As I struggled for air, I managed to give him a response Niya style. “Fu-fuck you.”
He laughed and squeezed tighter. Looking at Rodney, he said, “You better talk to your friend. As soon as she signs that first contract and starts doing shows, I want my money.” With that, he let me go. “Now, get your fucking money, leave my drugs, and get the fuck out of here.”
It took everything that I had in me not to go balls out and kill him right then and there. He was a brave man, and as Rodney and I headed out the door, his voice stopped us.
“See, I’m a fair guy. I pay for my drugs.”
With my back turned to him, the roar of laughter from him and his two men came crashing down on me. I knew right away that White Boy was a dead man.
* * *
“Are you okay?” Rodney asked as I sped to his house.
“Yeah, I’m cool. It’s just that White Boy got a lot of fucking nerve. I can’t believe that he put his hands on me.”
“Don’t worry. We will find a way to take care of that nigga,” Rodney answered as he lit a cigarette.
“Nah, don’t even worry about it. I’m sure he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
After that, I drove in silence. After the stunt White Boy had pulled, I didn’t need anyone else to have any information on what I was doing. Rodney was cool, but after that night, whatever dirt I would do, I was going to take that shit to the grave with me.
Chapter 49
Jamilla
It was Saturday, around eight in the morning. The house was quiet as I thumbed through my book. It was all done. I had titled it Rainbow Hearts. It was based on facts, with a whole lot of fiction between the lines. I was going to give it to my English professor that Monday. Mrs. Turner had said that she would type it all up and edit it as she went along and would have the file to me within a week. Niya and I were both Libras, and I had to have the book in hand by September 26, which was her birthday. We hadn’t made definite plans yet, but I knew that we would spend the day together. I was so nervous as I thought of her reading it. I had put so much of us into the book that I hoped that she didn’t end up hating it. As I sat there thinking about her, I decided to text her since I hadn’t heard from her since the night before.
Hey. I just want you to know that I am thinking about you. I love you.
I pressed SEND, and my heart raced a little. I didn’t know if she was still angry about the night before. So I sat there and stared at my phone until it lit up with a text.
Hey. I was thinking about you too. Tell me, what were you thinking about?
Oh shit. Okay. I had to calm down. She always did that to me, always made me sweat a little. I thought about my answer for a minute, then texted her back.
Just thinking about you and how much I love you. Are you still mad at me?
Again, I sat there, anxiously awaiting her text.
Honestly, yeah. A little, but not much, though. I can’t stay mad at you, Milla boo.
I smiled while texting, I miss you, Niya. After just one night without hearing from you, I miss you as if it has been years!
She texted back, I am not too far away, you know. Come see me! Come get in bed with me!
Damn. I had to cross my legs to stop what was happening between them. Thoughts of her pleasuring me intoxicated my mind, and for a brief moment, I was drunk from thoughts of her roaming hands. I got up to brush my teeth and wash up. As I walked to the bathroom, I texted, Be there in twenty minutes.
* * *
I texted her before I left my apartment and told her that I was on my way to hers. When I got there, she was standing at her door, leaning against the wall, smoking. Whenever a day or two passed without my seeing her—or in this case, fourteen hours—I felt all giddy inside. She was so beautiful. It was rare to see her with her locks out. Her hair was usually in braids or pulled back in a ponytail, but that morning, it was out, and her wild curls only added to her magnificence. I could tell that under her white wife beater, she had on no bra, and for some reason, I wondered if she didn’t have on any panties under her boxers.
“So, you missed me?” Niya asked as she blew smoke out of her mouth. Her eyes were low, and so was her head. She lifted it and looked at me as her sentence seemed to dance in the air.
“Ye-ye-yeah, I did,” I answered nervously. Her stance and her presence were causing me to stutter.
“You okay?” Niya asked with a slick smile on her face. She knew what she was doing to me.
“Yeah,” was all that I could get out.
She moved to the side but didn’t leave me much room to get by. My eyes were on her the whole time, and as my body brushed against hers, she didn’t smile and her vibe was dominating. As I walked ahead of her, my skin was on fire. It was as if I could feel her eyes dancing against my back.
Once I got to her room, I sat in her desk chair while she closed her bedroom door and stood against it. She stood there, smoking, not saying a word. I sat in the chair, nervous as hell, excited by the sight of her, and wanting to know what was on her mind.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, still not moving, still with her back against the damn door.
“You told me to come and get in bed with you,” I answered, now a little confused.
“Oh yeah? That’s the only reason?”
Her eyes were small slits, and her head was cocked to the side. She wasn’t looking at me, but down at the blunt in her hand.
“I mean, yeah. No. Well—”
She started to giggle, so I stopped talking. She walked over to me slowly, and once in front of me, she removed the rubber band that was holding my hair in a ponytail.
“You know I like to see that hair out. Now, tell me, you came over here only because I said so?”
Shit, shit, shit. My heartbeat was out of whack. She was too close, her voice was too soft, and her fingers were running through my hair. I couldn’t answer. Hell, my eyes were damn near rolling to the back of my head.
