema, truly had the Midas touch. “Pint-sized?! We’re the same damn height!”

  Rolling my eyes, I leaned back on my elbows. “Did I stutter?”

  The wet sound of her sucking her teeth filled the space left empty from her lack of response. “Anyway, what else did Mr. Jereth say that made you take leave of your God-given sense and agree to marry him after a two-hour conversation? Hmm?” She stood, glaring at me, a ball of white fabric fisted at her hip.

  I sighed. “It wasn’t so much what he said; it was how he said it. The way he looked at me was…” I broke off with a shake of my head. My body was tingling from just the memory of his gaze on me. “Toy. He looked at me like I was the missing link to the greatest mystery.”

  “That sounds great, TT, really. So, why couldn’t you just fuck him and move on? Why marry this strange-ass man?!”

  Not having an answer for her, all I could do was shrug. “He asked me.”

  “Tonya! You gotta come on, man. You can’t tell me this shit doesn’t sound crazy to you!”

  “I mean, yeah, maybe.”

  “Maybe?! You don’t even know this man!”

  “You weren’t thinking about that when you were being a dick recruiter!”

  “Because it was just for sex!” She flailed her arms, waving the garment in the air like a forgotten flag. “You insert the penis, take it out, put it back in, everyone comes, and goes on about their merry way! You don’t have to know someone to get an orgasm off of them.”

  I smirked at her minimalist description. “That’s what’s wrong with your ass now; listening to that damn sex podcast got your head all fucked up. In theory, sex is that simple but in execution, it’s far from it.”