A couple notes:

- if you haven't read any of the N&Ts books, you might wanna get on that soon bc context is needed from them, specifically Bounce Back, in order to fully appreciate Power Forward

- the following excerpt is only lightly edited so pls excuse any errors that may occur in the text

***

Zebediah

Ain’t too late to get with the winning team at the Conrad. -Zeb

Wifey’s first time in Vegas and she wants the strip experience. I’m still comin’ down there to raid your minibar though. - Big Bruh

Does flexin’ this hard mean I can charge my spa services to the room, bubba? - Jahbaby

I laughed at the two of them being the first to respond while the twins probably wouldn’t bother chiming in. Micah was a damn miser who, even when I offered to foot the bill, never took me up on the offer to live life a little lavishly. The shit was crazy considering how flighty and all over the place he’d been in his twenties. I guess having a kid and settling down with his lady had changed his point of view. And Mickey wouldn’t be caught dead being anywhere that was not where her husband was, so I knew convincing them to stay anywhere outside of the provided accommodations was a lost cause.

Whatever’s clever, babygirl. - Zeb

Are we still on for dinner by you and Jah? - Big Bruh

Yeah, I made reservations for eight at Fuhu at 8. - Zeb

Make that nine. Kyra’s coming. - Double

Unbidden a grin came to my face at that news. Kyra was my younger sister’s best friend and in another life, my future wife. My sister would shit herself if she ever heard me express the idea, but from the moment I’d been introduced to her spitfire of a best friend there had been an undeniable chemistry that crackled between the two of us. Since she was like a sister to my little sister, I kept it player, reciprocating the flirtatious energy she always exuded when we were in the same room, but never taking it past that.

But I’d be damned if I hadn’t wanted to. Kyra was a bite-size portion of temptation with her smooth brown skin, standing no taller than five foot five, and a curvy body that women were out here paying for. All of that paired with her warm, expressive brown eyes, button nose, and cupid’s bow lips that were always painted in some shade of red whenever I saw her made for quite the stunner.

Aw shit, now I gotta make sure I look extra good for my future baby mama. - Zeb

Zebediah, please. I don’t know who’s worse between you and her. - Double

Why you wanna fight fate, Dub? Don’t be a hater all your life. - Zeb

🤬😤🖕- Double

Please don’t get her started, Z. - Trouble

Damn, here comes the fun police. I’ll modify the res, Dub. See y’all later. - Zeb

***

After my workout I made my way back up to the room, surprised at hearing two feminine voices engaged in conversation as I entered the room. Assuming that either our sister or sister-in-law had accompanied her down to check out the suite, I walked directly into the second bedroom talking shit.

“Mmmmhmmm, I told y’all to get with the winning team, this shit nice, right?” I crowed, making my way into the space.

“Ummmm, knocking is still a thing, rudeness,” Jahel instantly shot back. “What if me or Kyra weren’t dressed?”

Hearing the name made my head snap to the other side of the room where Kyra stood near the window with her arms crossed and a grin of amusement curving her mouth. Goddamn, she looked good.

“My bad, future baby mama,” I said, returning her grin. “I would apologize, but you already know how we get down.”

“Hey, Zebediah,” Kyra crooned as her eyes did a quick, but efficient sweep of my form.

“I’m tellin’ Mickey on y’all,” Jahel teased.

“Hush, brat,” I replied.

“I hope it’s not too much of an imposition,” Kyra’s honey-coated voice rang out as she moved back closer to where Jahel and I were standing.

“Seeing your beautiful face is never an imposition, only a pleasure,” I replied smoothly as Jahel rolled her eyes.

“Kyra’s hotel reservations got randomly canceled and instead of her trying to find a new room, I told her she could just bunk with us. We’ve got more than enough room here.”

“Absolutely. That ain’t no problem at all,” I said, still eyeing Kyra.

She was dressed simply, in an abstract printed dress, but the way it clung to her curves had me panting damn near as loudly as I had been when I’d hopped off the treadmill earlier.

“Great, now can you take that sweat and funk on into your room. You’re fuckin’ up the vibe in here,” Jahel quipped.

I could see Kyra suppressing a laugh in response.

“You think you’re real cute, huh kid?” I said, turning and advancing on Jahel like I was about to go after her. That was enough to make her squeal and skitter across the bed, closer to where Kyra stood as I laughed and made my way out of their room.

