by Kennedy Ryan
Something flares behind his eyes when I use the word that says I’m his. I knew he’d like that; I’m nothing if not deliberate.
He leans down the few inches separating us until his lips are at my ear. His hands inch up to span my waist, his thumbs subtly, secretively brushing the underside of my breast. My breath hovers in my throat, suspended, and my mouth waters as I remember the taste of him this morning. Me on my knees in the shower, water beating on my shoulders, the long, rigid length of him hitting the back of my throat. His fingers screwed into my hair, holding my head still while he pumped over my tongue, scraped against my lips.
“So you’re taken, huh?” He breathes against my neck. As calm as he looks from the outside, I hear the hitch in his breath, feel him hard and pressed into my belly. “I don’t see a ring.”
I shoot him a sharp glance. We haven’t talked about rings and proposals in a while—it hasn’t mattered. We practically live together, though we both still have our own places. Anything other than together isn’t an option, but his teasing statement makes me wonder if he’s started to think about it the way I have. I find myself holding out my hand a few times a day, studying my ring finger, wondering what he would choose for it . . . wondering when he’ll ask.
Wondering when it started to matter so much to me. The last thing I want is to make him feel pressured. We’ve loved each other for years, true, but we haven’t been official for long at all.
“Grip, I’m not—”
He palms my throat, thumb on one side of my face, fingers on the other, commanding me, coaxing my mouth open. His tongue sweeps the sensitive lining inside my jaw, over my teeth, around my lips. The sun is high in the sky. Patrons walk past us, coming to and leaving the restaurant. A few gawk. I’m not sure if they recognize Grip or if our PDA al fresco just disconcerts them. The kiss slows to mere brushes of our mouths, my lips pulled between his with tiny tugs and hungry bites. The firm hold he has on my chin softens, and his fingers slide into the hair falling around my neck.
“I had to shut you up because every time I mention rings you start stuttering and saying stupid shit.” His eyes smile down at me. “And your mouth kind of hangs open. It’s not a good look for you.”
A laugh breaks free from me. It’s a happy sound, like a caged bird free and singing. That’s how I feel sometimes, like for years I walked around locked up, guarding my heart against this man, and now I’ve been let loose, liberated, kissing in broad daylight on the street and spilling laughter that sounds like a bird’s song.
And not giving a damn what anyone thinks about it.
“Oh really?” My smile widens an inch. “I seem to remember you liked my mouth open this morning in the shower.”
His chuckle rumbles in the small space separating our bodies.
“Damn, Bris. What am I gonna do with you?”
“You’ll figure something out.” I prop my forearms on his shoulders, caressing his neck. “You always do.”
He studies me for a few long seconds, something changing in his eyes. They sober, the cocky grin falling into a straight line.
“What’s wrong?” I cup one side of his face, the slight scruff tickling my palm. One minute we’re flirting and teasing, verging on horny, and the next we’re . . . not.
“Nothing.” He sets his hand over mine against his jaw. “I just missed you today. I miss you when we’re apart.”
His words settle over my heart, refreshing like rain falling on dry, thirsty ground. I feel it, too. I’m not sure how I kept him at bay for eight years when eight hours away from him makes my chest ache. The look in his eyes . . . there’s more to it than what’s on the surface, but I’m not sure what. He traces the corner of my mouth.
“You’re just trying to distract me,” I turn my mouth to kiss the hand touching my face, “from getting back to Kevin.”
Grip rolls his eyes, some of the humor returning.
“You seriously think I’m dealing with that dude?” He scoffs a quick rush of air.
“Don’t judge the deal by Kevin. I wish you could meet my friend Charisma. She’d be your editor, but she’s tied up in New York, and Kevin just happened to be here in LA.”
“Maybe we could meet her in New York.” Grip’s tone is careful and his glance is searching, but I’m not sure what he’s looking for. Am I missing something?
“Not any time soon.” I sigh, running my thumb over the dark arch of his brows. “Charm’s stuck there, and things are way too hectic for me to get away right now.”
