Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sunday brunch at my mama’s house smelled like fried chicken, catfish, buttermilk biscuits, brioche French toast, pancakes, cheese grits, scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, brown sugar bacon, potatoes with peppers and onions, cinnamon rolls, and coffee strong enough to wake up the dead.
I should have been hungry.
Technically, I was. My stomach knew what to do with my mother’s table. The rest of me had been messed up since I woke reaching for a woman who had already left my bed.
Kayla sat beside me in purple leggings, a yellow sweatshirt, and two puffs with bows even enough to prove Mama had done her hair.
She had made me responsible for cutting her pancakes into pieces shaped exactly right, which apparently meant small enough for her mouth and big enough to accommodate all the drama she carried in her little body.
“No, Uncle Dre.” She pushed at my hand. “Like this.”
“That is how I cut it.”
“No.”
Across the table, Danielle laughed while her husband, Keith, caught the syrup bottle before Kayla’s elbow knocked it over.
“She is very specific,” Danielle said.
“She is bossy.”
Kayla looked at me with offense all over her little face. “I am not.”
Keith wiped syrup from her sleeve with the patience of a man who had accepted that fatherhood came with contact drills. “She gets it honest.”
Danielle turned toward him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side without syrup on my pants.”
Pops chuckled into his coffee.
Mama passed me the biscuit basket like she hadn’t already put two on my plate. “Leave that baby alone. She gets it honest.”
I looked at my sister.
Danielle lifted both hands. “Don’t bring me into it.”
Pops sat at the head of the table pretending he wasn’t watching me, which had always been one of his favorite lies. My father could stay quiet for an hour and know your business before you finished admitting you had any.
Kayla had been listening to grown-folk conversation since I sat down, picking up Imani’s name every time Mama or Danielle used it. Kids heard everything you wished they didn’t.
Mama had already looked toward the front door twice.
The third time, Kayla beat her to it.
“Where Imani?”
The whole table paused around one small question.
I looked at the traitor beside me. “Good morning to you too.”
She grinned around syrup.
Mama’s gaze came to mine. “It’ll just be you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hmmm.”
That sound had a sermon attached to it.
“Don’t start.”
“I did not say anything.”
“That’s how you start.”
Pops lifted his coffee. “Leave the boy alone, Ro.”
“I am not bothering him.”
“You looked over his shoulder like Imani might be hiding on the porch.”
Mama pointed a biscuit at him. “I was hoping she was with him.”
“So was I,” I said before I could stop myself.
The room changed.
Danielle’s expression softened, which somehow irritated me more than one of her jokes would have.
Mama set the biscuit basket down. “She had somewhere to be?”
“She left before I woke up.”
That was the easy version.
The real version was me waking with my hand moving across cool sheets, looking for warm skin. A hip. A thigh. Anything that proved the night before hadn’t been Crown Weekend playing in my face.
Instead, my palm landed in the big-ass wet spot she’d left across the sheet.
I stared at it for a second, dick hardening before the rest of me caught up. Her perfume was still in the bed. My shirt was on the floor. Imani was gone, but there was proof everywhere of exactly what we had done in that room.
And I knew what made that spot.
How wet she’d been beneath me. How many times I had pulled more out of her.
The night before had not left me either.
My left knee was stiff beneath the table, the quad above it carrying that deep, used-up soreness I knew well.
I had spent enough years in this body to know the difference between pain that meant stop and a joint reminding me I had put it to work.
Last night I had spent hours bracing, changing angles, holding my weight over Imani while she wrapped herself around me.
I straightened my leg beneath the table until the tightness eased and almost smiled.
Worth it.
I had told her the truth with my face close enough to hers to feel her breathing change. The confession came out before I had enough sense to stop it.
She had my favorite pussy.
Nobody had ever come close.
A better man might not have compared.
I wasn’t better in that moment.
I was honest.
I had tried to find it. Spent years touching other women and telling myself good was good, wet was wet, sex was sex, and a grown man did not let one woman’s body become the measure for everybody who came after her. But there were some things a man could not talk himself out of remembering.
A man did not forget pussy that could wet his dick, his balls, and the crease of his ass without effort. Did not forget being snapped around like his dick was her favorite toy and she planned to claim ownership from the inside out.