“You’re so childish,” Jahel called out after me.

“I’m sure you’ll make me pay for that later,” I called back.

She’d already taken the initiative to invite Kyra to stay here without checking with me, so I knew that Jahel’s decision-making when it came to anything else during our stay would go in pretty much the same manner. That was her m.o. She got away with murder being the baby of the family. Jahel’s motto was always take action first and repent later. We all indulged her, me maybe a little too much of everyone, so she’d grown accustomed to this just being the way.

I was in no way put out by Kyra’s presence in my suite however. Even though I couldn’t do more than look, I’d certainly be appreciating the view.

This was unplanned, but Will and Ciji decided they wanted y’all to see how they spent Love Day and who are me to deny you the pleasure of witnessing.

Synopsis: Will and Ciji's first Valentine's Day culminates in quite the eventful evening.

Get into the short here: https://www.theshopbynicolefalls.com/products/tied-a-preston-brothers-short

well, here we are at day 365/365. and i couldn’t be happier. whew shit. bitch i made it. i’d told my friend earlier this month that i wanted to write a new years novella. then i got SICK SICK and that went on hold. then an idea came outta nowhere and i let it blossom into this lil shorty orty that i hope y’all enjoy. let me know in the comments.

it has no title. hell the character barely have names. and most of the errors been cleaned up. :)

happy new year. see y’all in 2023. :)

“Get your ass down here and save what you want, otherwise it’ll all be going to the dumpster,” was how I’d been greeted just a few days before Christmas. The plan had always been for me to make my way home and spend about ten days with my family and hometown friends and then return to my life back in the city where I currently lived. Initially I had planned on flying, but I was glad that my citizenship in Procrasti Nation stayed on the up and up since now I could just make the drive just in case there were things from my childhood home that I would want to bring back to my place. Of course I’d been home countless times over the years and snagged things here and there, but for the most part, the majority of my personal effects had been packed up by my mother long ago when she’d turned my childhood bedroom into a guest room in the house nearly a decade ago. 

 I’d been expecting a call about collecting my things to come in the new year since Ma had been hinting at her and Dad wanting to move out of the house in which they’d raised me and my brother for the past year. I also knew that she was famous for moving on her own timetable, so to have it sprung on me with no notice shouldn’t have been that much of a shock. Marianne Charles marched to the beat of her own drum and the rest of us were forced to either learn the cadence or stay off beat.

Apparently, she and Dad had already found, bid on, then closed on a townhome that was half the size of our family homestead on the other side of town closer to my brother Cade and his clan. Over the past few weeks, Ma and Dad had been slowly moving into the new place and getting the one where we’d made memories to last more than four lifetimes ready to be placed on the market for some new, young family to make even more memories. She had decided that she wanted the new year to be their new start, so the old house needed to be completely empty and ready for the cosmetic upgrades that they were making before putting it on the market.

I’d arrived on Christmas Eve Eve to a house that was half-empty, half-ransacked and given the mission of not only helping Ma get things ready at the new place for Cade, Jeanine, and the kids to come over for the holiday, but to also help her sort through the shit left in the old house to aid in the downsizing. So the majority of my time home had been spent doing manual labor. Of course, it wasn’t until I was damn near scheduled to leave that she actually let me get into the things she’d summoned me down here to really sort through. So here I was on New Year’s Eve, in my childhood bedroom bright and early, shuffling through an assemblage of storage bins that served as a retrospective of my formative years.

Happy holidays, indeed.

The plan had been to spend the most of the day sorting through this stuff, seeing if there was actually anything worth keeping, and then skedaddling my ass over to my friend Ava’s for NYE evening shenanigans. She’d gotten us some VIP tickets for some bougie ass party that one of her friends had put together at one of the new downtown boutique hotels. The name of the party was kinda corny, Bling in the New Year, but I had a fly ass dress that made me look like a “chocolate disco ball babe” in the words of Ava. I couldn’t wait to get champagne wasted, dance my ass off, and bring in the new year with my bestie. But first, I had to slog through this work. My childhood bedroom and one of the other spare guest rooms were the last that we had to get through, so I was in here while Ma took care of the other.

“This lady is insane,” I grumbled as I drug yet another bin from the closet in my childhood bedroom. 

