I wondered who she was dating since I hadn’t been around. A woman only made drastic changes like that to gain a man’s attention. Who the hell was he, I wondered.
The elevator began buzzing loudly, and she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Are you getting on or not?” she asked.
I stepped inside, allowing the elevator doors to close once more.
Towering over her, I inhaled the scent of her perfume. Shrouded in a lemony and floral scent, an underlying stench of cigarettes wafted from her hair.
“Where’ve you been dressed like that?” I growled.
Rolling her eyes, she said, “Kole, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t care? Don’t act like I’m pissed because my girl has the nerve—”
“I’m not your girl, Kole!”
That shit stung for some reason. I inhaled a couple of times deeply and chose to ignore her comment. But she was right. I had made that as clear as day, but it didn’t make accepting it any easier.
“Where’ve you been, Silver?”
“Out.”
“With who?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Some friends of mine. Why?”
“Because I have a problem with you out on the town, dressed like this and just now returning at this time of night,” I growled deep in my throat.
“Well, get over it. I’m a big girl, and I can handle myself,” she muttered.
“The last time I checked, you couldn’t.”
“You taught me a few self-defense moves, Kole.”
“Not enough to handle yourself. And damn sure not enough to fight off a muh’fucka who might try you in this skirt and these heels.”
“That’s not your concern anymore!” she shouted.
“Says who, Silver?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing.
For some reason, her words hurt. Why was she pushing me back like this? Shit, I got it that she might lose her job if we screwed around, but there was no one here. Just me and her.
“Says me!” she declared as the elevator doors opened, and she stormed off.
I followed after her. After all, I hadn’t even pushed the button for my floor. After I’d seen her, I had forgotten all about going home. Forgotten, I was tired as shit. Forgotten, I was disappointed after my boy, Dexter Lewis, had lost to Drake Caruthers.
“Why are you following me?” she asked, not bothering to look back at me standing behind her.
I didn’t answer; I just waited for her to insert the key into her lock. When she did, I reached around her and pushed the door open.
“No, Kole!” she whisper shouted.
I lifted her into my arms, walked into her apartment, and kicked the door closed behind me.
Bear came running out, barking excitedly and dancing around our feet.
She beat at my chest for me to let her down, and I pinned her hands together with one of mine.
“What the f...what the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, exasperation dripping from my tone.
“You!”
I put her down. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Silver?”
“You’re such a hypocrite. You come into my apartment acting like you care, and you’re all worried about me. We haven’t spoken a single word to each other in the last two weeks since that happened. You’ve not thought twice about me since Ryan turned in that video.”
“That’s a damn lie, Silver! You’re all I’ve fucking thought about! That’s why I’ve stayed away from you because I didn’t want you to lose your job!”
“But you couldn’t express that to me? Couldn’t pick up the phone and call or text me that, that’s why you’re staying away? Couldn’t hop your ass on the elevator and come up here and have a conversation with me?” she shouted back.
Silver wasn’t the type of person to raise her voice. So now that she was, I could tell just how much my actions or inaction had hurt her.
“Wait, a second,” I said as I turned to Bear, who stood, planting his paws on me.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Putting Bear away.”
“Did I ask you to?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“I think he needs to be put away.”
“Fine!” she said, waving her hand in exasperation.
Taking Bear’s collar, I led him to the guest bedroom, where he had a second doggie bed and some toys. He walked to his bed and lay down, and I closed the door on him.
“Look, I didn’t know what to do. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t want you to lose your job. I didn’t want you to get into any shit over me,” I explained after I returned to her in the living room.
“You should’ve let me make that decision!” she hollered, pointing a finger at herself.
“What was I to do, Silver? From the moment Ryan saw us together on the fourth of July, you freaked the hell out. You shut down on me and shut me out. With that information out at the job only a couple of days later, I didn’t think you’d want to have shit else to do with me. And obviously, I was right. Look at you running around town dressed like this!” I shouted, pointing a finger at her fuck-me-real-good dress.
“What’s wrong with my dress?”
“It stops two inches below your shit!” I shouted.
She rolled her eyes, and I took a step closer.
I slid my finger under her skirt and stroked her through her silky panties.
Silver bit her bottom lip and gasped.
Kneeling at her feet, I grabbed her panties, and rather than snatching them to the side; I yanked them down to her ankles.
“No, Kole,” she whispered, jutting her hips forward and spreading her thighs.
I grasped her tiny hips firmly in my hands and pulled her closer to my mouth. Clamping down over her heat, I groaned at my first taste of her in two weeks. Her hands gripped my head, and her nails raked across the back of it.
I licked her slit while my finger rubbed her clit. Her hips worked vigorously as she pumped into my mouth. Using my fingers, I spread her further so I could dig my tongue deeper inside of her. She was wetter than a waterfall, and I was drinking it up.
Her mewling cries came to my ears, and I knew she was about to cum, but I hadn’t had my fill of her yet. Silver was delicious, and she was satiating a hunger that I hadn’t realized had been sitting deep in my belly for two weeks. I was ravenous. I didn’t stop eating her pussy even after she was buckling at the knees, riding my face, and screaming.
