Red Hot Rebound

by J L Sapphire

  “Do you have to go right now?” she asked. She grinned at him mischievously as she reached between them and groped his erection.

  “Dammit, woman…you’re trying to start something I can’t finish right now,” he growled in a low voice. Mekhi stood up and went into the bathroom to freshen up before he left.

  “Well, okay…if you have to go I understand,” Summer said sadly. She’d perked up when she opened the door to find Mekhi standing there, but him having to leave so quickly put her back into a funk. This man had her wide open, like the 7-11. If it was up to her, they’d spend the entire day in bed screwing each other senseless.

  “I’ll call you when I can. It’s a pretty busy day though, so it may be a while before I can respond to you if you call or text.”

  “You know, I called to set up an appointment with you for a massage, just so I could spend some time with you. The receptionist said you’re booked for the day.”

  “I am and probably tomorrow too, so that wouldn’t have worked. Anyway, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you later.” Mekhi gave her one last quick peck on the lips before he walked out the door.

  After he left, Summer took a shower and decided she might as well go join Dionne down at the beach. She felt a little better knowing that Mekhi wasn’t intentionally ignoring her. She was upset that he couldn’t stay longer, but after the way Mekhi had just made her feel, she was sure to have a smile on her face for the rest of the day.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Summer emerged from her room with her beach bag, headed for the beach. Dionne had texted her and said she was going to the Miami Seaquarium with one of Mekhi’s beach football buddies, so she decided to take advantage of the alone time by catching up on Eric Jerome Dickey’s latest book, The Blackbirds . She was a bookworm and spent as much time as she could reading during the summer, because she was always so busy during the school year. She found an empty lounge chair and said a silent prayer that it had an attached umbrella to provide shade from the glaring heat of the sun.

  Remembering what Mekhi had told her about sunscreen, she removed the bottle of sunscreen she’d stopped and bought from the gift shop before she left the hotel from her oversized striped canvas beach bag and rubbed some on her body before putting her ear buds in so she could listen to Rihanna’s latest album, Anti , while she read.

  Halfway through the third chapter of the book, her eyes began getting heavy, so she put the book down to rest her eyes a bit. She people-watched for a while, smiling to herself as she watched two mocha-toned women squealing and having fun as they splashed each other with water. After the one with the natural afro got her hair wet, she promptly ended the water fight and left to go sit down on the white sand. On vacation or not, most Black women still aren’t trying to get their hair wet.

  Summer turned her head to her left and focused on a group of four people frolicking down by the water’s edge not far from the two women. One of the men was white, the other one was Black, and the women were both white- one a blonde and the other a brunette. She watched as the Black guy playfully picked up the barely there bikini-clad blonde and threw her over his shoulders while she giggled and insisted that he put her down. Unless Summer’s eyes were playing tricks on her, the man who’d picked up the blonde was Mekhi. She removed her Prada cat eye sunglasses so she could see better.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said to herself.

  First Justin, and now Mekhi. Let him tell it, he was so swamped with work…yet here he was at the beach with this white girl, who was all over him. Why had he just lied to her like that, though? Like, why even bother coming to my room earlier at all? Tears burned her eyes as she watched him laughing and having a good time.

  Before she could stop herself, she was on her feet, headed down to where Mekhi was with his little friend. How dare he come lay up between her legs then turn around and ditch her to hook up with another woman.

  “Work, huh Mekhi,” she shouted as she got closer to him.

  Mekhi, clearly not expecting to see Summer, gently placed the girl back on her feet.

  “Summer, I can explain.”

  “Explain my ass. You were just in my room not even an hour ago, orally sexing me, now you’re out here screwing around with another woman? I thought you were supposed to be so swamped at work, or is that the lie you told me so you could come hook up with her?”

  “First of all, I’m not screwing around with anybody, Summer; it’s not what you think,” Mekhi began.

  “Don’t tell me it’s not what I think…hell, I have perfect vision and I clearly saw you down here cheating on me after you told me you were going to be at work all day. Why’d you even bother coming to my room if all you were going to do was lie, Mekhi? Like, I’m so sick of you men and your lies and games. Who the hell do you think you are to treat women like this?”

  “Uh, Mekhi, maybe we should leave and just catch up with you later, bro,” the other guy told him.

  “Nah, you ain’t gotta leave, I’ll go. You stay down here with your little blonde headed bimbo, don’t let me interrupt you,” Summer said.

  “You don’t even know me to be calling me names,” the white girl stated, clearly offended.

  “I know all I need to know,” Summer snapped at her. Turing her attention back to Mekhi, she began clapping her hands. “Bravo, Mekhi, you sure played your role well and fooled the hell out of me. You actually had me thinking I meant a little something to you. I guess Dionne was right, I was just sex to you…nothing more, nothing less. I wouldn’t even have a problem with that if you hadn’t acted like you wanted more from me. It’s too bad you weren’t man enough to just admit that from the jump. But you know what, I can’t even be mad at you, I’m mad at myself for sleeping with a man who makes his living feeling women up. Lucky for you, I’m about to leave in a couple of days, so you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

  “Summer, would you stop talking and let me explain,” Mekhi said, attempting to place his arm around her waist to take her somewhere private.