I thought I was a packrat, but my mother had me beat by far. However, she was an organized as hell packrat, having sorted all of the items left in this house that were associated with me in any fashion into Rubbermaid bins, labeled by decade. I’d gone through the bins from my undergraduate and post-grad years already, not seeing anything in there that was actually worth keeping beyond a few pieces of jewelry that I’d completely forgotten had existed. Now I was about to start going through the bins that contained my junior high and high school days. I howled with laughter as soon as I opened the bin because on top was a picture from the post-prom trip that me and my high school crew had taken at Six Flags. Terrible hairstyles and airbrushed t-shirts were a-plenty. I snapped a quick pic of the picture and sent it out in a group text, joning on everybody in the pic, including myself. I was so glad to be loosed of the baby hair demon that had its clutches deeply embedded in me back in those days. The baby hair queen herself Candace Parker wished she was as cold with the baby hairs as I was back then. 

Tossing my phone onto the floor next to me, I took a journey back in time as I sifted through that bin. Getting lost in the memories of a time when life was as simple as trying to decide if I was gonna wear my KSwiss with a tennis skirt and polo on some preppy, Ashley Banks type shit or if I was gonna give the folks an Aaliyah vibe with the baggy Tommy Hilfiger jeans and oversized graphic tees. There were a shit ton of photo albums, littered with prints from disposable 35mm cameras which were my jam back then. I was a paparazzi ass bitch before the term had become commonplace. I spent way too much time flipping and sending photos of those pics to friends and family members, reminiscing on the good times in my past, some I’d completely forgotten, that they brought to mind. 

Naturally all of those memories were shuffled into the keep pile. I also came across the goo gobs of letters that my friends and I had written each other, pressing them into each other’s hands furtively during passing periods because God forbid we didn’t know each other’s most pressing thoughts in the class periods that we didn’t happen to share. I lost so much time reading and laughing at the campy ass drama we’d managed to create in our adolescence. Those WB teen dramas didn’t have shit on us, okay?

Once I was done sorting everything in those bins into keep and trash piles, then hauling the items to their respective places—the big ass dumpster my parents had rented for the move or the trunk space of my SUV—I hustled back up the stairs to go through the final bin, which contained things from my elementary school years. As I stepped back into the room, my phone buzzed and I picked it up to see a message from Ava. It was a link to a TikTok—I shouldn’t have been surprised honestly—that was like a sizzle reel for the party that we were going to tonight. Apparently the promoters did this annually in different cities around the country and our hometown was their latest place of expansion. I was already excited for the evening, but seeing the decor and the extraordinary number of fine ass Black people in attendance had me even more hype. I texted some version of that sentiment back to Ava before doubling back to TikTok and watching the video again. Naturally that led to me completely abandoning the task at hand as I mindlessly scrolled the app, laughing at the ridiculous things that popped up and scrolling past the cringey ass staged or curated content that always gave me secondhand embarrassment. I was about to put my phone down when the next video that shuffled on immediately caught my attention as the man in it was fine as hell. I quickly calculated his features, each one more entrancing than the next. Deep cacao colored skin. Low cut caesar with the deep waves. Bushy brows, with a scar bisecting one of them. Hooded brown-black eyes that pierced me through the small screen. A slightly crooked, prominent Nubian nose. Full lips that were a hairsbreadth lighter than his skin and surrounded by the faint scruff of a five o’clock shadow.

“Sheesh,” I muttered to myself, not paying much attention to the words coming out of his mouth until my eyes focused on a phrase in one of the captions displayed on the screen.

Future wife.

That was enough to intrigue me into futzing around with the app until his video was back at the beginning and I listened with keen attention this go around.

“Welp, here we are coming to the end of yet another year and here I am yet again wondering when my future wife is gonna appear. I’ve been searching hard as hell for you. And it’s rough out in these streets tryna find your ass, girl. But I ain’t giving up just yet. I know I’ll know you when I see you, future wife. On the off chance that you see this, I’ll be at Bling in the New Year on New Year’s Eve, looking forward to your arrival. Love, your future husband.” 

He ended his little impassioned speech with a panty-wetting grin that had me running that shit back one more time. Something about him felt familiar, but I knew that I didn’t know this man from a can of paint so I was buggin’. That didn’t stop me from having a little what if moment with myself before rolling my eyes and closing the app so I could get back to work. But not before I’d shared the TikTok with Ava. When my phone rang a mere three minutes later, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“So naturally you’re going to find this man tonight, yes?” were Ava’s first words when the FaceTime call connected.