She sat her blunt down in the ashtray, stood me up, and wrapped her arms around my waist. She hugged me tightly, and it felt good.
“Damn, Milla boo. I missed you, baby.”
She had her nose and lips buried against my neck, and I could feel her words against it as she spoke. I hugged her back, and in that moment, my knees went weak.
“Really, Jamilla. I miss you whenever I am not with you. Thank you for your friendship.”
That word—it was such a beautiful word, and being called her friend meant the world to me. But . . . but standing there in her arms, I didn’t want to hear that word.
She picked me up, and with my legs wrapped around her waist, she put me on her bed. She was between my legs as my thoughts ran wild. As I waited for her to make her move, she just gawked at me. She stared, and then she kissed my neck. She whispered something that I couldn’t hear, and afterward, she got off of me. She found her spot beside me, pulled me close, and just lay there. Now, what in the hell was I supposed to do with that? I thought that she would at least try to pull off my clothes, maybe kiss me, maybe touch me, but she did none of that. And there I was, thinking that it all was easier in bed.
Niya soon fell asleep, but I couldn’t relax to save my life. She had fucked my head up by just really going to sleep. Had things changed? Had I pushed her away one time too many? Was I losing her, what we had, and what I loved so much? Well, lying there, so close to her, I felt uncomfortable. With no answers, lying in her arms only made me think even more. I got off the bed without waking her up and sat in the chair. I watched her sleep as I smoked the blunt she had left behind in the ashtray.
While I was deep in thought, I caught sight of her notebook, and I became curious about whether she’d read what I wrote the other day. I got butterflies in my stomach as I thought of the notes she used to leave for me in my notebooks. I got up, grabbed the notebook, and searched through the pages, hoping to find a note that would let me know that everything was okay, that everything was still the same. When I found the page
with her writing on it, I sat back and read her thoughts.
To be madly in love, do you even know how that feels? It is as if I exist only in the land of insanity that my love for you has built. It is as if my thirst for you consumes me and dehydrates every ounce of stability in me. It is as if my hunger for you, which is growing with each passing day, ravishes my heart, allowing it to beat only when you are near me. Yes, I am madly in love with you . . . yet knowing that those feelings are not returned pains me most of all. To be madly in love, do you even know how that feels? No, No, sadly, you don’t.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, and instantly, they started to leak. My heart felt as if it had exploded in my chest and was leaking into my central nervous system. At first I couldn’t move, but when my feelings started to erupt and caused me to cry out loud and shake uncontrollably, I had to get up. I went into Niya’s hallway bathroom, grabbed a clean bath towel, covered my face, and just let it all out. I wept into that towel like I had never done before. I felt as if everything in me had shattered. I had ruined it all. I just knew it. Things would never be the same. Niya had realized that I didn’t love her the way she loved me . . . yet! She had realized it and couldn’t deal with it, or maybe she didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
I didn’t know what to do. So I sat in her bathroom and cried for a while. It was a deep, sorrowful show of what I thought was a loss of love. What was I going to do? When I was able to get myself together enough, I left her bathroom and went home. It would be three days before I saw or spoke to Niya again.
Chapter 50
Niya
When I woke up, she was gone, and instantly, I thought about her. There she was again, ruling my whole damn world, but I just couldn’t help it. She was my drug of choice, and I the willing drug fiend. When I got my first hit of her, it was like nothing I had ever felt. She surged through my brain and became the dopamine that sent me into a state of euphoria. Unfortunately, just like the drugs that held my mother prisoner, Jamilla was somehow starting to feel as if she wasn’t good for me, and that thought slaughtered my heart.
To be on top of her that morning, to hold back and not do the things I wanted to do to her, that shit was like executing everything alive in me. I had to force sleep just so I wouldn’t think about it with her right next to me. My mind was becoming too clouded with the thought of not having her, and insanity wasn’t too far behind my pursuit of her. How hard did I have to work? What else did I have to do to prove to her that I loved her like I had never loved before? My God, I would forsake life for her, I would reject the air that filled my lungs for her, yet she was still confused. She was still searching for the answers that I felt I had already given her.
Was I wrong for needing her the way that she had shown me that she needed me? Was my way of thinking off? Should I have been more understanding of her feelings? Sadly, I was starting to enter my selfish mode. I wanted to be happy. I had been through so much with my parents, with myself, and now I had to deal with White Boy. I wanted just to be fucking happy. I wanted to wake up and smile because all the bullshit in life that I had been dealing with had turned into Houdini and, poof, had disappeared.
So that morning, when I texted her to come over, I’d known what I was going to do before she even walked over to my side of the building. I’d known that I wanted to show her what it felt like to get a drop of what she wanted, to quench her thirst only for a moment and, boom, have it taken away. It was mean, cruel even, but I’d just needed her to feel it. This was her game, and I had played with the fucked-up cards she dealt from the minute I sat down at her table, without complaint. I had become monomaniacal, obsessed with every little aspect of her, almost possessed by just the thought of her and only her. But now things had to change.
