by Desiree Day
“I missed you,” Mohammad breathed, as his mouth moved over Tameeka’s breasts, sucking on her engorged nipples as though they were lollipops. Tameeka writhed underneath him as her hands roamed freely over his body. She gasped with desire when Mohammad tongued his way down to her mound.
“Oh, Mo,” she exhaled, and her hips shot up to catch his mouth as it zeroed in on her button. He gently sucked it and nibbled on it as though it was a delicacy until she felt the sweet stirrings of her climax. Then it built into an explosion that left her trembling from head to toe.
“You’re shaking, baby,” Mohammad said as he nipped at her shoulder.
Tameeka grinned up at him. “These are good shakes,” she reassured him as she caught her breath. “I saw fireworks,” she gushed.
“Good, wanna see more?” he asked, then before she could respond, he quickly mounted her and slid into her hotness.
“Mohammad,” Tameeka groaned, arching her body toward him. Her orgasm came at a dizzying speed, leaving her gasping for air. “We didn’t use anything…I might get pregnant,” Tameeka whispered.
“Would that be a bad thing?” Mohammad asked, smiling at her. “I want us back together. Not just as fuck buddies, or cut buddies but as a real couple. I guess seeing you with Tyrell made me realize how much I love you,” he admitted, then cupped her face in his hands and asked, “Tameeka, would you be my wife?”
60
Why It’s Important to Face Your Fears
They can hold you captive
They can prevent you from living your life
Stacie pulled her eyes away from the latest issue of Essence magazine and nervously glanced down the hall. She couldn’t see it, but it was there; the door, or more accurately, the door to the closet. The same closet where she had spent half her childhood hiding from her drunken father and sniffing shoes. She frowned a little, then settled back on the couch.
The place was unusually quiet. In the short time she had moved back home, she had become accustomed to family noise. The cry of a baby, women squabbling followed by gentle laughter and the soft scratches of footsteps, but now it was just Stacie, alone, in the apartment. Stacie unfolded her legs, then planted them firmly on the floor and peered fearfully down the hall.
She tossed the magazine to the side, and wearing a look of resolve, she pushed herself off the couch and marched toward the closet.
“Today I’m going to do this,” she muttered as she tried to ignore her clammy hands and the roaring in her ears. This was her twentieth trip to the closet, well, actually the closet door. Ever since she had moved back home, she had been making a daily trek in that direction, but she had never gotten the nerve to open the closet door.
Stacie stopped in the same place she had stopped the last nineteen times. The door hadn’t changed. It still had a hole in it from when Nevia had gotten mad at her and tried to hit her with her Easy-Bake Oven. If Stacie weren’t so petrified, she would’ve chuckled at the memory.
She peered over her shoulder, half hoping that someone would come barreling down the corridor or at the very least call her. But all she saw was an empty hallway with carpeting the color of dirty eggs. There was no one to call her back as she gulped deeply, pulled the closet door open and flicked on the light.
She hung back, preferring to stand on the threshold. Her mouth was dry and she swallowed several times to wet it. She slowly counted and on ten, she placed one foot in front of the other and crossed the threshold.
Her eyes widened with surprise; what she remembered as a humongous haven was really only a ten-foot-long, three-foot wide closet. Back then it was huge to me, she mused. And it had been cleaned up. The trunk had long since been thrown away, as well as all the shoes. Now the closet was filled with baby clothes, baby toys and baby games.
She scooted to her favorite place, the back of the closet, eased down and pressed her back against the wall. The sniffling started first, then the trickling and lastly the sobbing. She felt nine years old again and she automatically pulled her shoe off and brought it to her nose. Taking deep breaths, she calmed herself.
Occasionally she was the target of her father’s rages. He was a vicious man; sometimes he had said things that had gouged out pieces of her heart and made her cry for days.
Her father’s voice roared in her ear. “You’re nothing!” it hissed. “You’re just like your mother, pretty but dumb as fuck,” it scoffed. “You’re a piece of shit!” The words had spewed from his mouth and had drenched her with their nastiness, leaving her coated with a slime that she just now had the courage to wipe off.
“Stop it!” Stacie stood up and shouted into the darkness. “Stop talking to me like that. I’m a good person!” Her words were all wet but strong as the tears ran down her face. “You’re nothing but a big bully! I love you, Daddy, but you shouldn’t talk to me like that! I’m smart, I’m pretty, I’m loving, I’m God-fearing and I love myself. Don’t you ever talk to me like that again! I deserve better. You bastard!”
She could hear her father snickering and could imagine him sneering at her. “Don’t laugh at me. It’s your fault that we grew up in the projects. If you hadn’t drunk up your paycheck, we could’ve had a nice house. So there!” She stuck her tongue out. “So when you said I wasn’t shit, you weren’t shit, otherwise you would’ve been a real daddy to me. You know what, Daddy?” She peered into the darkness and smiled lopsidedly. “I got a man who adores me and calls me pretty every day. And I love it!”
