Nervous (9 page)

Hmph, the fool was determined to play hard to get. No man could resist me and he was an idiot for even trying. I pushed him onto a table and locked the door.

“Listen to me, Logan. I’m quite aware that you’re dating Darnetta. I’m also quite aware that you’re a man. All men love pussy. At least real men do.”

I lowered his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders just enough to constrict his arm movement and then I started undoing his cummerbund.

“You love pussy, Logan?”

“Yes, but—”

I put my fingers to his lips. “Then shut the hell up!”

I ran my fingers through his curly brown hair with one hand while I caressed his dick through his pants with the other. “You have that exotic look that I adore. Are you from an island or something?”

“No, I’m from right here in Atlanta. My momma has some Cherokee in her, though.”

“Well, all I can say is that you’re so fine that I couldn’t leave here tonight without feeling your dick inside me.”

I knew I had his ass then. Men suck up compliments and can’t get enough of them.

“Damn!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were shy. That’s what Darnetta said.”

“Darnetta doesn’t know a damn thing about me except what she sees at work. Women who are true dick connoisseurs like me don’t have to advertise it. We keep our business private. That’s why you never have to worry about anything that transpires within these walls leaving here.”

I hooked my foot around a chair and pulled it closer so I could sit down. Then I undid the clasp on his pants and yanked his zipper. Time was of the essence so I plunged right in the second I had his dick in clear view. It was a scrumptious dick, too.

Someone came and knocked at the door. We both fell silent until we heard footsteps walking away down the hall.

Logan whispered, “Oh, no! We have to come to our senses!”

I glanced up at him and said, “Sense this.” Then I deep throated him again.

He was right, though. My purpose was more about self-preservation than sex. So I pushed him back until he lay flat on the table, slipped off my panties, and mounted him. I rode him fast and quick for a few minutes, gathered my things together and headed for the door.

Logan looked dumbfounded. “What was that all about?”

I turned around. “Just something I wanted and I always get what I want.”

He shook his head in dismay. “Are you going to tell Darnetta?”

I smirked. “Why would I do that? Just tell Darnetta and Mason that I fell ill and decided to catch a cab home. I’ve had enough of this event to last me a lifetime.”

I walked out the room, found the rear exit, and jetted. After getting settled in the back of a cab that I flagged down, I couldn’t help but laugh. Let Jon try to get closer to Mason. I already had my game in order.

jonquinette

I woke up lying in the middle of my living room floor. My head was splitting from a migraine and I was wearing only a bra and panties. I didn’t remember anything: leaving the wedding, the ride home, nothing. I wondered if I had done something crazy in front of Darnetta. Heaven forbid I had done something ridiculous in front of Mason.

I debated about calling Darnetta to make sure she’d gotten home okay and to snoop around about what had happened. Then I glanced at the clock and realized it was after two o’clock in the morning. I wouldn’t call anyone’s house that late. Not in a million years.

I decided to go to bed and deal with whatever happened in the morning. I had just crawled under my covers when a knock came at the door. Startled, I sat up in the bed and listened to see if I was imagining things. Another knock came; this time louder.

I got up, threw on a robe and went to look out the peephole. Oh no! It was Mason. He must have heard me moving around because he said, “Jonquinette, I know you’re home. Can we talk?”

I spoke softly through the door. “Mason, it’s really late. Can we do this tomorrow?”

“I just wanted to make sure that you’re okay. Logan said you weren’t feeling well and that’s why you left the wedding so suddenly.”

Logan? What in the world did Logan have to do with anything? Other than a brief introduction, I hadn’t spoken five words to him.

“Um, I do have a migraine but I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, positive. Have a good night.”

I glanced through the peephole again and noticed he was still standing there staring at my door. He took a deep breath, started to walk away, and then hesitated. “Jonquinette, can you just open the door for one second? I’d feel a lot better if I could just see you. It’ll give me peace of mind.”

I decided there was nothing to lose. After fingering my hair and straightening up my robe, I inched the door open. “See, I’m fine, Mason.”

He chuckled. “It would help me out if I could see more than your eyeballs.”

I opened the door completely. “Is this better?”

He eyed me up and down and I tightened my robe around my chest.

“Definitely better. Well, you look okay,” he said. He touched my forehead with his palm. “No fever. Are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor?”

