It was too much.
She gripped and released the purse over and over, fighting her urge, fighting her demon.
Usain/Jeremiah/Marion/Omari laughed as he jerked at the cuffs of his sleeves. “You ladies have no idea how long I have waited for this right here,” he said, turning as images began to flash across the screen.
All of the women gasped as snapshots of them filled the screen one after the other in rapid-fire succession.
“Sweet Jesus,” Latoya whispered in shock, covering her gaping mouth with her trembling hands.
Monica pressed against the wall as the man she knew as Usain knelt to eat her.
He chuckled. “When you took that picture from me that night in your office I was just removing the camera I had put there earlier,” he said.
Keesha getting dicked from behind by a tall and thick dude.
He glanced over at Keesha as he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “So which one was hitting the pussy better, your man or his cousin right here tagging the hell out dat ass?”
Danielle on her knees with her lips sealed around a man’s shiny dick.
“You sick bastard,” she whispered harshly, burying her face in her hands.
“You suck a mean dick,” he said, using the remote to pause the photo just as the tip of his dick pressed against her inner cheek. “Swallow and all.”
“Who are you?” Monica screamed.
“Good to the last drop, huh?” he said coldly, his eyes still on Danielle. “I thought I might get one last good blow this afternoon at your apartment—”
Danielle dug in her tote and snatched out the wool brim he had left on her couch. She flung it across the room at him. It landed near the tips of his polished shoes of the finest Italian leather. “You left this, you lying, sneaky, phony, posing-ass pussy motherfucker,” she screamed, tears in her eyes.
He kicked the hat back toward her. “It doesn’t match my outfit,” he said, using the remote to resume the slide show.
The sight of Latoya stretched out on the church floor.
“That was smart of you pretending to catch the Holy Ghost so the church didn’t know you were high off those pills you love,” he said with a chuckle and slow, mocking clap. His eyes dropped down to her hands clenching and unclenching the handle of her clutch purse.
“Anytime you want to pop one of your pills you schemed from your doctor you just go right ahead,” he said. “I know how it must feel to be a junkie and need a fix. Right, Keesha?”
Latoya felt the eyes of everyone in the room switch to her. She turned and raced to the door.
“Oh, no, don’t you dare leave. We’ve only just begun, Mrs. Reverend Taquan Sanders,” he called across the expanse of the room, his voice echoing and mocking.
Latoya froze at the door, her hand on the handle. Her addiction revealed. Her shame on full display. She dropped her head to the door.
She felt an arm on her shoulders and looked to see Keesha standing beside her.
“Excellent idea, Keesha. You really are the best one to help her since you know how it feels to fiend for it. Right?”
Latoya turned, shifting her eyes from other random shots of the four of them still flashing on the screen. “What the fuck do you want?” she said coldly, coming forward.
He frowned. “Language, First Lady. The Rev and that church board wouldn’t like that,” he said, throwing things she shared with him back in her face.
The man had weaved his way into all their lives for months and sat there sucking it up like a leech.
Latoya couldn’t believe they all had been so stupid.
The lights in the room brightened and he picked up the briefcase he’d sat on the floor to pull out four files. He nodded as he tossed a file at each of their feet. “I don’t need these anymore. Please know that there is barely anything about you that I don’t know. Money talks and I got plenty of it.”
Keesha swiped up her file and flipped through it. “No the fuck he didn’t,” she gasped.
“Yes the fuck I did,” he said, clasping his hands together and looking so pleased with himself. “My private detectives are the best. Go ahead. Check it out. I had a ball. Better than anything on reality TV.”
He pointed his finger at Danielle. “Having a lesbian tryst to start your career. The handyman boyfriend in the Bahamas who broke up you and Sahad Linx of all people. That motherfucker almost as rich as me. Almost but not quite.”
Danielle shook her head back and forth as she glared at him like her eyes could burn a hole through him.
He turned to Keesha. “You really were so low to fuck Monica’s man. I guess the dope made you able to look at yourself in the mirror. But then you top all of that by fucking two cousins at the same time and don’t know who your baby daddy is. Damn you scandalous.”
Keesha flipped him the bird. “You don’t know shit about me,” she snapped.
He snorted in derision and turned to Monica.
She kicked her thin folder and it slid across the carpet toward him. He stopped it by placing his foot down on the center of it. “You really messed up that therapist you were sneaking with. I didn’t quite get to hit the pussy and see just what drove one fool to break your leg and the other one to stalk you and then eventually leave his wife. It tasted damn good though. Did you tell Cameron that you spread those legs for me?”
He turned back to Danielle. “Don’t worry yours was good too,” he said, chuckling.
She swiped at a tear that raced down her cheek.
He focused on Latoya. “You fight dirty for what you want. By any means necessary—including selling stories to the tabloids on your baby daddy. You really got to lay off them pills. You’re starting to lose weight. Next you be selling ass for pills.”
Latoya honestly didn’t know if she could take any more of the humiliation from him. “What do you want?” she asked him again, her throat tightening with tears filled with anger, shame, and withdrawal.