“What happened to… hello? How are you? My name is? What happened to that?” was my response and the both of us immediately busted out laughing at me meeting her greeting with a popular TikTok sound. We clearly spent way too much time on the app.

“Hey, baby. How much more do you have to go before you’re on your way here?” Ava asked.

“One last bin, then I’m gonna run my car over to Cade’s so I can park it in their garage. There’s nothing of value in my car for real, but I don’t want anyone to get any ideas if they peek in the backseat and see all of the boxes and what not, you know?”

“Mmmhmm. So you want me to pick you up from Cade’s?”

I shook my head. “Jeanine is gonna drop me at your loft, so we’re all good on that front. I’ll need a ride back over there though whenever I recover from tonight,” I finished, sticking my tongue between my teeth as I grinned.

“Right, back to the lecture at hand. Baby boy is fine fine, Ri. You can’t tell me that you aren’t tempted to keep your eyes peeled when we’re at Bling in tonight.”

I held up a hand and ticked off my fingers as I spoke. “One—didn’t you tell me this was a franchise? Who’s to say he’s gonna be at our Bling in party. Two—tonight is supposed to be a bestie turnup. And three—girl you really think I’m gonna be yet another thirst bucket in a Flavor of Love style gauntlet challenge to win this man over? Wow, it be ya own bestie…”

“Wow, whatever happened to your sense of adventure? Your sense of competition?” Ava replied, giggling.

“Now you know damn well I don’t chase, I lie in wait,” I shot back, joining in her laughter.

“And on that note, I’m out. Please make sure you get here quickly because I actually wanna be on time for this party so I can attack the seafood towers before gen pop gets their grubby hands on them.”

“I thought we were in VIP?” I asked.

“We are, but that doesn’t mean some rapscallions won’t find a way to get their asses beyond the velvet ropes.”

Rapscallions? I was always taken so off guard when Ava brought a word out of her vocabulary that gave the impression that she was a modern negro Brontë sister.

“Okay, sis. Let me finish up here and I’ll see you soon.”

“Later, baby!”

I started going through the final bin and once again found myself distracted when I came across some more photo albums. With full and earned arrogance I could say that I really was a cute ass kid. When I came across a photoset that looked like I was a flower girl in somebody’s wedding, I was hella confused because I couldn’t recall ever doing so. Flipping further through the book, I came across some more photos of me and who I assumed to be the ring bearer holding hands. We were adorable as hell, two cute lil chocolate drops outfitted in all white. I squinted, trying to make out the face of the ring bearer to see if that would give me any clue as to whose wedding this was. After a couple moments, I gave up the ghost, instead choosing to go find my mother and see if she could provide some insight.

“Ma, whose wedding was I in?” I asked, walking into the room where she was packing up the last of a few scattered items into a box marked donations.

“Huh?” she asked, face scrunched up as she turned in my direction.

“These pictures,” I said, holding the photo album toward her.

She grabbed it from me, flipped a couple pages, then began chuckling.

“Oh, baby you weren’t in a wedding. It was your wedding.” 

“Ma, say what now?”

“Oh I’d forgotten all about this,” she said as she kept paging through, squealing with delighted laughter. “Chile you know you always had a flair for the dramatic. You remember the Williamsons who used to live next door to us?”

I frowned as I wracked my brain to remember, but ended up just shaking my head.

“They didn’t live over there long, but you and their little boy Armon were thick as thieves from the moment you first met. And when you found out that they were moving you insisted on staging this wedding because if he was your husband then he would have to stay. We put together a little ceremony to appease you, but whew, baby you cried the block into a flood when you realized that it was all for show because they ended up leaving regardless.”

“Why do I have no recollection of any of this?” I replied amusedly.

“Oh baby doll, I have no idea. Though it was a bit traumatic for you. Perhaps you just suppressed the memory,” Ma cajoled.

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Okay, girl. You almost done in here?” She and I had ridden over together. Once we were all done,  I was dropping her off, retrieving my things to get ready at Ava’s, then dropping my car at Cade’s.

“Yes, ma’am. We can leave this box here since your daddy is gonna come by and load everything up to take down to the secondhand shop in a few days. Thank you so much for helping me get this all together, baby doll. You know I appreciate you more than words can express.”

