Chapter 36 Mehar
MEHAR
I had never been to a party where nobody was afraid.
My father’s house had gatherings that looked like celebrations from the outside but felt like performances from the inside.
Everyone smiling because they were supposed to.
Everyone laughing at the right moments because not laughing meant consequences.
Ahmad’s family events were worse. They were filled with silent women serving food to loud men who didn’t acknowledge them.
But this…Rita’s eighty-fifth birthday in a private room at the Banks family casino was something I’d only ever seen in movies.
The room was gorgeous. High ceilings, dark wood paneling, ambient lighting that made everything look golden.
The casino wasn’t open to the public yet so we had the entire space to ourselves, and the Banks family had turned it into something between a supper club and a house party.
Long tables with white linen and candles.
A DJ in the corner playing old school R&B.
Frankie Beverly, Maze, the Isley Brothers blasted through the speakers.
A bar fully stocked with Banks Reserve everything.
Braised short ribs with a red wine reduction, lobster mac and cheese, collard greens with smoked turkey, jalapeno cheddar cornbread, shrimp and grits with andouille sausage, blackened salmon, and lamb chops with a rosemary glaze was on rotation. Rita had requested the menu herself.
Rita sat at the head of the table in a silver sequined dress with a tiara on her head that one of Justice’s daughters had placed there.
She couldn’t see it but she could feel it and she hadn’t taken it off all night.
She looked like a queen who had earned every jewel in her crown through decades of holding a family together with nothing but love and an iron will and apparently a shotgun she kept in her closet that everyone pretended not to know about.
“This casino is something else,” Rita said, running her hand along the edge of the table.
Her cloudy eyes swept the room even though they couldn’t see it clearly anymore.
“Your grandfather would’ve lost his mind in here.
Alexander loved a good time. He would’ve been at that craps table all night losing money and telling everybody he was winning. ”
“That’s where Quest gets it from,” Prime said, and the table laughed.
“Shiiit, I never lose,” Quest said from beside me. His hand was on my thigh under the table and had been there since we sat down. He was so casual and possessive at the same time.
Everyone was there. Prime and Zainab with the twins in matching outfits that Zainab had probably spent an hour coordinating.
Justice with his daughters, Storie and Dream.
Storie was twelve and already gorgeous and Dream was five and running around the room like it was her personal playground.
Mekhi and Zephyr were at the bar doing shots and arguing about something sports-related.
A few cousins and family friends I’d been introduced to throughout the night whose names I was trying to remember.
The only person missing was Serenity. Rita had mentioned her earlier, pulling Quest aside and saying she’d spoken to her that morning on the phone and that she was doing better in rehab.
“She sounds clearer,” Rita had said. “More like herself. She’ll be home soon.
” Quest had nodded and kissed her forehead and I could see the relief in his shoulders even though his face stayed composed.
“Is that young man single?” Rita suddenly asked, pointing her cane in the general direction of the bar where one of Mekhi’s friends was standing.
“Grandma, you can’t even see him,” Justice said.
“I can feel his energy from here. He’s handsome, isn’t he? Somebody tell me if he’s handsome.”
“He’s aight,” Prime offered.
“Aight is good enough at my age. Is he single?”
“Grandma, he’s like thirty,” Quest said.
“And? I said is he single, not is he age-appropriate. I’m eighty-five, baby.
The dating pool is a puddle. Let me have my fun.
” She sipped her champagne and the whole table was in tears laughing.
Dream climbed into Rita’s lap and Rita held her close and whispered something that made Dream giggle and I watched this woman, blind, aging, fierce, hold court over her family with more authority than most CEOs held over boardrooms.
I looked around the table at all of them.
Prime feeding Zainab a bite of oxtail while she held Kheris on her hip.
Justice with his arm around Storie’s chair, whispering something that made her laugh and shove him away.
Mekhi and Zephyr arguing louder now, probably about the Commanders.
Quest’s hand still on my thigh, his thumb tracing slow circles against my skin through my dress.
This was a family. A real one. Messy and loud and imperfect and held together by something stronger than obligation.
They fought for each other. They threw each other in trunks when they had to.
They showed up even when it was hard, and they laughed even when things were heavy, and they loved without conditions even when the people they loved made it difficult.
I had never been part of something like this.
And sitting here, in a sequined dress I’d bought with Quest at Nordstrom, with his hand on my thigh and his grandmother wearing a tiara and his brother feeding his wife oxtail, I felt something crack open in my chest that I’d been keeping sealed shut for years.
Belonging. That’s what it was. I belonged here.
The cake came out on a rolling cart pushed by two servers. It was three tiers, white fondant with gold accents, and “Happy 85th Rita” written in elegant script on the top tier. The room erupted in a very off-key rendition of the birthday song that Rita conducted with her cane from her seat.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Rita said, holding up her hand before anyone could cut it. “This ain’t big enough for a man to jump out of. I specifically requested a male stripper. Now, where he at?”
“Grandma, nobody is jumping out of that cake,” Quest said.
“Then what’s the point of three tiers? You could’ve gotten a sheet cake from Costco and saved the money for my stripper fund.”
“You do not have a stripper fund,” Justice said.
“I do now. Somebody start a GoFundMe.” She pointed her cane at Mekhi. “You. The handsome one’s friend. Do you know how to set up a GoFundMe?”
