by Linda Verji
Zain wanted the children on Friday because she’d planned to use the second half of the weekend to hunt for houses. It was uncomfortable – both literally and figuratively – squeezing her three kids and herself into Chryssa’s space and although Chryssa hadn’t said anything to indicate that she wanted them out, Zain didn’t want to overstay her welcome.
Zain would’ve told the buster that but he, of course, had to be aggressive and embarrass her in front of her colleagues. She said, “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because you’re acting like a child.”
“Go to hell!” Zain snapped. She slammed the handset down on its housing, effectively cutting the call. Just for good measure she slammed it down three more times. Gah! Lucky knew how to push her buttons. The phone rang again and she just knew it was him. The trauma doors fortunately burst open mid-ring and a number of paramedics rushed in with a new patient.
Zain didn’t know when Eli had gotten there, but he was right beside her as they met the new arrival. He inquired, “What do we have?”
“Thirty year old female, backseat passenger, forehead versus window,” a male paramedic rapped the patient’s stats as they wheeled a woman whose head was heavily bleeding into the trauma room on a gurney.
“We need to stop the bleeding.” Eli turned to Zain. “Scrub in with me.”
“Okay.” Lucky and his drama were instantly shoved to the back of her mind.
* * *
“I’m sorry, she just went into surgery,” the nurse said, “but you can leave a message.”
“No thanks!” Lucky snapped before ending the call. For a while he bounced the phone in his palm as he sat on the edge of their bed.
When he’d called, he’d had no intention of yelling. Sure, he was already irritated at the fact that she’d gone back to work Exactly how did she expect to take care of their kids when she was running around that hospital at all hours of the day? Why did she even need to work? He was making enough money to take care of her. What woman didn’t want that?
But that wasn’t what had pissed him off.
No! The moment he’d heard her voice, every bit of frustration he felt from being away from her for last five weeks came flooding in. The only words he’d wanted to hear from her were that she was coming back. She didn’t say them.
She isn’t back!
It’d been five weeks and she wasn’t back! She’d gone back to work as if she was creating a new life for herself - one without him. She was supposed to have realized how much they loved each other and that they had to let some things go for their relationship to work. He’d realized it! Otherwise he wouldn’t have let the fact that she’d used birth control while they were trying for a baby slide. Why couldn’t Zain let go of a few things?
She’s supposed to be back!
If Zain was trying to show him that she could do without him then she was doing a bang up job. It was all he could think about and it hurt like hell. He’d only yelled because he didn’t want her to know how much she was messing with him. He dropped his phone on the bedside table and went to Maari’s room. He found his son in the bathroom brushing his teeth.
“Did you talk to her?” Maari asked, foam running down the side of his mouth.
“Yeah,” Lucky said, handing him water so he could gurgle. “She’s okay.”
“She told me about the operatin’ she did yesterday.” Maari walked out of the bathroom and climbed into his bed.
“Operation,” Lucky automatically corrected.
“Yeah, operatin’. There was blood, and brains, and guts everywhere! That’s gangster, yo!” Maari exclaimed. He went silent contemplatively staring up at the ceiling before he turned to Lucky and said, “I think I’mma be a doctor when I’m grown.”
“I thought you were gonna be a rapper?”
“That was last month,” he informed Lucky with a big yawn. He closed his eyes and sleepily murmured, “’Sides, somebody’s gotta fix T.I. and Fi’ty when they get shot up.”
Holding back a smile, Lucky kissed Maari on the forehead. He switched off the light as he walked out of the room. He briefly considered going back downstairs but dropped the idea when he remembered that his mother and Sonia were there. Lucky appreciated the help Nadifa gave him with the kids. He just wasn’t too excited that she’d moved Sonia from the pool house to the guest room downstairs.
But Nadifa was his mother so he let it slide.
He went back to his and Zain’s room and stripped down to his boxers before he settled on the bed. He tried to read one of Zain’s corny romance novels but only ended up horny and thinking of her. He finally switched off the lights and went to sleep.
