“I want that, Damon, but you know how we are together.”
“Nick, if you don’t wanna have sex anymore, then we won’t. I’d rather give up sex than give up having you in my life. I missed you all those years we didn’t keep in touch. You’re a part of me.”
After a minute or so of silence, she said, “Okay…but what do we do together then, because all we’ve done with each other since you’ve been back is…that.”
She couldn’t say the word. I didn’t even want to think it.
“I have something in mind. I don’t guess you’re coming over today, so you wanna roll out with me tomorrow, or do you have plans?”
“No, tomorrow’s good. And thanks for understanding, Damon.”
“No problem, Nick. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Man, I really wished I meant that.
*****
Around five that evening, I was kind of just sitting in my living room, staring at my computer and trying not to think about Nicky. I should’ve been working, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Listening to music usually helped me focus. But that didn’t even work, so I just sat there.
A knock at my door damn near made me jump out of my skin, and although it jolted me, another set of knocks had to sound before I was able to truly realize what was going on, that someone was at my door.
I dragged a hand over my face before hopping up to check the peep hole. A smile stretched across my face when I opened the door and pulled Angie Boyé into a hug. “Hey!” I greeted her.
All the years Nicky had been my friend, Angie had become like a big sister to me, and in my current state of mind and heart, seeing her smiling face was like pain medication to me. “What are you doing here?” I asked, as I gestured toward my sofa, offering her a seat.
As I sat next to her, she lifted a plastic bag I hadn’t noticed her holding. “Brought you some dinner. Nothing fancy. Ryan grilled some burgers, so I brought you a couple.”
I took the sack from her and peeped inside to see two burgers wrapped in foil, along with small Ziploc baggies of tomatoes, onions, pickles, slices of cheese, and hamburger buns. “Man, thanks, Ang. I didn’t know I was hungry until you got here. Crazy, right?”
She smiled. “It’s a hazard of working from home. Crazy hours because it’s so easy to lose track of time. You forget to eat, hold your pee, work so long that you find yourself falling asleep with your hand on the mouse pad of your laptop.”
I looked around my place and back at her. “Damn, is there a camera hidden in here? Sis, you just narrated my life.”
She chuckled. “No, I’ve just been living that life for a few years now. Well, at least until Ryan and I got married. He’s spoiled, wanted to be sure he got his time with me, so he made us a schedule. We work fixed hours when we’re not traveling and have official off days. It’s been a good change.”
I thought about that for a minute, then rubbed the back of my neck, and said, “I need to do the same thing. I’m wearing myself out.”
“It can easily happen. Hey, how’s it going, though? Is all your hard work paying off?”
I slumped back on my sofa. “Ang, I don’t know. I mean, I’m making it, but I’m actually contemplating moving in with my mom to save some money, and you already know I’m not tryna do that. I’m thirty damn years old, almost thirty-one, plus I’m not tryna hear her mouth. She’s never supported my wanting to be an entrepreneur, and it’s not like we get along.”
Angie was quiet with this introspective look on her face, then she finally said, “You know, the other side of my duplex is vacant, has been for a while now, since Ryan moved out. Ryan is against letting any men lease it, and I’m not trying to have no women up in there, but you’re family, so I think he’d be okay with you living there.”
“Uh, I’m sure I won’t be able to afford the rent at your place, either.”
“I wouldn’t charge you any rent, Damon. I wanna help you.”
“Angie, I can’t—”
“You can and you will unless you wanna hurt my feelings.”
I shook my head. “Angie…”
“Look, me and Ryan aren’t hurting for money, believe me. We’re good. The place is yours if you want it. You’ll only have to cover utilities. Can you handle that?”
I closed my eyes and decided to take her offer for what it was, a gift. So I nodded and said, “Yeah. Thank you, Angie.”
“It’s no problem. Just don’t tell Nicky I’m not charging you any rent. Her spoiled ass has been tryna move in there forever.”
I chuckled. “I won’t.”