Emotionally exhausted, Stacie fell against the closet wall. She felt good. She felt reborn. She felt invincible.
She regretted that she could not have said her peace to her father; but his lifestyle had caught up with him. He’d been living in a shelter and was penniless when he died of cirrhosis five years earlier.
“Good-bye, Daddy,” she whispered. On shaky legs, she pushed herself out of the closet, leaving her shoe behind.
61
What I Got in a Man!
A man who’d battle an army of millions for my safety
A man who cares about what makes me laugh and cry
A man who knows that foreplay begins at sunrise
A man who looks in the mirror and sees love
A man who looks at his close circle of friends and family and sees love
A man who knows that his potential is unlimited
Hey, slow your roll, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I’m taking care of her needs. If she needs anything, she lets me know. So go on.” Jackson shooed Rudolf off. He scurried away, but not before pinning Jackson with a hard glare. Stacie chuckled, feeling a little sorry for the waiter. She knew that the only reason Jackson insisted on returning to the restaurant was to show Rudolph that he had gotten the girl.
“So are you excited about starting school Monday?”
“I am. I’m gonna be a teacher,” she giggled happily. “It’s so interesting how one door slams shut and another opens,” she said philosophically. “Thank you.” She leaned over and kissed Jackson on the cheek, then settled back in her chair and fixed him with a stare.
“Whassup, baby?”
“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have thought about going to school to teach. I’d probably end up at another law firm doing the same old shit. Working for another Andre, answering the same old phones and saying the same old shit.”
“Who would’ve thunk it. A bus driver with brains,” he joked, reaching for a roll and slathering it with butter. There was a comfortable silence as Jackson chewed his bread. His life was better than ever. In three months he’d have a new wife, Jameel was safe and sound, but most importantly, after Michelle’s foiled kidnapping attempt, she was given probation on the condition that she relinquish all parental rights to Jameel.
“Thanks for Lexie,” she said softly, cutting into the silence, and he grunted. Seeing how miserable she was without her baby, he had given her the money to have her fixed. He had also given her enough money to keep her financially afloat until she landed a job, which s
he had, three weeks ago, as an executive assistant to the CEO of a major property development company. Stacie smiled, then asked, “Isn’t it funny?”
“What’s that, baby?”
She looked down at her engagement ring, then said, “That you and I ended up together and Tyrell and Tameeka broke up. It should’ve been the other way around. Don’t you think?” She wrinkled her nose and glanced up at him, then rushed on to explain when she saw that he had raised his eyebrows so high that they almost touched his hairline. “I love you…I really do,” she quickly assured him. “But, dang, we had so much stuff going on. You couldn’t stand me. I couldn’t stand your arrogant ass…and still can’t sometimes. But look at us—we’re together. Happily together. And we’re getting married.”
Stacie grinned as she gazed over at her fiancé; ever since he had come into her life, things had gotten better. Her list for the perfect man had long been scraped, she had stopped her shoe sniffing, but most importantly, through him she had found herself.
“That is funny,” Jackson said, then focused on his food.
“Meek was the one who gave me advice on you—on us. She was my man expert. Not that she isn’t now, but you know…” Stacie let her sentence drift off and she looked imploringly at Jackson.
Jackson sighed and put down his fork. “It’s very simple. Tameeka and Tyrell would still be together if she hadn’t cheated on him. She deserved what she got.”
“But she didn’t mean it. She was all screwy in the head. But she’s okay now, she and Mohammad are burning up the sheets.”
“All screwy in the head? Well, that just excuses it all. She didn’t mean to cheat on her boyfriend, but since she was all screwy in the head it made it all right,” Jackson mocked, then picked up his spoon and began shoveling soup into his mouth. As far as he was concerned the conversation was over.
“Well,” Stacie muttered. “She was going through things that made her screwy in the head.”
“Yeah, whatever. Mohammad had better be careful, because dude will be her next victim.” Jackson looked her dead in the eye, then said, “You’d better not cheat on me.”
An image of her, Crawford and the stuck condom popped into her head. “I…um…er,” Stacie stuttered, then averted her eyes.
Jackson set his spoon down and turned to his fiancée; concern was in his eyes. “Whassup, Princess?”
“Nothing,” she lied, bowing her head and fussing with her napkin.
“You sure?” Jackson reached out and grabbed the tip of her chin, forcing her to face him.
“Yeah, I’m cool. It’s like you don’t trust me or something,” she said, laughing nervously.
“I trust you! Now tell me that you’ll never cheat on me,” Jackson demanded softly, his eyes glinting dangerously in the soft restaurant lighting.
“I will never, ever cheat on you,” she solemnly pledged. I will never, ever cheat on him again, Stacie vowed to herself.
They locked eyes and Jackson searched hers looking for any speck of a lie, and not seeing anything, he grinned. “I know you won’t.” He bent down and kissed her. “Who’s Big J?” he murmured against her lips.
“You are, baby,” Stacie breathed.