by Kennedy Ryan
I didn’t grow up dreaming of stardom, of making my mark on the world the way Grip and Rhyson and Kai and Luke and Jimmi did. All my friends ate a constant diet of ambition, and even today, I still feed that appetite. Those weren’t my dreams though. No, I dreamt of a home, of people who loved me whether we had a little or a lot, who were there. For a girl who grew up in big houses with empty rooms, this was my dream. Grip has tried to buy his mother a huge house, but she refuses to leave this one. I wondered why, but now I know. She is planted at the center of a garden with roots that go so deep, she wouldn’t think of pulling them up, of leaving this neighborhood, this nucleus of people. Maybe this was her dream, too, and I find that seeing it come true for me through those who love Grip makes me a blubbering mess. I don’t know if it’s hope or hormones or a little of both, but it’s too much. As soon as I’ve been congratulated, squeezed, and teased by so many I lose count, I slip off into the kitchen.
I’m facing the sink when the door swings open behind me. A soft touch on my shoulder has me swinging around with a bright smile pinned to my face.
“You okay, Bristol?” Ms. James asks, her wise eyes searching me.
“Of course.” I return the gentle pressure when she squeezes my hand. “I just . . . I’m . . .”
To my mortification, I lose it. Sobs shake my body as a release of emotion I thought I had under control spills messily over my face, down my neck, and all over my mother-in-law. Her arms go around me, her hand moving in reassuring slides over my back, the maternal monosyllables I never heard as a child breaking me into little pieces. When Grip enters the kitchen, his mother is still putting me back together.
“What’s wrong?” The smile on his face vanishes little by little until it’s gone altogether. Concern radiates from him, worry in his eyes when he sees me in his mother’s arms.
“Nothing wrong, baby.” Ms. James pulls away enough to swipe my tears, the kind smile in her eyes matched by the one on her face. “This is an emotional time for us mamas.”
“Hormones?” Grip glances between us bravely, like he needs to gird his loins if it’s hormones.
Ms. James and I look at each other, roll our eyes, and promptly laugh at him.
“What?” Grip tries to look indignant, but his lips are twitching. “I can handle hormones.”
“Crisis averted.” I sniff and wipe away the last traces of wetness from my cheeks. “Hormones are in check.”
Relief and love mix in the look he divides between his mother and me.
“Okay, if you say so.” With one last lingering glance to make sure I’m okay, he shifts his attention to his mother. “Ma, Ms. Green’s son is here. He says you wanted to take her a plate or something.”
“Yes!” Her face lights up, but then falls. “Marlon, she ain’t doing good. She’s on oxygen and been in and out of the hospital.”
“Man, sorry to hear that.” Grip’s brows bunch. “Does she need anything? Help with medical bills or something?”
She looks thoughtful for a moment before grabbing his chin.
“My sweet boy,” she says. “What would do her wonders is to see your face. She asks about you all the time. She used to keep you when I got called in to work. It’s just up the street, won’t take long.”
“Sure. I’ll come.” Grip checks my face, looking for signs of distress. “You wanna roll with us or—”
“No.” I lean up to kiss his cheek, making sure my eyes are clear so he feels good about leaving me. “You go on. I’m gonna sneak a piece of sweet potato pie and just rest a little.”
“If you need to lie down, just go in my old room.” Grip brushes the hair from my face and looks at his mom. “She sleeps all the time.”
“A situation I need to change,” I say with a laugh. “I can’t get all my work done sleeping like normal people do.”
“Normal people do not sleep as much as you been sleeping,” Grip says, his grin teasing me.
He drops to his knees in front of me and whispers to my stomach, laying a quick kiss on the barely perceptible roundness that is the only visible sign of my pregnancy. He does this all the time, and though I’ve asked him more than once what he’s saying, he always tells me it’s between him and his baby.
He stands, looping an arm around his mother, who barely reaches his shoulder.
“Ready, Ma?”