“Great! Let me call and make sure Ryan’s okay with this, and if he’s not, I’ll just have to change his mind.” She gave me a wink.
I smiled at her and shook my head again. At least I knew one Strickland sister still had love for me.
12
There was this one time in tenth grade when Damon caught this virus. It’d been going around the school, and was so bad, it caused a lot of absences. This particular day, Damon missed school, a rarity for the brainiac who absorbed information like a sponge. Damon and I both loved the learning aspect of school but struggled with the socialization arm of it outside of our friendship.
I made it to lunch before deciding to skip the rest of the day to see about him, knowing his mother had probably left him to fend for himself. Wanda Davis was a beautiful woman who married young and divorced young, and in between that, had Damon who eventually became a casualty as her need to be successful outweighed her need to nurture her only child. During the bulk of high school, while she climbed the corporate ladder, Damon was left all alone more often than not.
After I coasted into his driveway in the car that had been a sweet sixteen gift from my father and parked next to the hand-me-down Ford Bronco some uncle or cousin of Damon’s had given him, I approached the front door, knocked, waited, then took the spare key out of the fake rock sitting in the flower bed next to the front door and let myself in. Damon was in bed, burning up with fever. Lips parched and delirious out of his mind. My heart squeezed in my chest at seeing him like that, at seeing my Damon like that. I’ll never forget the look in his drowsy eyes when he saw me. I could tell he wasn’t sure if I was really there, but still looked relieved at the mere possibility of my presence.
I jumped into action, recalling the things my mom would do when me or my sisters would get sick. I found some Tylenol in his mom’s bathroom and coaxed him into taking it. Located some chicken noodle soup in the kitchen and damn near had to force feed it to him. Turned the ceiling fan on in his room, blasted the AC even though it was in the dead of winter, to try and cool his body down, and breathed a sigh of relief when his fever broke.
I stayed there with him, sitting on the side of his bed, until I was expected to be home, then snuck out the house after bedtime and went back to him. Gave him more Tylenol and soup and was happy to see he was much more coherent. When I sat on the side of his bed, watching him drift off to sleep again, his eyes popped open and he lifted his long arms, a smile on his face as he whispered, “Come here, Nick.”
I moved closer, let him fold me in his arms as I lay next to him in the twin bed.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said in a weak voice, as I closed my eyes and melded into his thin body.
“You’re my guy, Dame. Gotta take care of you.”
“You’re my girl,” he replied, his voice heavy with sleep.
When we were alone, we always referred to each other as “my guy” and “my girl.” It was our thing.
I smiled and burrowed in to spend the night there with him. I’d already set his bedside alarm and brought some clothes with me. I’d leave his house and head straight to school if he was still improving. If not, I would stay right there with him. I already had my excuse ready for my mom. I’d just tell her I left for school extra early, before she got up, for a meeting or something.
As it turned out, I didn’t need the alarm, because Damon woke me up with pa
ssionate kisses. We made love that morning. Not sex, but love. By then, we’d been together in that way countless times, but there was something deeper about this time. In his little bed, we shared something so intimate, so intensely emotional, it ached as much as it pleased us. There was a desperation intermingled with the carnality of our connection, and from that point on, sex with Damon was never merely sex again.
That morning was also the first time I realized just how much in love with him I was.
Those events played repeatedly in my brain as I waited outside of Travis’s condo for Damon to pick me up and take me wherever he was taking me. I was outside, because I was nervous and anxious, and also because I knew myself well enough to know that being inside any dwelling with Damon was a bad idea.
When his Optima finally pulled up in front of me, he rolled the window down, stuck his head out of it, and with a grin on his face, said, “Damn, I missed you, too.”
I rolled my eyes as I walked over to the passenger’s side and climbed in, the familiar mixture of spearmint gum and Damon’s cologne infiltrating my senses, causing my body to instantly react, as if my coochie had a mind of its own and thought, oh, Damon’s here so I better get wet. Had he not already begun pulling off the lot, I might’ve snatched the door open and jumped out.
“Where are you taking me?”