“You say that like I had a choice,” I joked, then quickly corrected once I saw Ma’s face starting to frown up. “You know I’m always down to help you, ol’ lady.”

“Aht aht, watch who you callin’ old, lil girl? I’m the one who makes sure your daddy can still keep it up,” she replied.

“Ma,” I dragged out with a groan.

“Hey, you brought that answer on yourself,” she replied with a shrug and a grin.

With that I went to collect the last of my things from my former childhood bedroom, then we headed out.

Once I got to Ava’s, I was feeling overcome by the festive mood that the end of the year always sparked in me. I loved thinking about the experiences of the past three sixty-five and what they’d taught me before we moved into a fresh set of days, ripe with lessons, blessings, and all sorts of unknown adventure. The sounds of the disco horse blared through Ava’s in-house system as she and I stood shoulder to shoulder putting the finishing touches on our hair and makeup for the evening. As we finished, Ava took a step back giving me a once over then turning back to blow herself a kiss in the mirror before saying, “I now pronounce us two bad bitches! Let’s get it!”

Her infectious energy always turned me up, so I followed her out of her vanity room and out into the living room, hyping her up along the way as we danced—popping and twirling and swirling to every rhythmic measure of the music before silencing it on our way out of the door. She’d hired a black car service to drive us to the party in style and it was stocked with a freshly uncorked bottle of Beau Joie. The drive to the venue where the party was being held wasn’t long, but Ava commandeered the aux of the car so we could continue our disco horse soiree as we sipped fine bubbly. It felt like a waste that we’d each only had a flute’s worth of the pricey champagne before we needed to get out of the car and Ava agreed, snagging the bottle and carrying it as an accessory as we took photos on the red carpet leading into the party.

That alone should have let me know I was in for a memorable night. The VIP section of the party was lit as hell. Getting there early to attack the aforementioned seafood towers was a good call on Ava’s part. We gorged ourselves on king crab, shrimp, and oysters as we sipped nothing but champagne for the majority of the night. I even tried caviar for the first time—not really for me—and felt decadent as hell. Just like in that sizzle reel TikTok I’d seen earlier in the day there was no shortage of fine ass people in attendance at this party. That felt damn near like a requirement as the night carried on and I kept seeing fine ass after fine ass. 

Ava and I were mainstays on the dancefloor, dancing either with one another or whatever handsome faced stranger found the invitation that our constantly winding hips offered too alluring to resist. The music was all over the place, but in the best ways possible. I heard songs I’d completely forgotten about from my youth deftly weaved into contemporary hits with ease. The only time I was off the dance floor was if me or Ava needed to refresh our drinks or to catch a breath of fresh air since it was getting pretty thick up in here the nearer we drew to the midnight hour.

Intermittently that man from the TikTok looking for his future wife popped into my mind as I looked at the crowd around me. I bet he hadn’t realized just how many damned people would be trying to Bling in the New Year alongside him when he’d put out that little video. Or hell, maybe that had been its purpose after all, drumming up some last minute excitement as marketing to entice more people to be in the place to be. Despite the bevy of fine I’d seen thus far, that particular brand of fine had yet to come in my purview. Not that I was looking for him in specific or anything.

When we were moments away from the countdown, I looked around to try and find Ava. I’d lost track of her when I was deep in my moment of telling folks to move out the way because me and my girls needed space. Once that song wound down and I still hadn’t laid eyes on her, I was getting a bit worried. I did a lap around the party, starting with the bar area to see if she was getting a refresh. No such luck so I headed toward the bathrooms. I could hear the DJ on the mic saying we were in the last minute of the year as begin his countdown from sixty. Around forty-five seconds, I’d found Ava, tucked deep into a corner with one of the broad-shouldered fines that had been circling us earlier in the evening.

Happy New Year to you, sis!

Not wanting to disturb that groove, I did a swift about face, trying to head into the opposite direction to join the now screaming throng of people counting down from twenty. Instead I was met with a face full of solid flesh. I pulled back instantly, apologies spilling from my lips as I rolled my eyes up to take in the face of the person who I’d run into.

“Ten, nine, eight…” the crowd roared as I stared into what was now a familiar face.

“It’s you,” I breathed as our eyes locked.