“I’m sure. It was a long day and I just overdid it some. I have a history of anemia so my iron is probably low. I forgot to take my tablet earlier.”

Mason took me completely off guard by grabbing me into his arms and kissing me. He slipped his tongue into my mouth and at first I didn’t know how to react. Then something came alive inside me and I responded. It was the first time I had truly kissed a man and it felt great. He was gentle yet powerful and his arms around my waist made me feel comfortably at ease. For once, I wasn’t nervous.

He pushed me backward into my apartment and against the wall as the intensity of our kiss grew. It lasted for a good five minutes until…

…he grabbed my left breast and I freaked out.

I manuevered myself away from him. “I’m sorry, Mason. I can’t do this.”

He grinned at me and said, “I didn’t mean to rush you. We can take our time getting to know each other.”

I grinned back at him. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”

“So how about we start with a real date. Not one where we just happen to end up in the same place but one where we actually leave here together and come back here together.”

“That sounds original.”

We both laughed.

“Dinner. Tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. How does that sound?”

“Like a winning proposition.”

Mason kissed me on the forehead. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

I climbed back into bed and fell asleep dreaming about Mason.

jude

BITCH!

November 1994
Tenth Grade
Pembroke Pines, Florida

Henry Pierce paced the kitchen floor, waiting for his wife to come back inside from the garage. Meredith came in carrying a large turkey that she had retrieved from the chest freezer.

“This turkey’s a little small but I think we’ll make do,” she said.

“How many people do we have coming over for Thanksgiving dinner?” Henry asked.

“About a dozen.”

Henry sighed and sat down at the table. “Why is it that everyone always gathers at our house for holiday dinners? Don’t they ever entertain at their homes?”

“Henry, that’s not fair. You know my family members entertain from time to time. It’s just that we live in the most central location and that makes it easier for everyone to get together.”

Henry smirked. “If you say so, but I think it has more to do with us footing the grocery bill than anything else.”

Meredith didn’t comment. They both knew it was a true statement. While Meredith tried to act as if she “came from money,” that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She’d grown up dirt-poor, the daughter of two janitors who favored being addressed as environmental engineers. She had two older sisters who were golddiggers, which explained why Meredith was one herself. Unfortunately, her sisters hadn’t landed a wealthy man. Meredith seduced Henry one night while he was too drunk to know better, they had a whirlwind romance, and were forced to marry after Meredith became pregnant.

Henry had long recovered from the fact that Meredith had trapped him by lying and saying she was on the pill. After it was all over, said and done, he found out that she’d never taken a birth control pill, rather less had a prescription for one, in her entire life. Henry wasn’t rich by anyone’s standards but compared to Meredith’s family, he was Donald Trump.

“Whatever, Meredith,” Henry said. “That’s not what I want to talk to you about anyway.”

Meredith put the turkey in the sink and ran hot water over it to begin thawing it out for dinner the next day. “Well, we have to talk while I’m cooking. It’s getting late and I still have to rinse my greens and get them on, cut up the potatoes for my salad tomorrow, and bake a couple of pumpkin pies.”

“Good grief! You act like we’re feeding an army!”

Meredith snickered. “Hell, Henry, you know how my family eats.”

Henry cleared his throat and pulled his chair up closer to the table so he could rest his elbows. “Meredith, we need to have a serious talk about Jonquinette.”

Meredith paused and stood still before facing him, leaning her hips against the sink. “What about her?”

“We can’t keep ignoring her behavior. All these years, we’ve made excuses for her actions but something has to be done immediately before it gets out of hand. I don’t even know what I’m saying. Things have already gotten out of hand and you’re not helping matters any.”

Meredith said, “Jonquinette’s just fine. She’s the typical teenage girl. Her hormones are raging and she’s going through major changes.”

Henry shook his head. He stood up and grabbed Meredith by the shoulders. “Jonquinette’s anything but typical, Meredith. You and I both know it.”

Meredith yanked herself free in anger. “I refuse to stand here and listen to this nonsense.”

Henry got a glass out of the cabinet, turned on the faucet, and filled it with cool water. He took a sip and contemplated his next move. “Meredith, I wanted to believe Jonquinette was normal just as much as you. Hell, even more. But we’ve got to get her some help.”

“Help? What kind of help?”

“She needs to see a specialist. A psychiatrist.”

“You’ve lost your damn mind,” Meredith said. “Jonquinette isn’t crazy; you are.”