She nods briskly, balancing two plates covered with aluminum foil.
“We’ll be back in a little bit, babe.”
When I have the kitchen to myself again, I blow out a long breath. With my emotions once again under control, I really do want that slice of pie. The door swings open as I’m taking my first bite, and I almost choke when I see Jade. The last time we stood in this kitchen, she revealed just how much resentment she still harbored about my relationship with Grip. I’m sure she blames me for how things have been between them.
“What’s up?” She flicks her chin like she would to a stranger on the street, not like we’re family—because I guess we aren’t. I smile a little uneasily as a reply.
She makes a direct line for the sweet potato pie I just sliced into, and it’s silent in the kitchen while she plates one for herself. She’s on her way out, plate balanced in one hand, back to the door pressing it open when she pauses and looks at me from under the brim of her baseball cap. Even today she still wears her typical uniform of baggy jeans and Raiders gear.
“I guess you got him now.” A bitter twist of her lips accompanies the words.
“What?” Confusion stills my chewing mid-bite. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She takes a few steps back into the room and looks me over, dislike plain in her eyes.
“Once you got a kid with a man, you’re linked to him forever,” she says. “Can’t fault you for that, I guess. Well played.”
“Wait a minute.” I set my fork, loaded with a hunk of sweet potato pie, back onto my plate. “You’re saying you think me getting pregnant is strategic somehow? So I can stay in Grip’s life even if we—”
“When you break up, yeah.”
I cling to the fraying strands of my patience with the tips of my fingers.
“You can be such a bitch.” It’s not what reasonable Bristol had planned to say, but she left the building as soon as Jade started spouting this nonsense, and I can’t for the life of me get her back.
Vodka could get her back.
I need a drink badly, and that is one thing I can’t have in my current condition.
“What’d you say to me?” Jade’s expression shifts from disdain to outrage.
“What I should have said a long time ago.” I stand to face her eye to eye. “I’ve been patient. I’ve bitten my tongue when you’ve said rude, judgmental shit to me, all because I know what you mean to Grip, but you won’t get away with accusing me of trapping my own husband.”
“I didn’t say trap.” She grimaces, looking as close to contrite as I can expect. “I just meant—”
“I know damn well what you meant.” My voice elevates with the emotions still close to the surface. I swallow some of my indignation and try to rein my temper. I will gouge my tear ducts before Jade sees tears from me.
“I’m not, nor have I ever been, afraid of or intimidated by you,” I say. “In case you were wondering if your bullying tactics work on me, they don’t. The only thing I was afraid of was coming between you and Grip.”
We stare at each other unblinkingly, perpetrating the same war of wills that began the day we met.
“He loves you.” My voice is softer because I know it’s the truth. My husband has a soft spot for his cousin. He lets her get away with things no one else would, but I was the line he drew in the sand, and things haven’t been the same between them since she crossed it. “He hates it when there’s distance between you.”
“He doesn’t hate it that much.” She shoves her hands in her pockets. “He said he would choose you, would cut me out of his life if he had to.”
Her throat moves with a gul
p of emotion.
“And he did that,” she says, glancing down to her Chuck Taylors. “He showed me.”
“He doesn’t want this any more than you do, Jade, especially now when you both have great things going on. Don’t you want to share it?”
“So, what?” She cocks one skeptical brow. “You want me to try for the sake of the baby?”
“No, I want you to try for the sake of trying.” I haul in a frustrated breath. “Try because maybe you’re wrong about me. Maybe your preconceived notions about me are just that—notions, not even true. I love Grip more than anything. If we have nothing else in common, we have him in common.”
Jade shifts from one foot to the other, the same look on her face that Grip gets when he’s wrapping his mind around something new.
“I guess.” She gives a subtle shrug and meets my eyes with lingering ire. “It’ll be easier if you ain’t one of them white folks raising black kids who don’t know where they come from, who don’t understand their own culture and can’t even stand to be with their own people.”