He dreamt of Zain.
She stroked his dick repeatedly with those soft hands of hers and licked the precum that leaked from the tip of him with her tongue. She tasted him before she took him completely into her mouth. The way his woman worked him had to be illegal. She had him arching off the bed in a plea for more as she sucked and suctioned him into her mouth.
“Zain,” Lucky groaned as he reached for her in his sleep. His fingers sifted through the strands of her long, curly hair and… Long, curly hair? Zain kept her hair straight and shoulder length. With the startling revelation, Lucky’s eyes snapped open and darted downwards to find Sonia sucking his dick.
He’d never moved so fast in his life!
In a flash he was out of the bed. Staring at Sonia with a mixture of horror and disbelief, he asked, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She was still kneeling on his bed – their bed – naked as a siren. Cupping her large breasts in her hands, she licked her lips. “I know you miss this.”
CHAPTER 15
Sonia was unabashed in all her naked glory. She was almost eight months along yet it didn’t seem fazed in her quest to seduce him. She flicked a nail over her nipple as her free hand smoothed over her distended torso.
“Get out,” Lucky demanded from the far end of his room where he stood against the wall – watching her. If the wall had rungs, he would’ve climbed them to get out of the room. Women had come onto him before, but never this brazenly and never in the room he shared with his wife.
“C’mon, Lucky.” She rolled his name on her tongue with a seductive lilt that made him think of strawberries and sex. It made it even harder for him when she sat on the bed and spread her legs.
He tried not to look. Honestly! He tried, but he was just a man and she was Sonia – a woman who made a living making men sweat. His eyes remained glued to the finger she ran over the lips of her pussy and between them.
Her face held a wicked grin as she said, “A big man like you needs some relief.” The way she drawled the ‘big’ and the slow seductive swirl of her tongue around her finger was enough to break any man.
“Get out of my room!” Lucky tried again. He almost groaned when she sucked the same finger into her mouth then released it with a pop. If he hadn’t been hard before, he quickly became so.
“See how wet you make me?” Sonia said moving her feet further apart to give him a glimpse of the pink flesh between her folds. He hadn’t realized he was naked until his shaft lengthened to its full glory in response to her show. Her pregnancy should’ve turned him off, but it didn’t. He had no idea why. It could’ve been because he’d spent so much time fantasizing about Zain pregnant that—
Zain! The thought of her was like a barrel of ice water being upturned over his libido. If she knew that he’d let it get this far, she’d leave him for sure.
“You need to get out.” Lucky’s voice turned insistent.
Sonia got off the bed, the sultry smile on her face silently proclaimed that she wasn’t going anywhere. With practiced strides, she slinked towards him. Her slow journey allowed him admire everything; the aroused toffee peaks of her breasts, her swollen belly, the shaved mound at the apex of her thick thighs, and her long legs. Her body temporarily paralyzed Lucky and when he looked up again, she was close to him – too close.
; “Don’t pretend that you don’t want me. You know you want me.” When Sonia tried to grab his arm Lucky shifted to the side. She kept coming. His eyes desperately searched the room for his boxers so he could get out of there. They were bunched up on the floor beside the bed. He’d need to get past Sonia to get to them.
Fuck it! He ducked into the bathroom and locked the door.
“Lucky!” Sonia sang from the other side of the door, sounding so creepy that Lucky was sure he was starring in a remake of The Exorcist. “I’m just going to wait for you on the bed. You can come get this pussy whenever you want it.”
The hell he was getting out of that bathroom!
The next morning, Lucky unlocked the bathroom door and peeked into the bedroom. A knocked out Sonia was huddled beneath the covers in his and Zain’s bed. He’d never been so glad to see a woman asleep in his life, nor had he ever dressed so fast. Once armored in a green track jacket, white t-shirt, dark-wash jeans, and white high-tops, he headed downstairs to the kitchen.
