Crossing Oceans

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Dead Calm

Male strippers just didn’t do it for me.

I wasn’t the judgmental type, not usually, but all that aggressive air-humping and choreographed tongue-flicking didn’t exactly scream masculine to me.

They were supposed to cater to women’s fantasies, but the sparkly outfits and bodies slicked down like greased pans gave me the distinct impression that most of them were really playing for the other team.

Opinions are like assholes though. Everybody has one, and mine was clearly in the minority tonight.

Around me the club was a chaotic crowd of screaming women and flying dollar bills.

My first cousins London and Paris were leading the pack, both of them wild-eyed and loose with their singles like their bank accounts wouldn’t feel it later.

We were dressed head to toe in black for the theme, Death to My Maiden Name, because in exactly one week London Simmons was officially becoming London Jackson.

She was marrying Eli Jackson, her deceased best friend’s widower.

It sounds like a headline from one of those messy supermarket tabloids, but their history ran deeper than gossip.

Eli grew up right across the street from them.

He is four years older than London and back when she used to find reasons to be on the porch every single time he stepped outside, he never noticed.

It wasn’t until Eli went off to college and came home with Brandy on his arm that London’s crush faded. Brandy was warm and magnetic, the kind of woman who pulled people in without trying, and she and London became inseparable almost overnight.

Seven years ago that world cracked open when Brandy was murdered. Wrong place, wrong time. People always said that like it was a freak accident. Something rare like getting struck by lightning, but in Mobile the wrong place was just the neighborhood you grew up in. I learned that at eighteen.

What was supposed to be a regular night turned into blood and sirens and a future I never got back.

Prez, my first love, didn’t make it out of that night.

I did….somehow.

Surviving never felt like winning though. Not when it cost me my track scholarship and the part of myself that still believed the world was fair. I buried that version of me right alongside him and never went back for her.

So no, I never judged London for falling for Eli.

I watched her become the shoulder he leaned on while he tried to piece his soul back together.

Eventually grief turned into comfort, comfort turned into a spark, and that spark turned into something neither of them planned.

Some people called it betrayal. To me it just looked like two people trying not to drown.

I was happy my girl found her person. That’s why I forced a smile and swallowed my cringe as a dancer dry-humped the air four inches from her face.

“Damn, his print is crazy,” Nicole hollered over the bass, nearly knocking over her drink leaning forward for a better look.

“Girl, please.” Amina sucked her teeth and tossed a crumpled dollar onto the stage like she was throwing away trash. “My baby daddy is packing way more than that. I’m used to bigger.”

I reached for my Patrón and rolled my eyes.

Amina was Paris’s best friend, which meant she was glued to our circle whether I liked it or not.

Her baby daddy just happened to be Dexter Nash, my former best friend and the man who currently held the undisputed Most Hated title on my personal shit list. She wasn’t lying about his size though.

I knew that firsthand, and the memory alone still made me want to throw something.

Dex was Eli's cousin and as teenagers we became best friends. He was always at Eli's house and I was always at London and Paris's. We bonded over track and anything competitive. For years it was platonic and easy between us. Our bond never needed a label.

Then came Paris and Kyson’s destination wedding in Jamaica four years ago.

We were posted up on the beach after the reception, high off a blunt we'd been passing back and forth, and drowning in rum punch under a sky full of stars.

Our usual back and forth shifted into something charged and dangerous.

Guards down, inhibitions gone, one touch of his soft full lips on mine and I was weak.

He had me stretched out in the sand making promises with his body that his heart had no intention of keeping.

The sex was so good I fell asleep that night quietly mapping out our future in my head.

The waterfront home, the kids, all of it.

Reality slapped me hard at breakfast the next morning. I was ready to spill everything to London when I heard Amina at the other end of the table, laughing and bragging about how Dex had put it on her right before the ceremony.

That man had started his morning in Amina’s bed and ended his night stretched out in the sand with me, and never once flinched about either one. He hadn’t just crossed a line. He crossed it, came back, and crossed it again.

Niggas will be niggas, the streets say. Dex wasn’t just some nigga to me though. He was my person. That was the part that never fully healed, no matter how many times I told myself I was over it.