“Now, Meredith, I’m not saying the girl is crazy. I’m saying, at the very least, she’s extremely confused.” Henry started pacing the floor. “There’s just something that doesn’t sit right about all of this.”

“The only thing Jonquinette needs is a decent boyfriend. She’s at the age where she should start dating.” Meredith turned on the oven and then sat down at the table. “If you really want to do something for Jonquinette, spend more time with her. She still has to log another thirty hours of driving with her learner’s permit before she can get her license in January. She also needs to improve her computer science grade and being that you’re a programmer, I would think you could help her out with that.”

Henry didn’t appreciate the sarcasm lingering in Meredith’s voice. “This isn’t about driving or some damn computer. This is about doing something before Jonquinette seriously hurts herself or someone else.”

“Where is this all coming from?” Meredith asked apprehensively. “Granted, she’s had episodes in the past but nothing lately.”

Henry lowered his eyes to the floor.

“Henry, nothing lately, right?”

“I guess not,” he replied. “I just have this gut feeling that this is the calm before the storm.”

Meredith got up and touched his hand. “Henry Pierce, you and I have been through hell together over the past two decades and we’ve always survived. We’ll survive this, too, whatever it is.”

Henry hugged Meredith snugly. “I love both of you so much. I just want us to have a happy family.”

“We do have a happy family, Henry.”

“If you say so, but—”

Meredith pulled away from his embrace and glared at him.

“But what?”

“I still plan to call someone on Monday. Just to see what they say.”

“Someone like who?”

Henry shrugged. “I guess I’ll start with the Health and Human Services Department. They should be able to recommend someone.”

Meredith rolled her eyes and slammed a pot down on the stove. She didn’t say another word.

Jonquinette tiptoed back upstairs without either one of them knowing she’d heard the entire conversation.

Thanksgiving Day, 1994
Three
A.M.

Jude had waited until both Henry and Meredith were fast asleep before sneaking out of bed. She threw on a pair of jeans, a tee shirt, and a pair of raggedy sneakers and then eased her way out of the house into the garage. She winced when she pushed the button for the door to rise. It was a dicey move because there was a noisy vibration. Her room was directly over the garage and she always heard it but wasn’t sure whether it was audible in the master bedroom.

She waited for a minute to see if she heard any movement. There was nothing, so she unlocked Henry’s Lincoln Town Car and eased behind the wheel. She was elated that he always kept an extra set of keys in the kitchen drawer. It made things so much easier for her.

She put the car in reverse without starting the engine and coasted out the driveway onto the street where she turned it over. She grinned as she headed off into the darkness. “I’ll fix your ass but good,” she whispered.

Jude knew exactly where to go: a strip downtown that was heavily populated with strip clubs and prostitutes lining the sidewalk. She had two hundred dollars and some change; Jonquinette’s life savings. She hoped it would be enough.

One
P.M.

Jude stayed up in the bedroom for most of the morning, pretending Jonquinette was studying computer science. But Jude didn’t give a fuck about computer science. She did like going into chat rooms, though; particularly those where people talked about sex and nothing but sex. One such room was called “Freaky Black People.” It was her personal favorite.

She’d had cyber sex with countless men, most of whom thought she was a twenty-five-year-old nurse from Raleigh, North Carolina, instead of a fifteen-year-old high school student. Stupid idiots, as far as she was concerned.

Even Jude was shocked that so many freaks were online Thanksgiving Day. She assumed they all had family plans but their addiction to chat rooms must have superseded them.

Jude was just bored stiff and waiting for the fireworks to initiate later that day. She still had a few hours before the festivities so she started teasing around with one of the men in the chat room who had the screen name “Slanging Dick.” His profile boasted that he could lick a woman’s belly button from the inside.
Nasty bastard,
Jude thought.
Just my type of man.

Jude had yet to have actual intercourse but it was only a matter of time, as far as she was concerned. Jonquinette led such a lackluster life that there wasn’t a single boy she spent time around that interested her. The boys at school were all revolting. Plus they were just that: boys. Jude yearned for a man.