That I loved the woman who possessed it was just the supreme bonus.
And that fucking mouth.
My mind gave me the picture without permission.
Mani stretched across that bed with her head near the edge, braids falling toward the floor while I stood over her.
All that beautiful brown body spread out in front of me, breasts bare, pussy swollen and wet while she looked up at me with my dick filling her mouth.
She had gotten so damn good at it.
I remembered the first time I pushed deep enough to make her gag. I’d eased back immediately, ready to give her air, and that greedy woman squeezed my thigh, caught her breath, then opened for me again.
Went right back to sucking.
Wet lips. Watering eyes. Tongue doing shit I damn sure didn’t remember teaching her. Taking me deeper because she wanted to, gagging and recovering and coming right back like eight years had turned something she already enjoyed into a damn skill.
And the whole time I could see her. Every inch of her laid out beneath me while she worked my dick like she had something to prove.
Fuck.
A shudder tried to move through me right there at my mama’s brunch table, and I covered it by reaching for my coffee.
The night before, I had run half a damn playbook through my head just to keep from cumming too soon.
Power right. Inside zone. Counter trey. Anything involving turf, assignments, and discipline while Imani shook beneath me for the fourth time.
Or fifth.
I had lost count somewhere between her nails in my back and that pussy locking down hard enough to make me reconsider every spiritual decision I had made since Sunday school.
Then I woke up alone.
That part sobered me immediately.
I sat there for a minute trying not to get in my feelings before I had facts. Then I checked my phone.
Malcolm had sent three texts before nine.
Malcolm: Nigga…please tell me you awake before the internet gets you.
The screenshots came next.
Me and Imani leaving the game hand in hand. Me near the private gate with my head bent toward hers. Me kissing her knuckles inside the Crown Club while she looked at me with enough softness for strangers to start building a relationship announcement around it.
The internet had put its own story underneath the pictures.
Crown royalty back where they belong?
Then came the comments.
People remembered she was my college girlfriend. People said she looked good. People pulled Aubrey into the conversation because apparently hurting a woman they didn't know was entertainment before brunch. They debated which one of them looked better beside me and built timelines from photographs.
I stopped reading.
Not because I cared what strangers thought.
Because I knew Imani would.
She had never been insecure about who she was. What bothered her was somebody else reaching into her life and naming it before she decided what it meant herself.
We had been through a smaller version of that at AWU, when a woman kissed me after a road game and somebody caught the angle before I pushed her away. Imani believed me once everybody who saw it backed me up.
Believing I hadn't cheated didn't erase what it felt like to become public conversation because she loved me.
Eight years later, the scale was bigger.
So was the reach.
I had called her twice.
Voicemail.
Then I texted.
Me: Talk to me, Mani.
Nothing.
I handled what I could after that. Showered. Answered Omar. Sent a route correction to Jones Outdoor before Pops heard about it from somebody at church. Told North & Vine nobody was allowed to threaten a produce vendor on the Lord's day.
Then I came to brunch with my phone too quiet in my pocket.
Mama watched me across the table.
“She saw the pictures?” she asked.
“I think so.”
Danielle winced. “The comments are doing too much.”
My jaw tightened.
“Oh, baby,” Mama said.
“I don't need that.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You said baby.”
“Because you look like one of your choices finally came around the corner and slapped you in the mouth.”
Pops made a sound into his coffee that could have been a cough if anybody at that table respected lying.
Danielle glanced toward Kayla, who had moved on from adult business and was currently treating pancake syrup like a controlled substance.
“So did Imani sneak out or politely leave?”
I glared at my sister.
“What? Those are different exits.”
“Dani,” Keith murmured.
“I’m being helpful.”
“You are being yourself.”
“That too.”
Mama leaned back. “She left before you woke up?”
“Ma.”
“Don't Ma me. Your father and I have children, baby. I understand how people end up waking together.”
Danielle looked physically wounded. “Why would you say that while I'm eating?”
Kayla looked up. “What happened?”
“Pancakes,” Keith said immediately, putting another bite on her plate. “Pancakes happened.”
Pops chuckled.
Mama smiled like she'd accomplished something and passed me the hot sauce.
That was family. They could embarrass you, feed you, get in your business, judge your decisions, and love you so thoroughly there wasn't much room left to hide.