He glanced over at me with that same goofy-ass grin on his handsome-ass face. “It’s a surprise. A pleasant one.”
I frowned as I fixed my eyes on him. “You better not be taking me somewhere to screw, Scotty.”
“Aw, shit. You pulled out my middle name? Damn, I’m not gonna try anything, Nick. I respect your wishes. I just wanna spend some time with you. Okay? Relax.”
I sighed. “I’ll try.”
I gazed out the window, willing myself not to look at Damon as he navigated the streets of our town, eventually hitting the highway. I wanted to ask him again where we were going, but instead, pulled my phone out and tapped on the Instagram icon. Ironically, the first photo in my feed was one of Damon, obviously taken that morning from the driver’s seat of the car I was sitting in. He was smiling brightly and the caption read:
Getting ready to spend the day with my #dayone. Nothing makes me happier than being in her presence, if only for a second. #mygirlforever #truelove
My first thought was to panic and worry about whether Travis had seen or would see the post, but Travis despised social media and didn’t partake in it at all. I glanced at Damon, my heart fluttering at the sentiment of his words, a storm brewing in my mind at the implication of the same words, and my body? It was frustratingly aroused.
My shoulders sagged. Honestly, I wanted this attempt at chastity between us to work. Damon meant the world to me. I loved him in many ways and didn’t want to face a future without him in my life at least as a friend. But this wasn’t going to work. He loved me, really loved me, and at that point, I realized it was wrong to expect him to remain in my life in any capacity—even if he wished to—while I built a life with another man. It wouldn’t be right. I loved him too much to cause him that kind of pain.
I had opened my mouth to share these feelings with him when I looked up and noticed he was pulling to a stop in front of a building that seemed somewhat familiar to me. My eyes scanned the lot and then rolled over to Damon who was wearing another ginormous grin.
“Where are we?”
“The gym at the old high school in Crumpton.”
I nodded. That’s why it was familiar to me. Crumpton was a town that was located about ten miles down the highway, east of Romey, with about half its population. This high school located on the edge of town had been replaced with a newer one.
“Why are we here?”
He nodded toward the building. “You didn’t read the sign?”
My eyes scanned the front of the building and zeroed in on a blue and white banner stretched over the aging metal double doors: 5th Annual Crumpton Comic-Con.
My eyes widened as I turned to him and smiled. “A Comic-Con?”
He gave me this look that was familiar to me. It was one he’d given me many times but more so when we were much younger—a look of innocent adoration. It melted my heart and made me want to lick him from head to toe.
“Yeah, I know how much you enjoyed the one we went to back in high school, figured you haven’t been to one in a while. Thought it’d be fun,” he said.
I turned my head and stared at the banner, letting my mind drift back to the beginning of our senior year of high school when Damon surprised me by driving me to Nashville for their Comic-Con. It was so much fun, and I promised myself I’d wear a costume the next time I attended one. A Wonder Woman costume. On the way back to Romey, I buried my head in Damon’s lap and thanked him for the surprise with my mouth, almost causing him to have a wreck. My eyes flickered and dropped to my lap at that memory.
I finally shut those thoughts out and glanced at him. “I haven’t been to a Comic-Con since you took me.”
He frowned slightly. “Really? Well, this is past due. Let’s go.”
He hopped out of the car and so did I, giving him a curious look as he walked to the trunk and lifted it. A second later, he tossed me a package. I looked at the photo of its contents affixed to the front and then at Damon. “You got me a Wonder Woman costume?”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “Yeah, that’s what you said you’d wear if you dressed up for one of these, right?”
“You remembered…” I breathed.
“Of course I did. I remember everything about you, about us.” He dropped his eyes a bit, reminding me of the shy, adolescent Damon and making butterflies flutter in my stomach.
I glanced back at the building. “Uh, how long is this…how long will we be here?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you back home before Detective Stabler starts worrying.”
I rolled my eyes. “Stabler wasn’t even a lawyer, Damon.”
“I know.”