“Yeah?” Grip twists his lips into a grimace.
“Yeah. Kai’s finally about to drop her debut album, and Rhyson’s in the studio working on his next project.” A sudden smile takes over my face. “I forgot to tell you I got Luke that reality show about the making of his next album.”
“Wow.” Grip’s eyes drop to the ground before he looks back to me. “Yeah, you’ve got a lot going on here.”
“The show’s filming in LA for the most part. I need to be on set at least for the initial footage, and don’t get me started on everything happening for Jimmi. I may have to hand her off to Sarah, though she’d kill me.”
“I get it,” Grip says with a small smile. “You’re too busy to go to New York.”
There it is again. What’s that look? Am I talking about work too much? I do that. I get caught up in my career, but I’m lucky enough to make dreams come true for the people I love the most. I never knew how fulfilling it would be, how damn good at it I would be. With every accomplishment, the opportunities double and my ambitions multiply. It’s never bothered Grip before, but maybe now that things are busier than they’ve ever been, he’s tired of hearing about my work and how much I love it.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I say. “Here I am going on and on about Prodigy and all my stuff, and I didn’t even ask about school. You registered for classes today, right?”
He goes still for a second, his expression becoming unreadable.
“I’m still looking at classes. There’s a little time before I finalize things for next semester.”
“Well I want to hear all about it tonight.” I tip up to leave a kiss on his lips. “But now I need to get back to Kevin.”
Grip’s face loosens into a grin.
“Tell his goofy ass you already have dinner plans, and to back off my girl.”
“Oh, I have dinner plans?” I take a few steps backward toward the restaurant entrance, my eyes never leaving the handsome face with its stark planes and bold bones. “And what are these plans?”
“Dinner at my place.”
“Am I bringing dinner?”
That’s usually what happens—neither of us is exactly gourmet chef material.
“No, I’ll grill up on the roof.”
Ah, the roof, one of my favorite places in the world. Overlooking everything but isolated from it all, just my love and me. Add medium rare red meat, and it’s my own private utopia.
“Then I’ll see you after work.” I smile and turn to go.
“Hey Bris,” he calls.
I look over my shoulder to find that sober look back in his eyes, tightening the skin over his high cheekbones, making me nervous.
“I love you.”
He says it to me every day, several times a day, and it never gets old, never frays around the edges or fails to palpitate my susceptible heart.
“I love you, too.”
I don’t try to lighten the moment with an easy smile or a flippant comment. Whatever is bothering him, he’ll tell me, probably tonight. I’ll let him come to it on his own.
In the meantime, Kevin.
2
Grip
I have to tell her tonight.
I’ve been putting it off, but I need to register for next semester. Getting my degree online has always worked for the busy pace of my life, but Dr. Israel Hammond, renowned criminal justice activist, will be a guest professor at NYU, and I need to be on campus. His book about racism in America completely rocked my world, and I nee
d to take that class.
Rationally, I know it won’t wreck us if I spend a semester in New York and Bristol stays here in LA. We survived eight years of games—chase, hide and seek, pin the tail on the donkey, with each of us playing the role of jackass from time to time. You name it, we played it. We survived Parker’s sick attempts to destroy us, and he’s stewing in a minimum-security resort-like prison suite because we figured out how to shut him down. We survived contempt and condemnation from people as distant as Black Twitter trolls and as close as members of my family who didn’t want to see us together. They are slowly, surely, one by one, coming around. Jade will be the hold out; I know this, but eventually she’ll see the light, too.
We win. Love prevails. I get it.
But that doesn’t make the reality of me being on one coast while Bris lives on the other any easier to accept, even for a few months—not with the way I need her.
I flip our steaks, losing myself in thought and the smoke rising from the grill. Do I have to go? I’m a rapper, an entertainer . . . do I really want to uproot my life for five months just to sit at the feet of some professor I don’t even know?
Hell yeah I do.
