White Lines II: Sunny: A Novel (5 page)

Silence fell between them, as the ladies pondered that.

“How long has it been?” Jada asked. “I know Adiva is eleven, but were you together for long before she was born?”

“I have been with Zion Williams off and on since 1992.” Olivia shook her head, half ashamed. “Seventeen years.” At times, the years that she and Zion had been together seemed like a genuine blessing. But other times, it was embarrassing to admit that she had remained by a man’s side for almost two decades without the security of marriage—or at the very least, a commitment that he would get out of the drug game. “Sometimes, I tell myself that the first five years don’t count since we were both young, and our relationship wasn’t serious then. Still, even if you knock off the first five years for that technicality, I’ve still spent the past twelve years with this man. And if things don’t get better soon, I think we could be at the end of our story.”

Sunny gasped, and Jada looked shocked as well.

“Why?” Ava asked, her face frowned up. “Excuse me for saying so, but Zion is fine!”

Olivia smiled, knowing that Ava spoke the truth. “That he is,” she allowed. “But good looks, great sex, and physical fulfillment ain’t everything.” She sighed, sipped her sangria again. “Since the early days, when my brother transitioned out of the drug game, I’ve been encouraging Zion to do the same. But he ain’t trying to hear me. It’s like … there’s some kind of magnet that attracts him to the hustle, and no matter how much money we make, no matter how many years go by, with all the criminal investigations and the bad publicity … this guy just won’t walk away.”

Sunny knew what that was like. “When Dorian was alive, I used to tell him the same thing. But he never took getting out of the game seriously.” She chewed her food and wondered if things would be any different if he were still alive. “One of the things I’ve always admired about Lamin was his ability to get out of the game and turn his negatives into positives.”

Olivia nodded. She was proud of her brother. “My grandfather used to spend hours telling us the truth about life,” she said. “Papa was no saint. He did his share of dirt in his youth—gambling, shooting crooked dice and all that. That’s where we got the name for Lamin’s company. But Papa had sense enough to quit when he started a family. He recognized that the risk outweighed the reward, and he always told Lamin to know when to stop. He didn’t preach at us or tell us that we shouldn’t have been doing all that shit we were into back then. But he insisted that a smart hustler knows when to throw his cards in and leave the game.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m starting to think that Zion wants to do this shit until he loses everything.”

It sounded like it just might come to that. In all the years that Sunny had known Olivia, she had never sounded so serious about leaving Zion. Sunny looked at her friend and nudged her playfully. “You ain’t fooling me,” she said. “You would sooner die than be without Zion. How many chicks have had their asses kicked over the years because they were silly enough to get too close to your man?”

Jada laughed. “Yeah, Born told me a few stories about you. He always said that you don’t play that shit when it comes to females in Zion’s face.”

Olivia laughed, too. “I love him, I won’t front.” She did. Zion was the only man she had ever wanted to be with for life. “But sometimes love ain’t enough. When you’re moving in one direction and the person you love is standing still, refusing to budge…” Olivia shook her head, her frustration obvious. “Plus we’re arguing more than ever. Ever since I got busy with the launch of my label, you would think I committed a crime or something. He snaps at me all the damn time, nitpicking over little, dumb shit!”

Ava understood. “I broke up with Miles over that type of thing,” she said. Miles Parker was a man Ava had dated when she lived in Pennsylvania for several years. He was a contractor she met when a friend of hers hired him to do some work on her home. Ava and Miles had seemed bound for the altar until things changed and she moved back to New York. “I was busting my ass trying to make partner at my firm, and every time I had to work late or travel out of town, he ran a guilt trip on me about it. It got to the point that I realized that he was resenting my success, and probably worried that I would outgrow him. I wasted a lot of time, hoping he would stop being insecure and accept that I was determined to go all the way to the top in my career. But when the arguments continued and his attitude got uglier, I was out.”

Olivia nodded. “So you feel me, then,” she said. “I don’t want to believe that’s what Zion’s problem is. But if it walks like a duck and quacks and all that shit?” Olivia chewed her food and let them fill in the blanks.

Smirking, Sunny gave her the side-eye. “Now you know that ain’t the way the saying goes, bitch!”