I looked down at the package again and then let my eyes roam the rapidly-filling parking lot. Crumpton was a small town, but I knew people were willing to travel far and near to attend an event like this. This one appeared to be no exception. “Um, thank you for this, but I don’t think I should wear it. It looks kind of revealing on the picture, and I don’t want to do anything that might upset Travis.” I hated to bring him up, but since he already had in a roundabout way…
Damon blew out a sigh as he shut his trunk. “He ain’t here, Nick. Look, I just wanna have some fun…with you. Just for today, I don’t wanna think about the fact that you’re engaged to someone other than me. I don’t wanna think about anything. I just wanna enjoy this day, and I wanna spend it with you.” He reached for my hand. “Please?”
I took his hand and nodded. As we approached the building, I noticed the package in his hand, and asked, “What kind of costume do you have?”
“Come on, now. What kind of question is that, Nick?”
I grinned. “My bad.”
*****
Once inside, we split up, each ducking into a restroom to change into our costumes.
I came out first, holding my neatly folded clothes against my chest as I stood outside the men’s restroom waiting for Damon. When he finally emerged, I gasped. Damon looked…there are no words for how good he looked in that Black Panther costume that appeared to have been painted on him. Virile? Hot? Sexy as hell? None of that seemed adequate. And although a mask covered most of the top half of his face, I knew it was him because I could see his eyes and lips and I knew his body, had it embedded in my psyche, could identify it in a line-up, and at that moment, desired to climb his fine ass like a tree.
I swallowed, unfastened my eyes from him, and glanced down at my feet. “You didn’t think to get me footwear, huh?”
His eyes followed mine to the Jessica Simpson strappy ballet flats covering my feet then slid up the red thigh-high stockings to the micro-mini dress—blue skirt with white stars and red bodice that made my cl
eavage pop, gold v-shaped belt and gold Double-W accenting my breasts—all the way to the gold headpiece.
I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as his eyes finally met mine. “Um, it didn’t come with the boots?”
“Obviously not.” I looked down at my size-C boobs that appeared huge in the built-in push-up bra. “Where’d you get this from anyway? La Perla? This feels more like lingerie than a costume.”
He shook his head. “You know I can’t afford shit at La Perla. I ordered it off some website. Glad I did, too.” He licked his lips and grinned. “Come on. Let’s see what they got going on.”
As I took his hand again, I asked, “We just gonna carry our clothes around?”
As it turned out, after Damon paid the ten-dollar fee for us to enter the actual event space, which was the gym floor, we were each given plastic bags with the Crumpton Comic-Con logo on them. We shoved our clothes in them and began checking the place out.
Seconds later, Damon was damn near tackled by some white chick in a Storm (from the X-men) costume who begged him to take a picture with her as we attempted to make our way down an aisle of vendors.
Shoving her phone at me, she shrieked, “I gotta get a pic with my soul mate!” using some black woman’s voice and then wrapped her damn arm around Damon and leaned into him. And what did he do? Just stood his stupid ass up there with this goofy smile on his dumb face, wrapping his arm around this trick. I wanted to throw that phone at her nose and yank her off him, but instead, I snapped the damn picture and flung the phone back at her.
Thirsty bitch.
After she left, Damon took my hand, and asked, “You all right?”
I cut my eyes at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
That shit happened at least a dozen more times—hoes in various costumes approaching us, wanting to take pictures with Damon. Brazen, desperate hoes. I mean, yes, he was fine, but damn! And the worst one was a chick dressed up as Daphne from Scooby Doo. That trick actually asked if he would kiss her. When I heard that shit, I walked off, went and grabbed a seat in a room that was set up to look like the bridge of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. I took Dr. Spock’s seat, of course, and sat there trying to calm myself, because all I could see was red. Yeah, I was engaged to Travis, but Damon was mine, fucking mine! Always had been, and…and, shit, I was pissed about those women ogling and groping him. Honestly, the only reason I didn’t punch one of them is I didn’t want to get arrested and tarnish Travis’s reputation.
Be with Me (Strickland Sisters Book 3) Page 6