“I think you’ll be a very hot cowboy,” I said to him and he grinned down at me.
“You think so?”
“Uh huh.” I could totally picture him in long boots and flannel shirts with a leather jacket and big brown hat.
“Even if I'm all lanky?” he asked.
“Even then, Adrian. I think you can be whoever you want to be. The sky is the limit, you know. For both of us. We can be whatever we want to be and that’s because of the way we have grown up. It has made us hard to crack.” I don’t know where all that theory came from but it was for sure something that I believed with my heart – for both me and Adrian. I believed in him and his dreams. What his passion was, if he tried to go for it, nothing would stop him from it. Nothing will hold him back. We lay there on the grass and gazed up at the stars, losing track of time.
“I should go home, Adrian, it’s late.” I didn’t want to face Dad at home. It was better if I was headed to bed before he came home.
“Oh alright. Yeah, let’s go. I’ll walk you home.” Getting up, we started walking back. Tonight had been revealing for both of us. We had discovered our dreams and passions for life and had made each other witnesses. While we walked past the community bar, a wave of noise lifted from there. It kept on increasing. Men yelling, wood cracking, metal hitting.
“What is it?” I asked Adrian.
“I don’t know. Let’s go and check.” He took my hand and we headed towards it. By the time we reached the door, I heard a heavy sound with a loud shriek and then silence. My heart began to pump wildly as we entered the bar. People were standing in a circle around something. I could hear words like is he dead? He's not moving. There is too much blood. Somebody call 911. Somebody call the doctor.
I clung to Adrian as he made our way through the crowd. Now people were beginning to look my way with strange eyes. “Oh shit,” I heard Adrian say loudly and he swiftly turned to hide my face in his chest and his arms circled me tightly, keeping my head close to him.
“What’s wrong, Adrian?” I tried to ask him. He didn’t say anything, just hugged me closely. I had to see whatever it was. I struggled out of his grip and freed myself.
“Tynice, no!” His warning was too late.
I looked past him and my eyes froze and my knees gave out. I came down on the hard wooden floor. My dad, Drake Johnson, was lying cold on the ground with pool of blood around him and his face badly smashed. He was dead. My father was dead.
My mind and body had stopped working altogether. I felt Adrian’s arms around me as he hugged me close. He was saying something in my ear. His voice was clear but I couldn’t make out the words that came out from his mouth. I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t thinking.
My eyes were just stuck on the face that had haunted me all fourteen years of my life. I wasn’t going to see him again. He wasn’t going to come back home drunk and beat the shit out of my mother. He wasn’t going to demand money which Mom had saved up. No one was going to curse anymore. No one was going to go look for alcohol bottles or wind up in jail. Nothing was going to happen. Should I be happy? I should be, shouldn’t I? But why was it that I felt no relief inside? Despite his faults, he was still my dad after all. I felt pain. Pain of losing the person who was a part of me. The person whose blood I was carrying. I had lost my father.
Adrian
June 2014, Williamsville, Illinois
I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes away from that woman who had a sky kissing stance that made her too proud to let me help her out. She had black hair that was bound up on her head in a tight bun. She had a good height of five foot six and had the perfect rich, warm, golden caramel skin tone. Her body had curves in all the right places. She was curvy but still in shape.
Her white shirt gave away her full breasts and her jeans showed off her long legs. She was a sight to stare at. She had stared back at me and then had gotten embarrassed. I could totally imagine what she was thinking of. Well, baby, that makes the two of us ,I said to her mentally. I had then checked her engine. Her brake wire had burned off. There was no way it could be fixed there in middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.
And then she had leaned on the side of the car. I had a hard time focusing on the work at hand and my dick had a hard time staying in the enclosed space of my jeans. I had offered her to drive her to her destination which she obviously denied. She was too self-reliant to allow a stranger to help her. But then she had agreed. My charms never failed to work – ever. Then she told her name, Tynice. Of course we were so busy ogling each other that we had forgotten to exchange names. I totally didn’t blame her. I told her mine. When I turned she was gaping at me with her big brown eyes, reminding me of someone. “Adrian West?” How does she know my name? I answered in a yes. “Oh my Gosh, Leggy it’s you,” she said and then she was wrapped around my neck.
Leggy? Leggy! The realization finally hit me. Holy shit. She was Tynice. My Tynice. “Tynice?” I called her and she nodded furiously. Oh shit! After all these years, I find her here stranded on the interstate with a broken car in the middle of night. I hugged her back. Not to mention how my body jumped to attention at the contact. I twirled her around in a circle as we both laughed. And then she suddenly went all tense and struggled out of my arms.
“I’m sorry.” She let go of my hands so that she was no longer holding me. But I couldn’t make myself let her go and why the hell was she apologizing? We were not fifteen and sixteen anymore. “I can’t believe that I'm meeting you here of all places,” she said without looking into my eyes. She was embarrassed, wasn’t she? I placed her feet back on ground. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable.