When I finally finished, I stood up and turned her around. I pushed my sweat pants down to my ankles and bent her over the credenza near the front door. I ran up inside of her, and she clenched all around me.
I remained still for a few moments, holding her at the waist while she gasped for her breath.
“I...I...can’t breathe,” she gasped.
My mouth hung open as my breathing grew heavy and deeper in my chest. I pumped into Silver real hard, forcing her breath from her lungs. I pushed further inside and reveled in the plush softness of her deep comfort.
Pulling out, I plunged back in and then pulled out again. Silver started pushing back against me, driving me crazy. My strokes sped up and became rhythmless as I just sought to touch every part of her pussy walls that I could.
Her breaths were loud and jarring as I pumped in and out of her, coating my dick with all her juices. Seeing the swell of her fat pink lips around my big black dick drove me crazy. I sunk deeper into her each time I went in until I could go no further.
Placing a hand on the arch of her back, I pushed her down further so I could hit new angles.
“Kole!” she screamed.
“Yes, baby, yes?”
“Kole!”
“Yes, baby, yes?”
“Kole, fuck meeee!” she cried out.
My strokes slowed and became in sync with her movements. I grabbed her ass cheeks, squeezing them tight around my dick when I pulled back and spread them apart when I slid in.
“Ooooohh,” she cried as she came.
The
sight of her pearl-colored sticky slickness coating my dick drove me crazy.
“Awww fuck!” I hollered out, my head jerking back as my dick drove deeper and faster into her.
Pulling out just before I came, I rested my dick on her ass and watched as my cum shot up and down her back.
When we finished, I pulled my pants up and headed for the door. “I just wanted to give you something to think about. When you’re ready to quit playing, you know where to find me.”
CHAPTER 22 – SILVER
“Do you love this guy?” Sue asked.
We had just finished Sunday dinner at her house, and I was still frustrated about what happened between Kole and me the night before. Or I should say early that morning.
Lowering my head into my hands, I tried to massage my temples to assuage the pain in my head. My sister’s suggestion increased my heartbeat. Why did the thought of really caring for him scare me?
I hadn’t been in a bad relationship before or even had my heart broken. But something about trusting Kole with my heart filled me with fear. Unfortunately, there was no way around the truth.
Looking back up at Sue, I shook my head. “I think I am, Sue.”
“Now, that you know, what you do, girl, what you do?”
“There’s nothing to be done, Sue. I don’t know if the feelings are reciprocal or not. We have a messed up situation that I can’t do anything about. I need my job, and messing with him could cost me that. Last night shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake.”
“There’s no mistake. You did it because Kole makes you happy, Eun,” she said, calling me by my first name.
“I know that he does, but I can’t do it. I’m not about to come work for you at the salon,” I joked.
But my sister didn’t laugh. Instead, she rested her chin on the tops of her interlaced fingers.
“You not come work for me, but you need leave radio. Go do something with your clothes,” Sue instructed.
I knew that she was talking about my fashion design. It wasn’t what I held my degree in, which was actually fashion marketing, but it was a talent that I had. Something I had been putting on hold for the longest because I was scared of failure. Just like I was afraid of failure with Kole.
“Silver’s gonna make clothes?” my brother-in-law Chung Hee asked, coming to plop down beside me on the couch.
“Get you stinky feet down!” Sue said, swatting at his feet when he rested them on the coffee table.
I hid a chuckle behind my hand because I knew that he did it on purpose. He was always doing something to aggravate my sister. And placing one’s feet on furniture was taboo in our culture. My sister chalked up Chung Hee’s dismissal of that fact as part of his American ways. He’d been living here longer than we had, but his family and ours were old friends.
Chung Hee removed his feet and stuffed some kimchi in his mouth. “You making clothes, Silver?” he asked with his mouth full.
“Noooo,” I said, bugging my eyes out at him.
I was fond of my brother-in-law and was just as close to him as I was with my brother, Seok.
“Why not? You good. I need some pants, and Sue needs a new wardrobe,” he said, stuffing his mouth again.
“I do not!” Sue argued.
“Yes, you do. You wear leggings all the time,” Chung Hee accused.
“You two...do you ever quit arguing?” I asked.
“No!” They said at the same time.
“So, about clothes. You wasting time at radio. You need to make clothes,” Sue said.
“I agree with her,” Chung Hee said, nodding his head at my sister.
Widening my eyes, I said, “Oh, really? Now you want to agree with her?”
“I’m just saying, I think you should do it, Silver. You’re talented; you love it, you can make money from it. Stop wasting time. You’re not gonna be young forever,” he said.
“Chung! You’re about to get kicked out of this living room,” I said, laughing.
“No fair. You can’t kick a man out of his own living room,” he replied, putting his feet back up.
“I’ll kick you out; you put stinky feet on my table again!” Sue said, swatting his feet with a magazine she had picked up.
Chung Hee stood up with his bowl of kimchi and headed for the kitchen. “Think about it, Silver. Do it now while time is on your side.”