Laughter blanketed the room as the ladies enjoyed their scrumptious brunch and girl talk for the remainder of the afternoon. Sunny was glad she’d invited them over. Times like these were food for the soul.

3

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

Sunny and Jada sat in Ava’s office. Ava was a partner at one of the top international corporate law firms and was side hustling as Sunny’s and Jada’s attorney in their business ventures. Today, the ladies waited as she met with a client in an office across the hall.

Sunny sat in one of the high-back leather chairs, toying with her gold bangles and thinking that she should have worn them more over the years. Dorian had bought her lots of jewelry during their romance, but these were special, bought on the day they’d met. They represented his introduction into her life, and although he had been gone for so long, it felt as if he had never left.

Sunny was dressed demurely for today’s meeting. Her hair was pulled back in a tight and sleek ponytail. Her makeup was minimal—just a little mascara and some lip gloss—and besides the bangles, the only jewelry she wore were a pair of gold hoop earrings. She wore a white blouse, skinny jeans and a pair of red Guess sandals.

Jada sat beside Sunny in an identical chair facing Ava’s large desk. She was dressed up slightly today because Sheldon had been in a Thanksgiving play at his school. Two months had passed since Born’s proposal and Sheldon’s behavior had gotten progressively worse. He had been assigned the role of a turkey in the school play, and had flapped his loud ass all around the stage yelling his one line over and over until they had to have one of the gym teachers escort him offstage. Jada had slunk down in her seat, embarrassed. After saying a prayer for strength, Jada had dragged Sheldon out of there and, resisting the urge to wring his little neck, took him home. Born had met her there and insisted that she go on to her meeting while he took Sheldon with him and DJ to the car dealership. DJ was close to signing a deal and Born was taking him to get his first Benz at the age of twenty-one. Jada was glad that Sheldon had somewhere else to go because she needed a break from him. She looked down now at the blue BCBG dress and heels and her mother’s pearls she wore and got lost in thought. She was thinking about how much it hurt to finally admit to herself that her son was fucked up, that his father’s dementia and her own demons had resulted in a problem child.

Sunny was lost in thought as well. The bangles had her thinking back to the day she first met Dorian Douglas, the love of her life.

*   *   *

She had been just seventeen years old and was fiery and outspoken. Sunny had few friends in high school because most of the girls envied her beauty or disliked her sassy attitude. So she spent most of her time in the company of her two older brothers, Reuben and Ronnie.

On the day she met Dorian, Sunny had been shopping at Brooklyn’s Albee Square Mall with Reuben. He had been spending what Sunny thought was an insane amount of time in the sneaker store, so she wandered over to a jewelry kiosk just outside the store. As she eyed a pair of bangles, she heard an unfamiliar baritone voice say, “You’re gorgeous.”

She turned and saw a very handsome man standing before her. He was tall, well-groomed and he even smelled good. Still, she frowned. “Do I know you?” she had asked, sassily.

Dorian shook his head. “Not yet. But hopefully I can change that. What’s your name?”

Sunny was still frowning. She got hit on by grown men all the time, so she wasn’t surprised by this guy’s flirtation. But she wasn’t in the mood for a smooth talker today. “I don’t talk to strangers,” she said and turned back to the bangles in the display case.

“Okay, so then let me introduce myself. My name is Dorian. Dorian Douglas. Now I’m not a stranger.”

Sunny ignored him, kept looking at the bracelets.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The saleslady came over and asked if Sunny needed help with anything. Sunny shook her head and started to walk off, but Dorian interrupted. “She wants those. Right there,” he said, pointing to the bracelets in the display case.

Sunny looked shocked and she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t have money to buy—”

Dorian held up his hand as if she should stop talking. Sunny wasn’t sure why she obeyed.

The saleslady retrieved the bracelets and laid them out before Dorian and Sunny. Sunny admired the gold bangles but knew that she couldn’t afford them. Her little summer job at the movie theater was barely enough to keep her in designer sneakers.

Seeing the way that Sunny’s eyes sparkled when she looked at the bangles, Dorian smiled. He nodded at the saleslady and said, “Ring ’em up.”

