I wanted him to hold me for a minute while I caught my breath, but Frankie wasn’t having it. He wanted to get his too. He pushed his baggy jeans down, and pulled his dick through the pee hole in his drawers. I almost laughed when I saw what he was packing. It was the size of a magic marker, maybe even skinnier. He pushed my hand down on it and it felt wet and slimy.
“Hold up,” I whispered, yanking my hand back and wiping it on the spread before pulling up my shorts. I fixed my shirt and closed my zipper.
“Whatchoo doing? Open your goddamn legs.”
I pushed myself up on my elbows. “You got a rubber?”
“What?” He sucked his teeth and groaned, and I knew I was off the hook.
“You heard me. A rubber. Grown men who fuck usually carry rubbers.”
“I just ran out. But I trust you. Your pussy is clean and I can tell you ain’t got nothing. Besides, ain’t you on the pill or something?”
I shook my head and sat all the way up on the bed. “Nope. I ain’t on shit cause my man can’t make no babies and he don’t fuck out. You ain’t running up in me raw.”
He hesitated for a minute, then pushed his dick back in his pants. “You didn’t mind raw when I was making your ass come.”
I shrugged. A finger was one thing. A dick was something else. Besides, I wasn’t attracted to him no more. I had gotten as much as I wanted from Frankie and now all I wanted him to do was leave me alone.
“Why’ont you go to the store or something? You got money, right? Go buy a pack of condoms if you want some pussy.”
He got up off the bed and fixed his clothes. “Don’t go nowhere.” He pointed at me. “We gone finish this shit. I’ma give you some dick like you never had before, Miss Juicy. You just wait right here.”
I looked at him and smiled. He must was gonna pick up a spare dick at the Spanish bodega because his finger was bigger than what he had in his pants. I watched from the window as he jumped down the stairs on the stoop and took off down the street looking for an open store.
Grabbing my purse from the closet I went back out to the kitchen and snatched a beer from Rita’s hand. “I’m ready to go, Rita.” I gave her a sad-ass look, then touched the low part of my stomach. “Cramps.”
Ten minutes later I was riding in the Range Rover with the window down when I spotted Frankie coming out of a late-night corner store. “Later baby!” I screamed out the window, then me and Rita bust out laughing as he held his hands in the air like Yo, what the fuck is up?
G and Jimmy were due in the next afternoon, but I’d had a good last night out. We went to Rita’s aunt’s house and stayed up talking and listening to music most of the night. I wet Rita’s hair and put it in some flat twists, and she put one big French braid down the back of my head, then we each took a pair of clean panties and tied them around our heads like scarves.
I laid down for the night with a smile on my face. Even though I had silk sheets and a ten-thousand-dollar bed waiting for me on Central Park West, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy, and I got the best sleep of my life laying right there next to Rita on a pallet on her aunt’s living room floor in one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Chapter Twelve
We got up the next morning hungry as hell and cooking up a storm. I made a pot of cheese grits that could have put Grandmother’s to shame, and Rita fried beef bacon and made scrambled eggs and salmon cakes. We took our time eating and then cleaned her aunt’s kitchen until it looked better than it had when we started. G, Jimmy, and Gino were due to fly in at 3:30, so I knew Pacho would be swinging by to pick me up at about 2:00 P.M.
It wasn’t even 1:30 when we pulled up outside of the apartment building on Central Park West, but already Pacho was parked in the valet area and sitting in the limo. All I had to say was that we’d gone out for lunch, I told myself. Nobody told him to bring his ass over all early anyway. I waved at Pacho then turned away as Rita handed the valet boy her keys.
“You sure it’s okay for me to come up?” she asked.
“Girl, please,” I said striding toward the doorway. “You need to. Ain’t nobody up in that big-ass apartment no way. Don’t nobody never come up there except the maids. All that expensive shit and don’t nobody ever get to see it.”
We rode the elevator upstairs and Rita was tripping about the carpet, fresh flowers, and gold mirrors and crystal chandeliers that lined the hallway. True, it was a long way from the projects we’d just come from, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun.
We stopped outside the door and I slung my purse over one shoulder and my Coach overnight bag over the other as I stuck the key in the lock. I knew what was up the moment I turned the knob and the door only opened half a foot, but at that point there wasn’t a thing I could do.
“Where you been?”
G sounded like a pit bull as he slid the chain lock off the door and opened it all the way. He must not have seen Rita standing behind me the way he snatched me inside the apartment and flung me up against the wall.
My lie came pouring straight out. “G, this my friend Rita. She came by and picked me up earlier and we went out to breakfast. I had a taste for French toast and wasn’t no bread in the house and you know I don’t have no money.”
He just looked at me for a minute, then he shook his head. “You’re a big liar, Juicy. We came in on an early flight and ain’t none of the doormen seen you come in or go out since the day I left. So where you been?”
G wasn’t yelling but he might as well have been for all the rage that was in his eyes. I looked around and saw Jimmy sitting at the table with the finest man I’d ever seen. Jimmy looked disgusted and the other guy looked amazed. He had to be Gino, but since he wasn’t a cop with a gun who could save my ass, I truly didn’t give a fuck.
“For real, G!” I turned to Rita. “Right, Rita? Didn’t you come get me and take me out for breakfast?”
I knew I looked pitiful, begging my girl to back up my lie, but I didn’t care. My ass was on the line cause G didn’t play. Rita nodded quickly. “Yeah that’s right. I picked her up and we went to get something to eat. Dagg. We wasn’t even gone that long.”
G never even looked her way. Instead he snatched my Coach bag and turned it upside down, shaking everything out. All my dirty shit hit the floor. Thongs, belly shirts, push-up bras, cutoff shorts, even my toothbrush, deodorant, hairbrush, and the panties I’d used to tie down my hair the night before. There was nothing left to say, and even if there was, G wasn’t trying to hear it.
“Why you lie so much, Juicy?” He grabbed the front of my shirt and tried to put me through the wall again.
“Hold up, goddamn it,” Rita said, trying to squeeze between us. “Hold the motherfuckin phone. You ain’t gotta be putting your damn hands all over her.”
The next moment was a blur. It was almost like G hit Rita with me. He snatched me by the neck and slammed me dead into her, banging our heads together, trying to crack them like eggs. We collided so hard we both went down to the ground. I heard him cursing and beefing above us but my left ear was ringing and I was too dizzy to move.
“I don’t know who the fuck you be, little mama,” he warned, pointing down at Rita, “but if I ever set eyes on your ass again I guarantee your people’ll be reading about you in the newspaper.”