I knocked back my shot and let the burn settle in my chest where the anger lived.

I was still stewing when one of the dancers drifted over.

He was dark-skinned, built like LL in his prime and smelled like cocoa butter and bad intentions.

He gestured for London to take a seat in the chair they’d set up near the stage, and she plopped down in it squealing while he worked around her.

The whole table erupted. Something about the energy shifted and before I knew it I was on my feet too, tossing singles and hollering right along with everybody else.

Then his eyes found mine and stayed there a beat too long.

“Damn,” he grinned, his gaze moving over my curves slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. “You fine. Thick as hell, too.”

I glanced over at London and then back at him. “Baby, tonight ain’t about me. That’s your focus right there,” I said, nodding toward my cousin.

He laughed low and kept coming anyway.

I took a step back. He was faster.

He caught me by the waist and lifted me clean off the floor before I could protest, and my legs wrapped around him on pure instinct. I’m a solid two hundred plus, but he held me like I was light as a feather. My body responded before my brain could remind it that this wasn’t the plan.

“Okay, okay, she’s the bride,” I laughed, tapping his shoulder. “Put me down and go do your job.”

He set me down slow and deliberate, in no kind of hurry. I smoothed my dress down just to have something to do with my hands because my face was telling on me and I knew it. The last time a man handled me with that kind of effortless strength it was Dex, and I hated that my body still kept score.

“Bitch, he had you elevated!” Nicole hollered, nearly choking on her drink. “I thought he was about to rearrange your entire soul on this table.”

Amina fanned herself beside her, her eyes cool as they slid over to me. “The way he lifted you though, whew chile, I know that man’s back is probably screaming right now.”

The shade was thick enough to trip over.

She had been low-key beefing with me ever since Paris told her about what happened in Jamaica. Paris was trying to look out for her friend. Amina, like a lot of women who love the wrong man too hard, decided it was easier to hate me instead of Dex.

I met her gaze with a slow smile.

“My size has never been a problem for a man who actually knows what to do with it,” I said evenly. “Big players can’t do nothing with a skinny hoe anyway. They need something real they can hold onto.”

Silence dropped over the table.

Paris set her cocktail down and pressed her fingers to her temple like she felt a headache coming on. “Y’all please do not start this tonight. This is London’s party.”

Amina rolled her eyes and looked away. Her smirk disappeared, replaced by a tight ugly line of resentment she didn’t bother hiding.

My phone buzzing in my purse saved us all from whatever came next.

I saw Kel’s name on the screen and something in me immediately loosened. I stood up, smoothed my dress down, and headed for the exit.

“Hey beautiful,” I said, stepping out into the cool March air. The quiet wrapped around me all at once after all that noise and heat inside.

“You okay?” she asked, her eyes already searching my face through the screen the way they always did.

“Just a little overwhelmed. The dancers are a lot.”

She laughed softly. “I bet. What time are you coming home? I can’t sleep without you.”

“Soon. I was thinking about swinging by Waffle House first. You want anything?”

“Skip Waffle House and come straight home. I’ll make you breakfast myself.”

“That’s why I love you.”

“You know I love taking care of you,” she said, her voice dropping into that easy tone that always made me feel settled. “Text me when you’re leaving.”

We said our goodbyes and when the screen went dark I stood there a moment just breathing in the night air.

I had a woman at home who catered to my every want and need.

Kel never once made me feel like I was too much or not enough.

Meanwhile, Amina was going home to an empty house while Dex had their daughter for the weekend.

I had won. I told myself that every single day.

The wedding in Mexico was one week away though, and no amount of self-talk was going to change what that meant. I was going to be breathing the same tropical air as Dexter Nash. I was going to have to look at the man who broke something real inside me and smile like I was perfectly fine.

I hated him.

I hated myself more for the way every detail of him still lived in my body like muscle memory. The weight of his hands, the sound of his voice, the exact way he felt inside me that night in Jamaica when we both should have known better.

I tucked my phone into my purse and walked back inside to celebrate my cousin’s last days of freedom.

Some things you just have to survive twice.