  “Don’t touch me,” Summer yelled at him. “I don’t need your explanations or your excuses. You only get one time to play me for a fool. Just leave me alone.” Summer turned and hightailed it away from Mekhi as fast as she could, praying that she didn’t trip over anything and fall flat on her face the same way she had the day she caught Justin with another chick in the mall.

  Luckily, she made it back to her lounge chair without falling. She quickly grabbed her things and hastily made her way back to her room. She was completely humiliated and all she wanted to do was be alone. Almost immediately, her cell phone began buzzing, but she ignored it. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody right now, especially not Mekhi. She planned to stay in the room until they got ready to leave. This had officially been the summer from hell and she was over it.

  Chapter 5 Home sweet home , Summer thought to herself two days later when she walked into her apartment back in Atlanta. While she usually wished she could extend her trips with Dionne a little while longer, she’d never been so happy for a vacation to be over in her life. This trip to Miami had been a disaster from the beginning- from the moment she’d been dumped by Justin and finding out about his cheating, to when she’d foolishly hooked up with Mekhi, hoping he’d make her get over Justin, but he’d only made her feel worse. She supposed that’s what she deserved for sleeping with a random stranger on the rebound.

  She pulled her rolling luggage into her bedroom and wheeled it in the corner. She would unpack later. Right now, all she wanted to do was bathe then crawl into bed. She usually didn’t suffer from jetlag, but with all that had happened over the past week, she was mentally and physically exhausted.

  She went into the bathroom and turned the water on for a bath. While she’d initially considered taking a quick shower, she decided that a hot bath was what she really needed. She poured her favorite mango scented bubble bath in the water and climbed in after the tub was full. She winced as soon as her t
oe touched the nearly scalding hot water and eased her body down into the tub gently. She rested her head on a foam bath pillow and closed her eyes as the water relaxed her.

  So much had happened in the last week and her thoughts were all over the place. Surprisingly, though, she didn’t think much about Justin. Instead, she felt a certain sadness that things with Mekhi had happened the way they had. Sure, she hadn’t expected anything serious to happen between them, but under different circumstances, he was definitely the type of man a woman could see herself settling down with…well, aside from the fact that he was a lying, two-timing loser. But aren’t they all?

  Summer sighed heavily as she reached for her bath sponge and began washing herself. Trying to forget about her man troubles, she turned her thoughts to the upcoming school year. Teachers always went back to school earlier than the students did and while she usually dreaded the end of summer vacation, she was looking forward to school starting back this time. Being back in the classroom would keep her busy and not thinking about Mekhi and his soft lips and the way he moaned her name softly as she sat on top of him.

  “Ugh, stop it, Summer. Mekhi lives over six hundred miles away from here. Even if you hadn’t caught him with the blonde on the beach, you still would have had to leave and come back home and more than likely you’d have never seen him again,” she chastised herself out loud.

  So why did she still feel so cheated and so played by Mekhi? Maybe it’s because even though they probably never would have crossed paths again, at least she would always have the near perfect memory of having a regretless summer fling with a hot, sexy chocolate man who’d rocked her world and gave her the best orgasm she’d ever had in her life instead of the memory she had of him right now- as the lying, cheating, hot, sexy man who’d rocked her world and gave her the best orgasm she’d ever had in her life.

  She sat in the water until it started to turn lukewarm, then she got out. After putting on a pair of flannel pajamas and a baggy t-shirt, she grabbed her cell phone and ordered Chinese takeout and got comfortable on the couch. The notification light was blinking on her phone, indicating she had a text message. She rolled her eyes when she saw that she had four missed texts and a missed call from Justin.

  “There’s nothing that fool has to say that I want to hear,” she mumbled under her breath as she tapped on the contacts icon and deleted his name and number from it. As far as she was concerned, it was one thousand percent over with Justin. She believed in giving second chances, but not when it came to cheating. Cheating was a choice, not a mistake and Justin made the choice to be unfaithful to her, so his ass could kick rocks with his bare feet.

  About thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. She grabbed her wallet off the console table by the front door to pay the Chinese delivery man for her food. Without looking through the peephole, she pulled the door open.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked the person standing on the other side.

  ***

  “That’s kind of a rude way to answer the door, don’t you think?”

  “What are you doing here?” Summer asked her unexpected guest again.

  “I wanted to see you. Is that a crime?”

  “First of all, I don’t really want to see you. Second, you can’t just be popping up at people’s house any time you feel like it. What if I would have had another man over here or something?”

  “Then I would have said I was your cousin.”

  “Wow; the lies just flow out of your mouth so easily, huh? Is that why you had no problem lying to me?”

  “What exactly did I lie to you about, Summer?”

  Summer thought for a minute before she answered that question. She and Mekhi had talked about many things, but she’d never gotten around to asking him if he was seriously dating anybody, so he didn’t exactly lie about being romantically involved with another woman. But he had lied about being so busy at work that he wouldn’t have time to hang out with her.