I toss an arm toward the kitchen door, where on the other side is a houseful of people Grip has known all his life.
“Does Grip seem like he’s forgotten where he came from?” I demand, fire licking under my words. “Like he doesn’t understand his culture? Like he’s running from it?”
Her lips part to reply, but I don’t even wait for her answer, because what can she say but no?
“Well, all right then,” I barrel ahead. “Our kids won’t be that way either. I haven’t once tried to take Grip away. If anything, I’m constantly trying to get in. Can’t you see how much that matters to me?”
I pause, hesitant to say my next thought, but I press on since I’m already in the deep end.
“And by the way, our first black president is half white.”
“Huh?” Confusion puckers her expression. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that his mother was a white woman from Kansas, but who would know that looking at him? He looks like any other black man, and there’s a good chance that my children will too. They’ll probably have to navigate this world as black people, and you know what that means a lot better than I do.”
I pause while my words settle in the air and hopefully change her mind.
“Instead of criticizing me for mistakes I haven’t even made yet, waiting for me to fail at raising black children, why not help me get it right?” I ask. “They’ll be your family, Jade, just like Grip is. You may not think of me as your family, but they certainly are.”
She doesn’t get the chance to respond because the door swings open and Grip walks through. Stopping short at the threshold, his eyes do a slow sweep between the two of us, like we’ve probably been fighting and he’s checking for bruises and bald spots.
“Uh, hey,” he says with deceptive ease. “All good?”
I bend an inquiring look on Jade, asking her silently if we are indeed all good or not. She sighs, adjusts her cap, and tips her head in a nod.
“We good.” The cousins hold a stare for a few seconds before relinquishing grins simultaneously. Grip walks over and hooks his elbow around Jade’s neck, stealing the cap from her head and playing keep-away for a few laughing seconds.
“I’m hearing good things about you,” he says, his smile lingering and wide.
Jade shrugs and replaces the cap, playfully swatting at his head when he tries to kiss her face.
“Well I’m doing good things.” She laughs at her own cocksure response and huddles deeper into his chest.
“I missed you, girl.” A serious inflection strips some of the humor from his voice.
“I missed you, too.” An impish twinkle leaps in Jade’s eyes. “We gon’ exchange recipes or some shit next? Bristol got you so whupped you talking like a chick now?”
Hearing my name in the context of a joke, of her teasing him, jolts me into the conversation. It’s an olive branch of sorts, the first she’s ever extended to me.
“Don’t blame me.” I lean against the sink, folding my arms over my chest and laughing. “He came to me like that.”
“I came like what?” Grip asks, trying to appear affronted.
Sweet. Considerate. Kind. Thoughtful.
All the things I’m thinking, I see reflected in Jade’s eyes, too, as she looks up at her cousin, still tucked into his side.
Yes, we both love him. We have him in common, and maybe one day, it will be enough.
32
Bristol
Weak light filters through a gap in the drawn drapes, illuminating a sliver in our darkened bedroom. Dawn bathes the room in gray. There’s no color in the sky yet, no brightness. Hundreds of mornings like this already stretch behind me, with Grip asleep at my back, folded around my body in protection, in possession, and I can only hope for a million like it to come. Some of those mornings, I’ll hear banging on our bedroom door. I’ll see little legs flying across the room and feel little bodies sliding between us under the covers. Having Grip’s children and sharing his life is a privilege that, years ago, I never imagined I could have, and now every morning I wake up envisioning it.
“You awake?” Lingering slumber roughens Grip’s voice, deepening the timber.
“Yeah, a little,” I slur sleepily.
His chuckling breath skitters over my neck, waking up parts of my body moments ago at rest.
“What’s ‘a little’ awake?”
“I’m awake, but I’m trying not to be.”
“Oh.” Disappointment coats his whisper. “Go back to sleep then.”
I roll over to face him, picking out the planes of his handsome face hidden in the shadows of half-light.