Mekhi nearly choked on his drink. The room was falling apart with laughter and Rita was sitting there with a straight face like she hadn’t just asked for a GoFundMe for a stripper at her own birthday party and I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt.
Quest leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“I want to show you the rest of the casino.”
“Right now? They’re about to cut the cake.”
“We’ll be back.” His lips brushed my ear when he said it and the temperature of my entire body shifted by about ten degrees. He stood up and offered me his hand and I took it because at this point saying no to Quest Banks was a skill I no longer possessed.
We slipped out of the private room while everyone was distracted with cake and Rita’s ongoing commentary about the absence of male entertainment.
Quest led me down a corridor lined with framed blueprints of the casino’s design, past the main gaming floor that was dark and empty and waiting for opening night, and through a door marked “High Rollers Lounge.”
The room was dim. A few poker tables covered in green felt. A blackjack table near the window. A bar that wasn’t stocked yet. Everything still smelled new—fresh paint, new carpet, leather seats that had never been sat in.
Quest locked the door behind us.
“You did not bring me in here to show me poker tables.”
“No, I did not.” He was already walking toward me with that look in his eyes that I’d learned to recognize as the preview to losing my ability to form sentences. “I’ve been staring at you in that dress for two hours and I’ve been very patient and my patience just ran out.”
“Your grandmother is in the next room.”
“My grandmother is three rooms and two hallways away, half blind, and currently trying to crowdfund a male stripper. She’s occupied.”
He lifted me onto the blackjack table. The felt was cool against the backs of my thighs and the absurdity of the situation—sitting on a blackjack table in a casino that hadn’t opened yet during an eighty-five-year-old woman’s birthday party—should have been enough to kill the mood. It was not.
He pushed my dress up my thighs slowly, watching my face the whole time, reading me the way he always did for any sign that I wasn’t okay with this.
I was okay with this. I was more than okay with this.
My body had been responding to his hand on my thigh for two straight hours and the anticipation had wound me so tight that I was vibrating.
He dropped to his knees on the brand new carpet of the High Rollers Lounge and looked up at me from between my legs. “You wore this dress on purpose.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This short ass dress with no stockings and you expect me to sit through dinner without tasting you? That’s cruel, Peach. That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
He pulled my underwear to the side—didn’t take them off, just moved them—and his mouth was on me before I could respond. I gripped the edge of the blackjack table and my head fell back and the sound I made echoed off the walls of the empty lounge.
“Shhh,” he said against me, and I could feel him smiling. “Be quiet. We’re in my casino.”
“Then stop making me loud.”
“Never.” He licked me slow and deep and I bit down on my own hand to keep from screaming.
His tongue was doing things that shouldn’t be legal in a gaming establishment, circling and stroking and finding that spot that made my thighs shake and locking onto it with precision that made me wonder if this man had studied me like a blueprint the same way he’d studied this building.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against me. “Sitting on my table in my casino in this dress looking like everything I ever wanted. You know that? You’re everything I ever wanted, Peach.”
The praise hit different now. It always did with him. It wasn’t performance, wasn’t dirty talk designed to escalate. It was real. He meant every word and I could feel the sincerity vibrating against my skin along with his voice.
“Quest, I want—” I pulled at his shirt, trying to bring him up to me. “I want you. All of you. Right now.”
He paused. Looked up at me with slick lips and dark eyes and an expression that was a war between want and discipline.
“Not yet.”
“Quest. Fuck me.”
“You’re not ready yet.”
“I am ready. I’m telling you I’m ready.”
“Not yet, Peach.”
“Quest—”
“You’re not ready.”
“How do you know what I’m ready for?”
“Because I know you.” He kissed my inner thigh.
“And when I’m finally inside you—” another kiss, closer to the center—“and I will be inside you—” his breath warm against my skin—“you’re going to feel every inch of me.
And it’s not going to be rushed. It’s not going to be on a table.
And you’re damn sure not going to have to be quiet.
” He looked up at me. “So be patient for me. Can you do that?”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.” He went back down and finished what he started, and I came on a blackjack table in the High Rollers Lounge of the Banks family casino with his hand over my mouth and my legs around his head and Rita’s birthday party happening three rooms away.
He stood up, wiped his mouth, adjusted my dress back down, and offered me his hand to help me off the table. I took it and stood on legs that were barely functional.
“You good?” he asked with that half-smile.
“Better than that.”
We walked back down the corridor. I was smoothing my hair and adjusting my dress and trying to make my face look like a woman who had been admiring poker tables and not getting her soul extracted on one.
Quest was beside me looking completely composed because that man could commit a felony and walk away looking like he just left a board meeting.
He opened the door to the private room and we stepped inside and I knew immediately that something had changed.
The music was off. The laughter was gone.
The energy that had filled this room twenty minutes ago—the warmth, the joy, the family—had been replaced by something cold and still.
Everyone was standing. Prime had Zainab behind him.
Justice had his phone in his hand. Mekhi and Zephyr were flanking the door like security.
Rita was still in her seat but her face had changed, the playfulness stripped away and something ancient and hard in its place.
And in the center of the room stood a man I didn’t recognize. He was wearing a courier uniform and holding an envelope, and the expression on his face said he wanted to be anywhere on earth except in this room right now.
Quest’s hand tightened on mine.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Nobody answered. Prime looked at Quest. Justice looked at the floor. And Rita, Rita turned her cloudy eyes toward her grandson’s voice and said two words that made the room feel like it had dropped ten degrees.