“Four, three, two…”

As the numbers descended, so did the stranger’s face, drawing closer to mine and capturing the gasp of surprise right off of my mouth as his pillowy soft lips collided with mine. I felt no urge to push him away as I got swept up into the passion that he imbued via little nibbles and nips at my lower lip until I opened up and invited his tongue inside to tangle with mine. He pulled back and I opened my eyes, feeling more drunk from this kiss than any of the champagne that I’d imbibed all evening. 

With an impish lift of one, scar-bisected brow, his lips curved into a smirk before he said, “Happy New Year, future wife.”

I was drawn out of my musings by the sound of my phone going off with a video call, so I reached over to where it was charging at my bedside to see who it was. I should have known it could only be one person considering that she was the only one who ever called me this soon after the sun had made its ascent into the sky. With a grin settled onto my face just from seeing her picture on my phone, I swiped eagerly, greeting her with an enthusiastic, “Hey, Lovey!”

“Good morning, my sweets,” my grandmother trilled. “Ok, spill it! How was everything? I want all the dirty details.”

My grandmother Lovey was everything to me. My biggest champion, my greatest comforter. She’d had to step into the role of rearing me right after she’d lost her only child and she had done so seamlessly. I had been a mess then, a fresh eleven years old and unable to conceive a world wherein the person who had been the center of mine previously no longer being with us. Since we’d lived clear across the country, my relationship with Lovey before my mom’s death had been decent enough, but we’d definitely grown way closer the older I got. She was the first person I called whenever I got news—good, bad, or indifferent.

A scheduling conflict had precluded her from being able to make the party last night, so I knew she’d be on my line bright and early this morning asking me about it. Lovey was in her seventies but was still as mobile and agile physically and mentally as she’d been decades earlier. She couldn’t make the festivities last night because she was the keynote speaker at a professional conference for writers. In addition to being my loving and caring grandmother, she was also a well-respected author of ten novels as well as a professor of English language and literature at a prestigious HBCU.

“It was amazing, Lovey. I wish you could have been there because your girl Kysre was in the building.”

“From Pretty Baked?” Lovey squealed. “Oh I just love that show! You didn’t say that there were going to be people from Sizzle Network there, too!”

“You knew there would be the possibility though since they’re sister networks with CanDo. I told her how you were a massive fan and she insisted that we keep in touch because she’s a major fan of your work and would love for you to come on an episode of the show in the future.”

“Ciji, I know you are lying to me!”

“Swear it, Lovey! Girl, don’t act like your name doesn’t ring bells in these streets still.”

“I suppose,” she answered with a smug little grin on her face. “All right we can circle back to all of this because you know what I am really calling for. How was it? Finally meeting your little boyfriend in the flesh. Give me all the dirty details.”

I grimaced, thinking about how that meeting was the exact opposite of what Lovey had been hoping for me.

“Oooh, what’s that face, sweets?” she said with a concerned frown.

“Forget anything I ever said about William Preston before because he is now at the top of my hit list!”

Lovey gasped. “No way!”

I shook my head vehemently. “Yes, way,” I replied before launching into the whole story about how he’d behaved toward me all evening when I’d done nothing to him.

When I finished, Lovey had a funny look on her face.

“Uh oh. What’s that look about?”

“You said he had been looking at you from across the room all night?” Lovey asked.

I nodded.

“And he didn’t have a word to say when you were finally within striking distance?”

“Yeah.”

“And he hustled his narrow behind away the moment it became apparent that he could no longer avoid having an interaction with you?”

“Sure. I am not quite sure what this line of questioning is supposed to help me conclude beyond doubling down on him being a rude, and potentially jealous, butthead.”

“Or, a man enamored with a woman and taken aback by how strongly he’s attracted, so he was trying to appear aloof and play it cool.”

“Oh please, Lovey! Weren’t you the one who adamantly lectured me on not giving into the ‘if he messes with you that means he likes you’ train of thought when it came to boys in my youth?” I screeched incredulously.

“I did. And I stand on that one hundred percent, but… I don’t know, sweets. That’s not the read I’m getting here based on what you’ve said to me.”

“Well it’s the read I got being in the midst of it all, so… trust me on this one. That man is not checking for me like that.”

“Famous last words, my sweets,” Lovey replied with a chuckle.

“Yeah yeah,” I grumbled as we chatted a bit further and then rang off the call altogether.