When I’m forty years old, I don’t want to still be just rapping. Jay Z is a hip-hop unicorn. Who else is out there rapping and relevant at almost fifty?
I’ll wait . . .
Yeah. Like I said. Dude’s a unicorn.
I’m passionate about the causes affecting my community, and I’m educating myself now, equipping myself now so I don’t squander this platform I’ve been given, but use it to do some kind of good. We have problems, and Dr. Hammond may have solutions. He’s a brilliant man who, even as he rails against the system, is smart enough to work within it, who cares enough to reform it.
“Mmmmm, that looks good.”
The comment grabs my attention, and I find myself smiling for the first time since I left Bristol. As she walks toward me, the approaching sunset paints the roof in shadows, but I see her clearly. Dark hair, burnished in places, falls around her shoulders. She has already discarded the dress she wore at lunch today in favor of a T-shirt and nothing else; it’s the one I just tossed into the hamper.
She tugs at my HABITUAL LINE STEPPER T-shirt, the hem landing at the top of her thighs. Where the T-shirt stops, my eyes keep going, past the lean muscles of her legs and the cut of her calves, the delicate bones of her ankles and to her bare feet. I love this girl, head to toe. Beyond this gorgeous packaging, it’s everything beneath that makes me beyond grateful she’s mine. The loyalty, the bottomless pit that is her heart, her sense of humor. The toughest girl I know is also the most tender, and I’m so honored I get to see both sides, all her sides.
“You out of clean clothes?” I nod to my T-shirt. “You gotta wear my dirty stuff now?”
An impish smile tugs at her bare lips. She’s washed away her makeup, and with it, all the sophistication she wraps around herself for her job. Up on this roof in my T-shirt, she’s just my girl. I love her in every iteration, but this is the one only I get to see, so it’s probably my favorite.
“I have clean clothes.” She steps close enough for me to smell her scent and mine mingling in the fabric. “I like the way this shirt smells.”
I drop a look over her, my eyes resting on the curves of her breasts in the soft cotton, where her nipples have gone taut under my stare.
“How does the shirt smell?” I ask, my voice as smoky as the steaks I should be paying attention to.
“Like you.” She leans forward until her breasts press into my chest. “It smells like you.”
My hands are twitching to touch her, and I finally surrender, slipping under the shirt to grasp her waist, pulling her up the few inches until our lips meet. I’ve been thinking about these steaks all day, and before Bristol arrived, I thought I was starving—but this, what I feel having her in my arms after hours apart, this is starving. It starts in my balls and tunnels up through my chest, infiltrates my heart, and presses its way to my mouth, which is open and devouring in a lips-searching, tongues-dueling kiss. I grip her by the ass, grinding our bodies together until the texture of her skin and mine, the scents of her skin and mine meld into this one panting, voracious thing that never seems to get enough.
“You better not burn my steak,” Bristol pants in between kisses.
I angle my head to send my tongue deeper into her mouth, holding her still, teasing her until she’s straining up, open and begging when I pull back.
“Grip.” My name is a whimpering complaint. She cups my neck and tugs my head back down.
“Oh, no.” I resist, laugh, and turn to the grill. “You were so concerned about me burning these steaks, Ms. Medium Rare.”
“I am.” She slides her arms around me from behind and I feel a sweet sting, her teeth gently biting my shoulder through my T-shirt. I love it when she bites me, but I’m not giving her that satisfaction yet. “But that doesn’t mean you get to stop kissing me. You have to multitask.”
One slim hand slides over my abs and past my belt to cup me through my jeans.
Damn. Not sure how long I can keep up this charade that I don’t want to screw her into the wall on the roof where anyone with half a telescope could see.
“Wow,” I say, keeping my tone unaffected, though she’s gotta feel me getting longer and harder in her hand. “Somebody’s horny as hell.”
She makes a sound that’s half outraged laughter, half indignant grunt before stepping around to stand in front of me by the grill.