I reached over and snatched the magazine from my sister’s hand and threw it at his head. He ducked into the kitchen just in time to avoid being hit.
Sue laughed, shaking her head. She got out of her chair and came to sit beside me.
“Nae dongsaeng,” she said.
Whenever she affectionately called me “my sister” in Korean, I knew she wanted me to listen to her and take her seriously.
“Yes, Sue?”
“Think hard. It’s time you do something. Put your passion to work.”
“I don’t even have a degree in that field, Sue,” I objected.
She narrowed her eyes at me and scrunched her nose. “You play with me? Huh, Eun? You not need degree for that when you got degree in fashion marketing, which is fine. You know this! You got no degree in radio, but you work at radio!”
I hated when she called me on my bull, but I’d put myself out there for that one, and there wasn’t a thing I could say about it.
I bit down hard on my bottom lip, thinking about the point she made. It seemed there were quite a few things that were demanding that I show courage lately.
Leaving a job that I had been at for some time now was scary. It was a job where I had friends, and I was great at what I did, and I could rely on it to bring home a steady paycheck. I had been hired at K-102 during my junior year of college for a summer program the station was running. And I’d been there ever since. Leaving K-102 would take a lot of courage, but I knew if I needed financial backing for a while, I could work at the salon.
Would I want to? No! I couldn’t imagine rubbing people’s stinky feet, whether or not I wore gloves didn’t matter. That was still too much for me to stomach.
But I would do what I needed to, to pay my bills, and not return home to live with my parents. My brother Seok had recently moved back with my parents to take care of them.
My mother and father were sixty-nine and seventy, respectively. As the eldest and only son, it was Seok’s responsibility to care for them in their older age.
Following a different career path would take discipline, determination, and courage. I could maybe drum up the nerve to do that. I had all the contacts in place, I’d done a few designs for nonprofit fashion shows before, and I’d even received business cards with a few fashion houses that were interested in doing business with me. I’d just been too scared to leave a sure thing to pursue something I wasn’t certain I could be successful at.
I had created and been maintaining a portfolio of my work since I did my first volunteer job at a nonprofit. Each time I created a new piece, whether someone saw it or not, I added it to my portfolio. My portfolio burst with colorful, unique, and creative patterns, which showed off my pattern-making, design, sketching, and sewing skills.
Although I had not been to one in a while since the radio station started flopping, I often attended fashion shows to stay abreast of trends. I’d decided it was more important to invest my time and effort into ensuring the station could rise above its challenges.
But deep down, I knew if I decided to pursue a fashion career, I could. I had gained excellent marketing skills thanks to my work at K-102. Not to mention I’d learned quite a bit about sales and finance. I had a lot to offer anyone who chose to employ me.
The problem was I lacked the courage to put myself out there like that. The more I sat on Sue’s couch thinking about it, the more I realized it was time for me just to do it. And with that realization, the happier I became. A plan began to formulate inside of my mind.
So, leaving K-102 and finding new employment within the fashion world was a no-brainer. I knew I had the courage to m
ake it happen if I dug down deep enough.
But the courage it required me to allow myself to fall in love with Kole Smith? I wasn’t sure that there was enough courage in the world for that.
CHAPTER 23 – KOLE
“Kole, thank you for everything that you’ve done during your time here. Dare I say if we find ourselves in need of your expertise again, we won’t hesitate to call you,” Brandon Dawes said.
“Thanks, Brandon. I really appreciate it.”
He bent his head and looked at the final reports I had provided him before he looked up at me again.
“It’s such a shame that we had to fire Claire, though. I just can’t believe she’s been covering up for them all this time,” Brandon said.
Shrugging my shoulders and turning my lips down, I replied, “Yeah, I’ve seen instances like this at other companies before. Yours isn’t the first, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The problem is that it’s easy for them to get away with misappropriation of funds if you don’t have a system of governance in place. You’re operating on an honor system, and that’s not a good financial practice. She was covering for Ryan, Janice Stevens, and Dave Atwell. All the other budgets comply, but that still doesn’t mean that you need to take a lackluster attitude. Watch these budgets closely at all times. Your board should be looking at it, too. Go over them with a fine-tooth comb and ask questions. When you all understand it, then you’re empowered to make sure that it goes well.”
Brandon shook his head and pulled his hand down his red face.
“Yes, I know you’re right. The board raked us over the coals about this one, as they should. Now I have to start a search for Claire’s replacement. That’s going to take some time...time this radio station doesn’t have.”
“Well, I could offer a suggestion.”
“What’s that?” he asked, lifting his head with a note of hopefulness in his eyes.
“I know that you may believe I’m biased. But if you check the work, Silver’s reviews, and—”
“No, I don’t think we should do that, Kole,” he said, shaking his head. “It’ll look as if we reward bad behaviors.”
“Pardon me for a moment, Brandon. What happened between Silver Wang and I was not bad behavior. Was it unprofessional? It could be said that it was, or even unethical, but that’s not true. Why? Because there’s no policy in place for that. And there has been a precedent set. I learned that your financial director and IT director are married, and they met and started dating one another right here,” I said, jabbing the table with my finger.
Hidden Page 13