He walked in just as Nadifa was berating Marilynn. “Why are you skimping on the butter? Doesn’t my son buy enough?”
“Zain says we shouldn’t use too much, ma’am,” Marilynn defended.
“Well, Ma’am Zain isn’t here so-”
“Ma, can I talk to you?” Lucky interrupted the heated exchange.
“Halake. You don’t even greet people in the morning these days?” Nadifa berated him, “That’s not how I raised you.”
“Good morning, Ma,” he said obediently. He kissed her on the cheek in greeting. “Can I talk to you now?”
Lucky led Nadifa onto the kitchen patio and closed the sliding doors so their conversation would remain private. “You gotta move Sonia back to the pool house.”
“Why?” Nadifa asked, worry clouding her features. “What happened?”
“She came into my room last night.” Lucky said. His mother stared at him with a vacuous expression for a moment, and then her eyes lit up as she finally understood what he actually meant. He added, “I had to sleep in the bathroom – on the bathmat.”
“Why would you sleep in the bathroom?” Nadifa looked at him like he’d lost his mind. She crossed her arms over her chest as she asked, “Couldn’t you share the bed with her?”
“The bed?” Lucky asked. He didn’t quite believe what he’d heard. “With Sonia?”
“She’s having your baby.” Nadifa’s slim shoulders rose and fell with a flippant shrug. “I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
His mother actually agreed with Sonia’s actions? Lucky cleared his throat then, enunciating each word precisely, he reminded her, “I have a wife, Ma.”
“No, you don’t,” she returned. “That mad woman hasn’t been around for weeks. A good wife would never leave her husband. You might as well take Sonia. She’s beautiful, she’s fertile, she’s a good girl, and she comes from a background like ours – she would make you a good wife.”
What?
Zain had more character in her pinky than Sonia ever would. She never would’ve tried to fleece him. Lucky knew first hand because when he’d bought her a car with his signing bonus she’d been more than mad with him assuming that he was trying to buy her love. Even after he ‘d explained that he just wanted to show that he loved her, she’d ordered him to take it back because they were not going to be that black couple; the ones that ended up bankrupt as soon as his pro career ended.
He depended on Zain for a second eye in businesses he wanted to invest in and to take care of his family when he couldn’t. He depended on her to be there to cheer for him in the stands and tend to his injuries when he went down on and off the field. She’d given up her thriving career to be the background singer to his musician. It was easy to forget, but without her he’d have already fallen.
If drama queening and infertility were Zain’s only faults, he could live with them!
In that moment, Lucky realized that Sonia must’ve been filling his mom with bullshit. He should’ve told his mother the truth about where he’d met Sonia because then Nadifa would’ve never bonded with her. It was too late now! The damage was done and he wasn’t about to get in an argument with his mother over her.
He ordered, “Just get her back to the pool house.”
“Listen to me Halake—”
Maybe it was the frustration that came with realizing what he’d lost in Zain, but he interrupted Nadifa curtly, “No, Ma. If you don’t get her out, I will and I guarantee it won’t be just out of the main house.”
Nadifa’s mouth fell open in shock. Lucky had never talked to her that way. Normally she said, and he did – reluctantly sometimes, but he always did. Lucky could feel her shocked gaze bore holes into his back, but he continued to walk away.
In the evening he had to get a ride home and call Marilynn to ask her to get a cab and pick the kids from school so they could get to music practice on time – courtesy of Polo.
Though it was the off-season, the Firebacks were expected to train at least twice a week to keep them on their game. Polo and another player had siphoned the gas out of Lucky’s car while he was on the field, leading to an altercation between the two of them that had almost turned into a full-on drag out. If it weren’t for Victor’s intervention, guaranteed there would have been blood on the field.
“Thanks for the ride,” Lucky said as he stood outside of Victor’s Escalade. His black gym bag emblazoned with the Firebacks red dragon logo hung across his torso.
“No problem.” Lucky was about to walk away when Victor lowered the passenger window. “Yo, Lucky!”