A few of the men online had tried to coax her into offline meetings. One of them almost had her, a smooth talker who went by “DreamLvr4U.” She was all ready to meet up with him until she found out he wanted to rendezvous at a raunchy hotel instead of one of the fancy ones he always talked about doing the nasty with her in. She also found out, from another woman in the chat room who had actually met him and had sex with him offline, that he had the dick of an eight-year-old. She wasn’t sure if “BombAzz-Puddy” was lying or not, but she wasn’t taking any chances or wasting her time. Besides, Bomb also informed her that Dream looked nothing like the photo he was emailing to women in the room. She said the photo must’ve been more than a decade old and that he was really closer to forty instead of the thirty-year-old he claimed to be.

Jude, whose screen name was Hot CUMmodity sent Slanging Dick an invitation to a private chat so she could cyber him.
What the hell,
she thought.
Practice makes perfect. Even if the practice isn’t real.

They entered a private room and it was on:

Four
P.M.

The house was packed with relatives, all of whom Jude hated. She’d put on a plaid wool skirt and long-sleeved sweater; just the variety of boring outfit Jonquinette would’ve selected.

Meredith was in her element, showing off for her family and pretending like she was the shit. When she asked Jonquinette to help her set the table, Jude plastered on a bogus smile and complied. She wanted to stay downstairs because she didn’t want to jeopardize missing the action once the doorbell rang.

By four-thirty, when they all actually sat down to eat, Jude was getting edgy. “The bitch” was late.

Benjamin, Jonquinette’s twelve-year-old cousin, was making Jude queasy by chewing with his mouth open. Jude wanted to reach across the table and slap him. Instead, she just grinned at him and redirected her eyes elsewhere. When he let out a loud belch, Jude cleared her throat.
That sorry motherfucker has no home training whatsoever,
she thought. Then again, she shouldn’t have been surprised considering his mother, Meredith’s sister Elaine, had no home training her damn self.

By five, Jude was absolutely enraged. She was ready to go scour the streets for “the bitch” and strangle her with her bare hands.

At five-fifteen, the doorbell finally rang. Jude jumped up and said, “I’ll get it. You all finish your dessert.”

Meredith called after her as she headed out into the foyer. “I wonder who it could be. Everyone’s already here.”

Jude yanked the front door open and glared angrily at “the bitch.” She whispered, “Don’t you own a watch?”

“The bitch” came back at her. “Yeah, but I had three dudes come by in a van and they were loaded with cash. Shit, you only gave me two hundred. Don’t get to tripping on me or I’ll turn right back around.”

Jude decided to swallow the words in her throat. At the moment, other things were more important.

Meredith decided to come out of the dining room to investigate. She was shocked when she saw the slut standing in her doorway. The woman gave the impression of being a streetwalker. She had on a taut spandex skirt that was so undersized you could see the crotch of her red lace underwear, a pair of stilettos and a halter top in the middle of November.

“Who the hell are you?” Meredith demanded to know.

Jude winked at “the bitch,” letting her know it was time to get the show on the road.

“Um, I’m looking for Henry,” she said. “Henry Pierce. Does he live here?”

Meredith came closer to the door. “Henry’s my husband. Who are you?”

“The bitch” grimaced and then laughed in Meredith’s face. “I’m Henry’s mistress.”

“Momma…” Jude cried, starting the performance she’d planned all along. “Daddy has a mistress?”

Meredith coughed, trying to prevent herself from choking on her own saliva. “Of course, he doesn’t. This
woman
is obviously mistaken.” She eyed the hooker and said, “You’ve apparently got the wrong house.”

“The bitch” asked, “Is this 12709 Spring Valley Lane?”

“Yes, it is,” Jude quickly responded. When she noticed no one else was coming out of the dining room, she got louder so they could hear the commotion. “You did say you were looking for Henry Pierce, didn’t you?” she yelled.

Henry obviously heard that because he appeared around the corner less than ten seconds later asking, “Who’s at the door?”

“The bitch” eyed Jude, trying to make sure he was the right person because she’d never seen him.

Jude decided to confirm it by running up to Henry and throwing her arms around his neck. “Daddy, say it isn’t so! Say she’s lying!”

“Who’s lying?” Henry asked.

Meredith glowered at Henry and said, “Your
mistress
is at the door.”

“My what?” Henry bellowed.

It gradually became Noah’s Ark up in the Pierce household as their guests came into the living room in pairs. No one wanted to be considered nosy but, at the same time, no one wanted to miss a single word of what was about to go down.

“The bitch” came farther into the house uninvited and threw herself down at Henry’s feet, grabbing onto one of his calves. “Henry, please come be with me.”