“Neither can I,” I said to her and she blushed - again. She was nothing like what I remembered her as. She was all grown up into a very pretty lady. “You turned out to be even more beautiful than you were before, Tynice.” I couldn’t help but say it.
“Like I was anything near beautiful back then.” She rolled her eyes and I gave out a loud laugh. She was always so self -deprecating.
“Well you have done well in these past few years.” How long was it? Sixteen years.
“You have changed a lot too. I couldn’t recognize you right away,” she said. Of course, I was a thirty-two-year-old man now. Not a sixteen-year-old boy.
“Yeah, I'm not so lanky anymore.” I grinned at her. She tucked her loose strand behind her ear as if trying to hide her expression. It came down again. My fingers itched to brush them back.
We could spend all night standing there and talking, but things had to be taken care of. “Since you are almost here, you might as well stay the night here in Williamsville. It’s just a ten-minute drive from here,” I said to her.
Panic rose in her eyes. “Williamsville? This is the road heading there?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s a short drive now,” I told her. “I'm not sure, Adrian. I… I haven’t been there since… well…” she couldn’t continue.
“I know, Tynice. I understand how you feel.” I took her hands in mine. The contact sent a current through my body. “It’s late and you had a rough day. My ranch is just down the road. It’s close. You can spend the night there. I’ll drive you back to wherever you want to go in the morning,” I assured her.
“I have an early morning meeting that I can’t miss,” she said.
“I promise to bring you back in time.” I don’t know why I wanted her to come with me so desperately. She finally nodded and I wasted no time in getting her in the truck and getting moving.
“You said you have a ranch.”
“Yeah.”
“So are you living your dream, Adrian?” she asked me in a soft voice.
I turned my face towards her and gave her a smile. “I am.” And then it was my turn to ask her. “What about your dream?”
“I am too. I'm an attorney,” she said.
“A kickass one?”
She laughed. “You remembered?” Oh I remember everything.
“So?” I probed her.
“Yeah, I'm a kickass lawyer in Seattle.” We had so much catching up to do. I wanted to ask her so many things. About what had happened and how she had lived all those years. I wanted to ask her if she had thought of me like I had of her all those years. When I looked at her to see why she was silent, she had passed out with her head against the window.
Reaching the ranch, I straightened her head before going to her side and then carried her in my arms. She fit perfectly there. She nestled tightly against me and curled her arms around my neck and sighed. I brought her inside and headed to my bedroom. Her soft warm breath kept hitting the base of my neck. Her warmth was igniting a fire inside me and the first part to be affected was my cock that was crying for attention.
Slow boy, she's not for you. I laid her on my king-sized bed. She mumbled something insensible as I uncurled her arms but then she turned and went back to sleep. I unclipped her hair and let her bun loose. Her black hair spread on my pillow. The sight wasn’t unpleasant. Her on my pillow. Damn it, West! Stop thinking about her like that. I took off her heels and stood straight to look at her.
She was in my bed. Tynice was here and she was in my bed. It felt good. I had thought of her so much but I had never known that when I would actually see her I would feel like this. I wanted her. Before I could torture myself further, I decided to leave. Pulling the duvet around her, I couldn’t help but look at her face. So peaceful and so pretty. She was beautiful. I brushed back her hair and, I swear, I heard her moan.
Damn. Before I knew it, I was bending down and my lips touched her forehead. A very different kind of current ran through me starting from my mouth to my brain and then all the way to my heart as soon as I kissed her. What was that? I backed off two steps. Swiftly I shut the lamp off and walked out of the room closing the door behind me softly.
* * *
In the morning, I had no idea what kind of coffee she preferred so I made plain black and set milk and sugar aside and then headed to my room. She was still sleeping. I set the tray on the night stand. “Tynice?” I called her. She didn’t stir. “Wake up.” I almost touched her face.
Almost. I had taken a long cold shower last night and an early morning two mile run around the ranch to expel all the pent up energy I had. I didn’t know what time she had to be at her appointment so here I was at six in the morning.
I called her again and she drowsily opened her eyes with a slow smile on her face and her arms stretched out in the air. Damn, if she kept doing things like that, who knows what I would do. And then her eyes came up to me and she immediately sat up. “Uh, hi,” she said.
“Hey, good morning.” I smiled down at her. She looked young with her hair loose on her shoulders and her just-woken-up face.
“What time is it?” She looked around for clock. “Oh my Gosh, I gotta go.”
“Relax. It’s just six in the morning. You aren’t late,” I said to her. “Unless you work at a farm where they leave for work at dawn.” She smiled at my words. “I made coffee. How do you take it?”