“Yeah?”
“This thing with Zain?” Victor was a man of few words, but Lucky understood what he was asking.
“We gon’ be cool,” Lucky answered the unasked question. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Cool.” Victor nodded and backed the car out of the gate before he headed out.
Lucky greeted the security guard as he stepped onto their property. The music teacher’s Corvette was parked in the driveway and the moment he stepped into the house, the muted but unmistakable sound of Maari’s smooth violin chords accompanied by the twins’ discordant arpeggios sounding from the music room welcomed him home. Loathe to disrupt them, he started for the stairs then paused on the fourth step.
Had his mother followed his instructions?
Lucky turned and descended the stairs. He took a left turn through the den, past the entertainment room, and to the other end of the house where the guest room door stood slightly open. His mother and Sonia were seated suspiciously close to each other on the bed – their backs to him – in an apparently intense conversation .
Lucky didn’t mean to eavesdrop. His hand was lifted, ready to knock on the door and announce his presence when he heard Sonia say, “He didn’t fall for it. I even got into bed with him – and nothing.”
“You need to slow down. Don’t be so obvious,” Nadifa said. “You saw how he reacted. Men don’t like women who throw themselves at them. Start by cooking his favorite food, then give him a massage. When he is comfortable then you can move on to—”
“Ma!” Lucky hadn’t even realized that he’d pushed the door open in shock. His mother and Sonia turned abruptly, both wearing twin expressions of shock as Lucky repeated, “Ma.”
Sonia’s shock morphed into irritation while Nadifa’s transformed into guilt. She tried to cover it with a strained smile as she stood. “My son, I didn’t know you were back.”
“No.” Lucky shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “So this is the plan?”
“What plan?” Nadifa asked. Guilt was written all over her face as she crossed the floor coming towards him.
“This is your plan?” Lucky stepped back; he didn’t want her to touch him.
Giving up all pretenses, Nadifa raised her chin. A determined defiance dominated her expression as she said, “I’m just doing my job as your mother.”
“This is your job?” he asked. “It’s
your job to mess up a happy marriage?”
“What happy marriage? Your wife isn’t even here.” Nadifa’s derisive snort turned into a chuckle. Lucky just stared at her. When Nadifa had exhausted whatever amusement she found in this ridiculous situation, she gestured towards Sonia as she said, “Sonia is a good girl who can make you very happy. Once the baby is born you can—”
“Make me happy?” Lucky’s upper lip curled as he stared at Sonia. “That Sonia?”
“How many Sonias do you see in this room?”
“Let me tell you something, Ma.” Letting the cards fall where they may he said, “She’s a stripper. Yes! I picked your good Sonia up in a strip bar. She was paid to sleep with me. Think about that when you’re trying to replace Zain with her.”
He could tell he’d shocked Nadifa. She shouted as he walked away, “At least she is only removing her clothes. The other one is just a prostitute!”
“Excuse me? Did you call my wife a prostitute?” In the past she’d said some pretty nasty things but she’d never gone so low. “You’re wrong for that, Ma.”
“Why am I wrong?” Nadifa asked stubbornly. “She’s a prostitute. You think I didn’t see those pictures of her with that man that were on the internet?”
It took a while for Lucky to understand what his mother was talking about, but he was shocked when he did. How did Nadifa know about that? A year into their relationship, Zain had been raped by one of her classmates. The classmate had then gone on to post naked pictures of a knocked out Zain on the internet.
It was touch-and-go for their relationship while they dealt with the rape mostly because Zain hadn’t even told him it was a rape until six months after. When she did tell him, she’d begged for him not to tell anyone, least of all their parents. He hadn’t ever seen his mother use a computer so how the hell had she gotten to those pictures?
“Why do you think I didn’t want you to marry that girl?” Nadifa kissed her teeth as she continued speaking, “These rich girls think they can open their legs for anyone because their money will buy them a husband.”