  “You were supposed to be sooo busy at work, with it being the Fourth of July weekend and all. You lied to me about that so you could spend the day with bleach blonde Barbie and her friends.”

  Mekhi laughed to himself. “Is that what you really think?”

  “That’s what I know. Did you forget that I caught you on the beach with her after you came to my room, went down on me, then told me you were headed back to work?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Hell nah! Why are you here? Better yet, how do you even know where I live?”

  “Let me come in and I’ll explain it all to you. I mean, I did come all the way from Miami to Atlanta just to see you; the least you can do it let me in.”

  “Did I ask you to come all the way from Miami to Atlanta?” Summer snapped.

  “No, but I did it anyway, because I wanted to explain myself to you in person. If you think I’m a jerk and don’t want to have anything to do with me afterwards, I’ll leave.”

  Despite the scowl Summer had on her face, she did want to hear what Mekhi had to say and she had to admit she was flattered that he’d apparently dropped everything and flown to Atlanta just to see her. She stepped aside so he could walk in.

  “Nice place,” Mekhi told her as he followed he to the living room.

  “Start talking.”

  “Straight to business, huh? Okay, so first things first. Adrienne-the blonde you saw me on the beach with- is not my girlfriend or even a girl that I’m sleeping with…she’s my sister.”

  Summer’s mouth dropped wide open. “Huh?! You’re kidding me, right? Your sister? I know you didn’t fly all this way just to tell me more lies, Mekhi?!”

  “I’m not lying to you. She’s my adopted sister. The guy you saw us with is her brother, my adopted brother, and the other woman was his fiancée.”

  Summer side-eyed him as if she still didn’t believe him. But why would he come all this way to lie? Now that she’d returned home from Miami, they never had to see each other again, so he didn’t have to explain himself to her.

  “It’s like this, my adoptive father, Julius Harrington, owns the hotel that you stayed in while you were in Miami. Just about my entire family works at the hotel, although I only work there part time during the summer. Adrienne, my sister is one of the receptionists at the spa; my brother, Sebastian, handles the accounting; his fiancée, Melanie, is a front desk manager. We all have a part in the hotel business…well, all of us except for my adoptive mother.”

  “And what’s she do?”

  “Spend my dad’s money,” Mekhi said with a laugh.

  Summer sat down on the couch, trying to process all that Mekhi was telling her. “So, how did you come to be adopted by a white family, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “My biological father and my adoptive father went to high school together. They were best friends. My real mother and father died in a car accident when I was seven. I was going to be placed in foster care because both sets of my grandparents had passed away prior to my parents deaths and we had no other family. Luckily, Julius decided to adopt me. I’ve lived with the Harrington’s ever since. They’re really good people and I don’t know where I would be if he hadn’t taken me in.”

  “Wow, I’m so sorry about your parents.”

  “Thank you. I still miss them a lot. They were coming back from a restaurant when they were t-boned by a drunk driver who was trying to run from the police. They both died on the spot,” Mekhi said sadly.

  Summer felt horrible for him, but she wasn’t sure what to say. She’d already told him she was sorry about his parents, so she stayed quiet until Mekhi started talking again.

  “I miss my parents, but my adoptive parents have been so good to me. They sent me to the best schools and have always treated me as their own.”

  “So, why didn’t you tell me that your family owned the hotel?”

  “Because in the past when I’ve told women that my father is a billionaire, they immediately begin seeing dollar signs and hearing wedding be
lls. Besides the hotel in Atlanta, dad also has one in L.A. and he’s talking about opening another one in New York. It’s like women see me as an automatic come-up. I’ve been used and lied to a lot; I even had one woman try to trick me into sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. After it was discovered that she was already pregnant when she met me, I told myself not to immediately reveal that my family is wealthy anymore and I’m very cautious about the women I get involved with these days.”

  “I don’t blame you for that,” Summer told him. “So, the yacht that we were on that night…”

  “Belongs to my father.”

  “Wow, for once I am speechless and I don’t know what to say.”

  “Even though I come from a rich family, I’ve never been a spoiled rich kid. I had dreams of going to the NFL once. I played football in college and two years ago right before the NFL Draft, I tore my ACL, which pretty much killed my football career, so I became a high school football trainer instead. I’ve always wanted to make my own money and not have to rely on my parents. So, yeah…the people you saw me on the beach with were my siblings. After I left your room that morning, I went straight to the spa to get ready for my back-to-back morning appointments, but they both cancelled, which gave me a couple hours of free time. In hindsight, I guess I could have let you know that, but when my brother and sister told me they were headed to the beach for a little down time, I decided to tag along with them. I definitely wasn’t intentionally trying to ditch you, though.”

  “Wow, I feel so…stupid. I was so rude to your sister. She must think I’m a psycho bitch.”

  “Yeah, she does,” Mekhi said, matter-of-factly. “I’m joking,” he said when he saw the alarmed look on Summer’s face. “She actually sided with you and said she probably would have thought the same thing, under the circumstances, although she did say it was T.M.I….what you said about our, uh, bedroom activities.”