“Black and strong.” Just like me. I poured her a cup and she immediately took a long satisfying gulp. “Oh shit, my phone. I have to charge it. It died last night.” She started to get out of bed again.
“Here.” I picked her smart phone up from the table and held it out to her. “I charged it last night.”
She looked at me with a look as if she wasn’t expecting me to do anything for her. My self-sufficient Tynice. “You didn’t have to, but thanks.” She took it from me and our fingers brushed slightly. She immediately flinched and took back her hand. Wow, what was that? She kept looking down at her loading screen.
“I’ll give you room to get ready. We’ll leave when you’re done.” Saying so, I turned to leave.
* * *
“It’s a big place you have here,” she said to me as we drove out of my ranch.
“You haven’t seen it all. It stretches a few yards back too.”
“You pulled it off, huh?” Yeah, I was a lucky son of a bitch.
“Pretty much. So tell me about you.”
“Well, I'm working with Lowe and Cripps Law Associates in Seattle.” She shrugged and told me a bit more about her being a lawyer. She was here for Jason Parker’s will case. “It’s William Parker we're fighting against.” William Parker? I had met the man a few times and I knew he never had anything good up his sleeve. And having Tynice working anywhere near him kicked me into protective gear. I didn’t like the sound of it.
“You keep your distance from him,” I said to her in a grim voice.
“You know him?”
“I have no intention of knowing him but it doesn’t take rocket science for a man like me to understand a person like him. He doesn’t have a shining rep around here.” She told me he had his hearing transferred from Seattle to Illinois. That made me more suspicious. I didn’t want to read too much into it but it gave me a bad feeling.
“How long do you have to work?” I asked her as we stopped outside her hotel and I unloaded her small bag from the truck. I wanted to see her again.
“I'm here on work, Adrian.”
“Okay, let me rephrase. When can I see you again? You don’t think that seven hours have made up for sixteen years do you?” I said to her with a mock sad face and then raised my finger to stay quiet as I continued, “If I must add that you spent six of those hours sleeping. Come on, Tynice, you can do better than that.”
She was laughing now. “Alright, if you put it like that. Umm…” she looked down at her phone, scrolling up and down the screen. “I have a full day today and tomorrow I’ll be occupied until one.”
Before she could put on more of her busy schedule on me, I interrupted, “Fine, I’ll get you at one thirty. Have lunch with me and we are spending the evening together.” Saying that, I pointed at her phone, “Add that to your planner.”
“But…”
“No buts. You're getting late for that meeting of yours which you kept whining about while you were with me. So you better hurry up, I’ll see you tomorrow at one thirty.” I motioned at her hotel.
“You, Adrian West, haven’t changed a bit,” she said as she pulled up the handle of her bag.
I grinned at her. “Probably,” I said and something about her face changed and there was a hint of raw feelings in her eyes.
“Good bye, Adrian,” she said to me in a low voice.
“Bye, Tynice. Go kick some ass.” She smiled and turned to leave. She took a step ahead and then stopped.
Looking back at me, she said, “I’m glad I found you, Adrian.”
“I was right there where you left me, Tynice. All those years,” I said back. She gave me a smile and then walked inside, rolling her bag along. I stood there until she disappeared inside the building. Tynice Johnson was back in my life and she was making me feel things that were way different than when we were growing up.
Adrian
July 1998, Williamsville, Illinois
I had never been this afraid in my life. Not once. But tonight when I sat beside Tynice, my heart was ready to jump out of my chest. She wouldn't say a word. She wouldn’t move. She didn’t shed a tear. My own eyes were watering but she wasn’t showing a hint of emotion. Her face was impassive and it scared the shit out of me. She was staring at her father.
Even when the paramedics arrived and shifted him on the stretcher and took him away. She sat there cold and unmoving. “Tynice? We gotta go home and check on your mother. She needs you.” I shook her. She didn’t answer but turned to look at me. Her beautiful big brown eyes were empty and it tore my heart. “Your mom, she needs you. You have to be strong – for her,” I tried to tell her. Then it was too much for me to look at her like this.
I got up and pulled her up forcefully. I took her elbow and led her out of the bar. She didn’t resist my actions. She began to follow my lead silently. I was out of words. I couldn’t think of anything to say to her.
There was a crowd gathered outside her home. I made a w
ay for her to reach inside. A few women from the neighborhood were gathered in her living room where not long ago Tynice was taking care of me. When we made our way in, Mrs. Johnson was slumped on the couch. Her appearance was a mess.
Her hair disheveled, her face tearstained and her body limp. She looked like she had aged a hundred years. “Mom,” Tynice said in a whisper and then got out of my hold and ran to her. “Mom.” She curled around her and began to sob loudly. She had finally broken down. I had never seen her like this. She was so brave and so stubborn to let anyone see her in a weak state and here she was grieving for her father who had given her nothing but painful memories.
Her Designer Baby Page 35