He took his time unrolling his sleeves, buttoning his cuffs and sliding on his jacket. When he focused back on them his face was hard with anger. “Payback is a bitch and I owed you tricks. I mean I really owed you. Period point blank. Life is all about karma. And when it comes to karma sometimes it happens naturally and sometimes a bad motherfucker like me creates it.”
He looked at each one with a line in his face born from bitterness. “You probably forgot the bullshit you pulled on me in high school. But I never forgot.”
“High school,” they all shrieked in disbelief before looking at each other in obvious bewilderment.
“You bitches don’t even recognize me, do you?” he asked, his eyes glittering with anger.
Latoya squinted her eyes as she studied him.
Monica shook her head.
“Sure don’t,” Keesha said, closing the thick file folder that held her secrets.
Danielle crossed her legs and waved her hand at him. “This is your big moment. The big reveal of this childish bullshit. So have at it,” she said.
He nodded. “You’re right, beautiful, it is my motherfucking day, plus I know you’re tired from your disorder and so I won’t keep you—especially you—any longer.”
Latoya, Monica, and Keesha all looked at Danielle as she dropped her head in her hands and cried. They all instantly moved to stand around her. Latoya knelt by her side and gathered Danielle’s hands into hers.
He walked up to them with his briefcase in hand.
“And by now all of your dirty little secrets that I already told you I would not keep have been sent to . . .”
They all looked up with hatred in their eyes for him. “Cameron,” he said, pointing it at Monica.
“Corey.” He pointed to Keesha.
He pointed to Latoya. “The Rev.”
“And your producers,” he told Danielle.
She jumped to her feet and swung ever so quickly.
WHAP.
The sound of the slap echoed inside the ballroom.
The bodygu
ards instantly stepped forward. He held one hand up to stop them. “It’s okay. She could never hurt me again the way I have hurt her,” he said, flexing his broad shoulders in his suit. “Plus that blow job was worth a slap.”
“How could you be so hateful?” Latoya asked him. “What kind of life is that if everything you are is built on a foundation of hatred?”
He looked at her like she was silly and nonsensical. “A damn good one,” he said cockily.
“I want you to know that Xavier Lofton has completely wrecked y’all’s shit,” he said coldly, walking out of the ballroom without another glance back in their direction.
As soon as the door closed behind him and his bodyguards, the stereo surround system kicked in.
“So I’m never keeping secrets, and I’m never telling lies . . .”
GIRL TALK
2000
The steady thump of the bass seemed to hit the walls of the gym of University High as the last party of the school year raged on. The DJ mixed in DMX’s “Party Up” just as Q-Tip’s “Vibrant Thing” faded out.
“Y’all gone make me lose my mind up in here, up in here . . .”
Latoya and Keesha sat on the other side of the wall separating the gym from the locker room. There were just enough flashing lights streaming through the glass squares at the top of the double doors to keep them from being in total darkness.
“Here, Latoya. Hit that.”
Latoya looked down at the blunt Keesha tried to hand her. “After I just sat and watched you lick it to roll it. No thanks,” she said, turning up her nose as they sat on a wooden bench with their backs to the wall.
Keesha shrugged and took a long drag. The fiery tip of it burnt brighter in the darkness.
“Where are they? This place stinks,” Latoya complained, as she rubbed her sweaty palms on the jeans Monica let her borrow.
“You’d stink too with all the funky asses that floated through this joint through the years,” Keesha said, dropping the last end of the blunt under her foot to put it out before lobbing it into the trash can in the corner by the row of lockers.
The rear door squeaked as it opened and both girls leaned to the side to look down between the long rows of lockers to see Monica walking toward them. “They’re coming,” she said softly, stooping down to hide with them. “Keesha, you smoked a whole blunt by yourself?”
Keesha giggled. “It’s like Lay’s, once you take one hit you just can’t stop.”
Monica sucked her teeth. “Shut your high ass up.”
“For sure,” Keesha said with emphasis.
“Are we doing the right thing?” Latoya whispered, feeling her nerves cause definite bubbles in her guts.
Monica nodded. “Yes,” she whispered back with emphasis, turning to look around the lockers at the closed rear door.
Keesha raised one arm in the air and partied in her seat to the sound of the party just outside the doors. “Y’all gone make me act a FOOL up in here, up in here.”
Monica and Latoya eyed her before they both rolled their eyes.
“So we should let that little nerd get away with the little stupid pranks he’s been pulling on Danielle because she wouldn’t go to the junior prom with him?” Monica whispered.
Latoya thought of how long it took Danielle to be able to sit down without it hurting from the thumbtack Xavier slid in her chair. “It was so cute how he asked her to go with his balloons and teddy bear,” Latoya said, making a sad face. “He had to build up all his little courage to even try Danielle.”
“She didn’t mean to laugh,” Monica said.
The rear door squeaked again and they all became silent, moving further back into the darkness enough to hide.
“Nobody will bother us in here,” Danielle said, pulling Xavier’s hand to step a few feet back from the doors leading into the gym.
Xavier was tall and thin. The oversized clothing he had on looked more like he was wearing someone else’s clothes than trying to be in style. He was an okay-looking boy but his square fade that resembled the father’s on the TV show Moesha and his acne just messed his entire game up.