What happened with White Boy had kept me up for a long while after I got home. I needed to adjust some things in my life; I needed to put me first. I’d stayed up thinking about how I would do that, because putting myself last had always been second nature to me. The thought of others had always preceded the needs of self, and because I had put others first for so long, I was starting to want more for myself. I loved Jamilla with all of me, and I would continue to love her. I just needed to change when it came to how I reacted to her. I had no idea how I would do this, for she was everything to me. She was everything. Even as I lay in that bed now and tried to will these things I was seeking into my mind, I couldn’t help but reach out to her, just to see how she was. I picked up my phone and texted her.
Jamilla, I woke up and you were gone, and as I was lying here thinking about you, I just wanted to text and tell you to have a good day.
I waited for a good twenty minutes before I realized that she wasn’t going to answer. Maybe that was best for now. As I got up and went into the shower, I tried to make sense of it all by telling myself that we both needed space, that maybe we needed to detox and remove all the toxins from our relationship.
* * *
It was around ten at night, and I found myself at Marlo’s place. Her room was very feminine, with photos of herself all over the place. I had managed to hold myself back from going over to Jamilla’s place or texting her again. Truth be told, I had called Marlo in hopes that her presence would act as a distraction. I had made a few deals, had a pocketful of money, so it hadn’t been such a bad day. I had stopped off and picked up something cute for her, and that shit must have made her juicy. She squealed like a pig and jumped in my arms, and it kind of reminded me of Roxie. Now, that was a name I hadn’t thought of in a while. At times, I missed her, but those moments were far and few between. But on days like the one I was having, she would have just added so much flavor.
I sat on Marlo’s bed and waited for her to try on the tight number I had picked up for her. I knew that with her fit frame, she would do the dress justice.
“Yeah, I knew that shit would fit you well. Come here,” I said after she’d put the dress on. I waited for her to walk over to the bed. Once she was within arms’ reach, I stood up and pulled her close.
I grabbed a handful of her ass and tried to push Jamilla out of my brain. I kissed her, and it was as if she melted in my arms. Her kiss tasted good, just not as sweet as Jamilla’s. Her body felt good, just not as good as Jamilla’s. Man, what was I going to do? I knew I would do the same to her as I did to Jamilla, but this time, I’d teach Marlo a lesson. I would teach these straight girls that the best thing they could do was know what they really wanted and know who they really were. It had almost worked on Jamilla, and that night, I wouldn’t leave Marlo’s house without succeeding.
“You think it looks good on me?” Marlo asked as she pulled away from my kiss and turned around. We stood in front of her full-length mirror, and we admired the dress and her beauty.
“You are a sexy-ass chocolate thing. Yeah, you sexy as fuck, Marlo.” My hands were rubbing her thigh. Her back was against me as I rested my chin on her shoulder.
“Am I the prettiest girl you have ever been with?” she asked as my hands slid behind her and squeezed her ass again.
“Hell yeah,” I lied.
And with that lie, she was all mine. Marlo wasn’t hard to read, so it was as if I had already finished her novel.
“Really? Please don’t lie to me.”
“Yes, Marlo, you are the hottest girl I have ever touched. Damn, girl. I can feel you trembling.”
That part wasn’t a lie. My hands had moved back to her thighs and were moving higher and higher. With one hand, I pulled up her dress, and with the other, I rubbed her inner thigh. She moaned as we watched everything that was going down in the mirror. The higher my hand moved, the more I could feel her feet move.
“Yeah, you’re such a pretty bitch. Look at you. Are you looking?” I said.
I wanted her to watch everything that was about to go down. She was another straight girl walking on the “wild side,” and I didn’t want her to forget this.
The red little dress was now around her waist. Her panties were pink,
lacy, and looked like something she would have on. My tongue played with her neck as my right hand rubbed the ridge of her panties on the side. I could almost feel her body begging for me to touch it. Her hips were moving to the waves of my fingertips, and her low, sensual moans played as the music to our sexual exchange. She was a sexy girl, beautiful even. Her model looks made me feel like a turnout queen. I was about to be the first girl ever to make her cum, and she would never forget me because of it.
“You like what I’m doing to you?”
I was teasing her, almost touching her wet spot, but not quite. I ran my fingers across the top of her panties, around the sides of them, but just not on what I would bet was her dripping wet pussy.
“Yeah, baby, it feels so good.”
“How does it feel to have a girl make you wet?”
I was looking right at her, and she stared back. I watched as she licked her lips and smiled.
“It feels so fucking good, Niya. It feels so good.”
“You want me to touch it? You want me to make you cum?” I asked before biting into her neck and licking my way up to her earlobe.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Tell me again. Tell me that you want me to touch it. Tell me that you want a girl to touch that pussy.”
I was looking at her as I ran my hand quickly across her clit. It was fast, over her undies, but she reacted nonetheless. She threw her head back and rested it against the front of my shoulder, but that was not what I wanted from her.
“Don’t fucking look away, Marlo. Look at yourself, look at me, and look at what I am doing to you. Don’t take your eyes off of that fucking mirror, you hear me?”
She picked her head back up, and as soon as our eyes met, I did it again, but this time as I quickly gave her clit a rub, my left hand met her left breast.
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