“What is it?” I ask. “You wanna talk?”
“No.” The smile I can’t see is easily heard, and a warm hand traverses the curve of my hip. “I wanna fuck.”
I’m immediately ready, my nipples tightening and my toes curling at the crude answer. I wrap my hand around the stiff length between his legs.
“Is that a yes?” He feathers kisses over my shoulder, licking at the ink he can’t see but knows by heart is there.
“Whatever you want,” I whisper, my hand setting a steady, tugging pace.
“Oooooooh.” Grip’s breath mists my nipples. “Even anal?”
My hand stops abruptly, apparently striking into him fear that I will abandon the mission.
“Just kidding, just kidding,” he says hastily, laughing over a nipple. He suckles vigorously then languorously, the varied pace driving me wet and crazy. “You’re gonna breastfeed, right?”
I gasp when his teeth lightly graze the sensitive underside of my breast.
“Is that really what you want to talk about right now?” I ask breathlessly. “My breasts as a source of nourishment?”
“I’m down to talk about these breasts twenty-four seven.”
His tongue flicks over my ribs, and he slides lower until all I can make out is the shape of his head under the covers. He licks into and then blows over my belly button, and I feel his breath whispering over my stomach. He’s having a conversation with the baby again, but before I can demand to know what he’s saying, he lavishes open-mouth kisses over the small mound above my pelvis. He scoots even farther down, gently lifting my legs over his shoulders and opening me up, pressing his face into the weeping center of my body.
I hear him draw a long sniff. I stopped being self-conscious about that a long time ago. Now it just turns me on that he loves the way I smell. His big hands cup my ass and he brings me to his mouth, tasting me with lazy laps of his tongue like a big cat and I’m his sugar-rimmed saucer. My hands wander up to my breasts, circling my palms, massaging them the way he does. The darts of pleasure radiating from my nipples in harmony with the unbearable pleasure of my pussy make me drip. The stubble coating his jaw, an erotic scrape, leaves an illicit burn. He moans against me, hastening the pace of my hips. He flattens his tongue on my clit, spreading the wetness all along the
slit, dipping lower to lick that tiny puckered hole. His tongue there sets fire to nerve endings that have been cloistered away, sensations I’ve never felt. One thick thumb slides in and I lock up, unsure of what he’s about to do.
“Relax,” he whispers, raining kisses across the lips. “I got you.”
Before I can think more of it, his thumb starts moving in tandem with his lips and teeth feeding on my clit.
“God!” All the air whooshes from my body and I buck, my torso and hips lifting under the covers. He ruthlessly lays an arm over my waist, keeping me in place while his thumb and mouth conspire, driving me to madness, a mindless creature gnawing on her fist, clawing at the sheets, and wailing into the dawn. His thumb works its way into some heretofore undiscovered inner sanctum, and the pleasure is pyrotechnic. It explodes, its wick burning through my belly, up my back, and lighting up the muscles of my thighs. Just like a firework, once ignited, I streak across the sky, bright and flaring, then land motionless . . . still . . . spent.
He handles me tenderly, turning me to my side, enveloping me, chest pressed to my back. He palms the shallow valley between my breasts, sandwiching us together until there’s room for nothing. Only love could slip into a space this small. He lifts my leg and passes his dick between the cheeks of my ass and over my pussy repeatedly, a sensuous prelude that elicits moans from my throat, tight with unshed ears.
“Grip, please.” I’m literally panting, begging, reaching behind me, grasping at his neck and head, desperately reaching for something to anchor me. I don’t care which hole he’s about to fuck, I just need him inside. The space between us throbs with need. My nerves are stretched to gossamer, the anticipation blazing through my patience, and I’m pressing my ass into him. I thrust back in a rolling rhythm meant to tempt him, meant to hurry him, but when he finally slides inside, it’s slow and measured. He’s feeding himself to my body in stiff inches, in short pumps, agitating me.