“I will not be slut-shamed by my own boyfriend.” Amusement lights her eyes, turning them to quicksilver.
“Shamed?” I put down the grilling fork I’m using for the steaks and reach for her again. “No shame in being horny for me, baby. I wanna give you a gold star.”
Her eyes slide down to the erection poking her in the stomach. “Is that what we’re calling it now? Should we name it?”
“Guys who have to name their dicks probably aren’t using ’em right.”
“So I ask again . . . should we name it?”
I cock a brow and press our hips together.
“Are you implying that I don’t know how to use mine? Because that’s not the impression I got this morning when you came so hard you were singing like a bird.”
She tilts her head, her eyes wide and considering. “Did you say like a bird?” A small smile plays around her lips. “What made you say that?”
“I don’t know.” I give a careless shrug. “Why?”
“It’s silly,” she says, rolling her eyes in self-derision. “I was thinking today when I laughed it sounded like . . .”
Bristol blushes about once every Halley’s Comet, so the color washing across her cheeks makes me wonder.
“What?” I probe. “Your laugh sounded like what?”
“Like a happy bird,” she mumbles, peering up at me like I’m going to laugh in her face.
Which I do.
“Stop laughing at me.” She narrows her eyes in mock warning.
“Right.” I dip my head to catch her eyes and tease her. “Because when you tell me you laugh like a happy bird I’m just supposed let you get away with that.”
“I’m not telling you things anymore.” She narrows her eyes and folds her arms over her chest.
“Yeah, right. I’m your best friend.” I pull her back into me. “You’ll tell me everything like you always do.”
“You are, you know.” Her voice softens. “My best friend, I mean.”
When she looks at me like this, her eyes stripped of every defense, no guard in sight, completely honest and open and vulnerable, I feel slightly invincible. It’s a trick of the heart, I know, but I can’t help but think that as long as she looks at me like this, there isn’t anything I couldn’t survive, that our love is the stuff of legends, rolled in Teflon, disaster-proof. I’m as fanciful as Bristol, my laughing bird.
“You’re mine, too,” I echo her sentiment. “My best friend.”
&nb
sp; “I won’t tell Rhyson,” she promises with a grin.
“I’m pretty sure he spits the same line to Kai.” I keep a straight face. “We have to say that shit to get laid.”
“I hate you.”
“Orrrrrrrrr do you love me and want to blow me after dinner?” I shrug and lift my hands, my palms up. “Just saying. Listen to your heart, Bristol. Listen to your heart.”
“I’m listening to my belly right now, smartass, and it’s growling. Feed me.”
“Like my mama used to say, ain’t no freeloaders in this house. What’ll you give me for feeding you?”
“Um . . .”
“I do have a suggestion, if you’re searching.”
“Let me guess—you have a ‘Will fuck for food’ sign up here somewhere?”
“I used bubble letters.” I laugh and give her ass a light smack. “You can barter that booty.”
It’s so damn easy with Bristol—our banter, the chemistry, the perfect rhythm of our conversation. It was one of the first things I noticed when we met all those years ago. We didn’t read each other’s minds or finish each other’s sentences. It wasn’t cosmic, but it was a connection that seized me by the brain and grabbed me by the balls. She was as smart as she was sexy, as curious as she was forthcoming. There were years in between when we made things complicated, when things were strained, but now with our hearts settled on each other for good, it’s simple.
This.
Her.
Us.
I’m as sure of her as I am that every night the moon will show up, the stars will shine down, and hours later, the sun will rise again.
This is my favorite part of every day. The sun is down, and we eat by fairy lights strung overhead. We both devour the steak and salad I prepared. When our plates are scraped clean, I’m on my second beer and Bristol has gone through half a bottle of red wine. We’re cracking each other up and just sharing what happened during our day, which leads her back to lunch with Kevin.
“Your fans would eat up a poetry book from you.” Bristol pours another glass of red. “And it would showcase the breadth of your talent beyond hip-hop.”