“You know I really like you, Danielle,” he said, his voice awkward and stilted and filled with the nerves he was feeling.
“Aw that’s so sweet, Xavier,” she said before she stepped close to him and leaned in to kiss him.
Xavier roughly grabbed at her butt as he released his tongue and swiped it across Danielle’s mouth.
Keesha, Latoya, and Monica all covered their mouths not to make a noise as they looked on. It was not a pretty sight to see Xavier awkwardly kissing Danielle with such wet, slobby noises that echoed in the locker room.
His penis got hard and stuck out like a straight arrow against the zipper of his jeans.
Danielle stepped back from him. Around her entire mouth it felt sticky and wet but she smiled at him softly and reached behind her to pull the peach T-shirt she wore over her head. “Take your clothes off,” she said, dropping it to the floor.
“Oh shit,” he swore, his eyes getting big as he stared at Danielle’s breasts in the black bra she wore.
He was out of all his clothes in no time.
The girls tried not to laugh as he almost fell trying to pull his denims over his sneakers. He finally kicked the shoes off and rushed out of his jeans and boxers.
Everyone’s eyes got big at the size of Xavier’s dick, including Danielle who stared at it for a few seconds with her mouth open in surprise. It was large and thick and hung from his thin body like it was heavy.
“Uhm uhm uhm,” Danielle said, still eyeing it. “Well damn, Xavier.”
He smiled and wrapped his hand around it to wiggle at her.
Keesha started to giggle but Latoya reached out to cover her mouth with her hand.
Xavier turned his head to look toward where they hid but Danielle stepped up and turned his face back toward her. She pushed him back against the door gently and pressed her lips against his again as he dick-pressed into her stomach.
That was the sign.
The girls all rose up and stepped out of the darkness just as Danielle reached and opened the door leading directly into the gym. She stepped back and all four girls pushed him out into the party. Danielle closed the door and locked it.
Soon the music stopped.
They stepped back just enough to still see into the party but not have their faces seen through the windows in the doors.
Xavier stood there in shock, dick hard as jail and naked as the day he was born. The crowd nearest to him backed away and formed a semicircle around him.
“Damn, big boy, what you up to?” the DJ joked on the mic, drawing more attention to the spectacle.
Everyone started laughing and pointing.
His hard-on disappeared and he peed himself.
Pure chaos reigned after that.
Xavier turned to try and open the doors, all of his shame so clear on his face as he banged on the doors.
The girls stepped back even farther into the darkness.
“He got a mark on his ass, y’all. Look,” someone screamed loudly.
“We gotta get out of here,” Keesha said, bending down to scoop up his clothes and sneakers. She dumped them into the trash can and raced down the length of the locker room and pushed through the rear door.
Seconds later the other three girls followed.
Chapter 25
Monica
8:59 P.M.
“I cannot believe that my entire relationship might be fucked over something we did in high school?” Monica said, breaking the silence as they all sat at one of the tables of the hotel’s restaurant.
“My marriage too,” Latoya admitted.
Keesha said nothing and just nervously bit at the acrylic tips of her nails.
Danielle turned to signal for the waiter. “Another glass of red wine, please,” she said as soon as he appeared at her elbow.
Monica leveled her eyes on her. It was Danielle’s third glass in just the min
utes since they left the ballroom and the now annoying refrains of Babyface’s “Never Keeping Secrets” behind. “Is it okay for you to be drinking, Danielle?” she asked.
Danielle leaned a bit out of the waiter’s way as he sat the glass of wine before her. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, picking up the goblet and taking a deep sip.
Monica opened her mouth to protest but then she pressed her lips closed. They hadn’t been friends in five years and Cristal had walked away from it, ignoring their calls and putting plenty of the distance she obviously wanted between them. Monica wasn’t holding a grudge, she just had her own problems to worry about.
They all did.
She took a sip of her own glass of wine and glanced at Latoya. She couldn’t believe after watching Keesha struggle to get clean from dope that Latoya the church mouse was popping pills. She had God more than any of us. So why get high?
Monica’s eyes dipped down to Keesha’s stomach. She was not at all surprised that she was fucking two men—and cousins at that. Although she’d forgiven Keesha for sleeping with Rah behind her back she had never really forgotten it. Her lips were as loose as her pussy. Running back and telling Rah during the sex and drug haze that Monica was cheating on him led to him beating her and breaking her leg in two.
Nope, I ain’t surprised at all.
She picked up her iPhone from where it sat on the table next to her glass. No calls from Cameron. Was that good or bad?
“Am I the only one scared to go home?” she asked.
No one answered her as they all shifted in their seats. Their silence was telling though.
“It’s weird that we let our friendship go and forgot all about our history together since high school and this vindictive asshole swoops right in and exploits our separation to destroy us,” Monica said with a sarcastic half-laugh.
“That’s for sure,” Keesha agreed, pushing yet another piece of gum into her mouth to chew. “I thought he was my gay next-door neighbor but come to think of it I never even been inside that motherfucker’s house.”
Latoya shook her head. “Well now I know why he never came to church every week, he was off playing dress-up with the three of you,” she said bitterly.
Never Keeping Secrets Page 19