Sunny looked at Dorian, surprised, but slightly annoyed. “So you think that’s all it takes to get in my pants?” she barked. “You buy me a couple of bracelets and I’m supposed to be so impressed that I spread my legs?”

Dorian laughed in amazement. This one had a mouth on her!

“Sweetheart, I’m not trying to get in your pants. And if I was, I can tell that it would take a lot more than just a little jewelry to do the trick.”

“A
lot
more,” she reiterated.

“That’s what I’m sayin’,” he cosigned.

“So what do you want from me in exchange for those bangles?” she demanded.

“Your name,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “That’s all.”

He handed his credit card to the saleslady and leaned on the display case as she scurried off to the cash register.

Sunny had to fight the urge to smile. She was flattered by the lengths this handsome stranger was going to just to get her name. “Sunny,” she said at last. “My name is Sunny.”

“That’s your real name?”

She was annoyed by this question. People asked it often and it got tiring. She was aware that her name was unusual, but still she rolled her eyes. “Yes. Why? You wanna see my birth certificate?”

He smiled. “Not at all. That’s a beautiful name for a very beautiful young lady. Do you have a man, Sunny?”

She thought about her so-called boyfriend, Eddie. He was the cutest guy at school, but he was a bore to Sunny. Hiding a sly grin, and not sure why she was lying, she said, “No.”

Dorian watched her closely. “How old are you?” he asked. She looked like she was quite a few years younger than he was and he prayed that she was legal.

“Seventeen,” she said. “How old are you?”

He cringed a little. “I’m twenty-two,” he told her. He watched her calculate the fact that he was five years older than she was. “Your parents gonna have a problem with you dating somebody older?”

Sunny frowned again. “Who said I’m gonna be dating you?”

Dorian’s smile made her heart race. “You’re gonna like me once you get to know me,” he said.

“Is that right?”

“Yup, that’s right.” Dorian put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and waited.

Sunny couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something very disarming about this Dorian guy.

The saleslady brought over a bag containing the bangles and handed it to Sunny. She handed Dorian back his credit card and gave him the receipt for his signature. Dorian signed for the purchase and Sunny noticed that he hadn’t bothered to find out how much the bracelets cost before telling the clerk to ring them up. She glanced down at his crisp new Jordans, and her eyes scanned his Polo jeans and shirt, his blinged-out watch and Yankee fitted cap. She wondered what his story was.

The saleslady took the receipt and handed Dorian a copy. He thanked her and held the pen and the receipt out to Sunny. She was confused for a moment.

“You can write your phone number on the back of this,” he explained.

Sunny set her bag down on the counter and took the pen and paper from Dorian. She hesitated briefly and looked at him. “I thought all you wanted was my name.”

He shrugged. “What good is a name without a number?”

Sunny thought about that. He had a point. “My father and my brothers are very overprotective,” she said. “So don’t be surprised if they interrogate you when you call.”

Dorian smiled. “No problem,” he said. “You’re a beautiful girl so I can’t blame them for being protective.” He watched as she wrote her home number down and handed the pen back to the cashier. Sunny handed him the receipt and when he reached for it, she pulled it out of his reach.

“Not so fast,” she said with a smile in her eyes. “A guy like you—tall, dark and handsome…”

“Thank you,” Dorian interjected.

“You’re welcome,” Sunny said. “Obviously you have a little money.”

“I have more than a
little
money,” Dorian corrected.

“Okay, so you have a
lot
of money,” she said. “You seem like a fairly intelligent person.”

Dorian nodded.

“So of
all
the females in Brooklyn, why go through all of this trouble for me?”

Dorian thought about the question and cleared his throat. He smiled and looked into her eyes. “When I saw you, I stopped dead in my tracks. ’Cause out of all the girls in Brooklyn, I’ve never seen one as pretty as you are.”

Sunny blushed and averted her gaze. Dorian knew he had flattered her, which had been his intention. But it was true. He thought Sunny was the most beautiful young lady he’d ever seen. He continued, “And if you’re as lovely inside as you are on the outside … well, then I gotta make you mine, whatever it takes.”