Despite me putting my grandmother off, I was secretly amused and somewhat thrilled at the prospect she’d offered me. Had I just been reading his energy wrong the entire time? Were those looks of disdain just artfully concealed desire? Had I misread the snort of derision I’d heard when Wayland had called me a sibling of theirs? I shook my head to snap myself out of it. Even if what Lovey was thinking had some merit, I really wasn’t in the business of entertaining men who weren’t mature enough to just express their feelings directly instead of doing all of the subliminal shit.

Thankfully, the odds of me sharing space with him again any time soon would be slim to none, so I just needed to not even give any of these thoughts the space to roam around my brain. As far as I was concerned, whatever problem William Preston had with me was something he needed to work out between himself and God.

A few things:

• Patreon saw this first. I tasked my patrons to provide prompts using a specific set of parameters & I wrote shorts based on ‘em.

• if you haven’t read Hunger, you should prolly skip this

• If you’re not a fan of short stories, you should prolly skip this.

Now that that’s out of the way, enjoy!

Troi

I could not believe that we’d let Lenita talk us into taking this damned trip with her for her birthday. How six Black women had ended up vacationing in New Mexico was well beyond me at this point. We hadn’t done one of these big girls trip vacations since most of us had turned thirty a few years back and we’d let the nostalgia of just how much fun we typically had together no matter where we were color the fact that nobody beyond the birthday girl had a shred of interest in any of the activities and excursions that she’d planned for us.

Well, wait…let me not lie, I was very much interested in the sunrise hot air balloon ride that we’d be embarking on tomorrow morning. I was wholly disinterested, however,  in this self-guided tour of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe that we were on at the moment, though.

“Troi,” my friend Safiyya whispered as she sidled up alongside me. “Is it just me or are these paintings looking a little…”

She and I were the only two left here at the museum while the rest of the crew had gone on a little excursion that took them out to Georgia O’Keeffe’s residence when she’d lived out in these desert streets. Neither of us cared for another ride of over an hour when we’d already driven about ninety minutes to get here from Santa Fe. So we’d decided to just hang out at the museum and await their return, but honestly? I was ready to beat this joint and go check out one of the local dispensaries. I always liked to keep an eye on what others in the industry had going on, even though my job wasn’t really involved with that part of our business. Plus, I’d damn near run through my little stash of gummies I’d brought with me since I’d decided to be hospitable and share with the other girls who were interested in partaking. I was lamenting the fact of having not brought any flower along.

I looked over at Saf expectantly, waiting for her to continue her sentence, but she just lifted her brows in a suggestive manner and said nothing more.

“Color me slow on the uptake today, Saf, but I’m not picking up what you’re putting down today, babe. You gotta state it plainly.”

Safiyya’s lips curled into a sly grin and I knew I’d just set myself up for some bullshit.

“Nita brought us to a museum full of pussy!” she said with a devious chuckle. “Are we supposed to be getting some hint from this or something? I mean I knew statistically there had to be at least one more of y’all on my team and honestly, I’d pegged Shea as the scissor sister adjacent one. Gotta get my gaydar checked coz Nita didn’t even ping!”

I let out a sharp crack of laughter before shaking my head at Saffiya before replying, “I’m pretty certain that Nita, of all people, would have been told us if she was bi or lesbian, fool! Have you forgotten that we know damn near every detail of every nigga she’s fucked since 2008???”

Saf nodded slowly like she was considering my point, then fervently shook her head. “Nah, it’s way too many pussies on these walls for this to be coincidental.”

“They’re flowers, Safiyyah,” I replied, with a chuckle.

“Tomato, tomahto, let’s agree to disagree,” she shot back with a shrug.

“Well babe, not all of us consistently have pussy on the brain so…I mean…”

“Woooooow, so that’s what we’re on now, Troi?” Saf said, rolling her eyes at me. “C’mon, you don’t see it?”

She pointed to the picture in front of where we were currently standing. I cocked my head from side to side, trying valiantly to see what she was seeing, but falling short.

“Sorry, boo! My pussy doesn't look anything like…” I trailed off and squinted to see the plaque alongside the painting with its name. “...oriental peonies.”

“All right, maybe not this one, but how about that one over there…”

I followed her pointed finger to a painting that was just about six feet away from where we were standing and…shit, Saf might have been onto something. I couldn’t see its name because the writing on the plaque was too tiny for me to decipher, but the soft yellow flower with its folds delicately draping against one another and a distinctly prominent bunching of petals near the top that vaguely resembled a woman’s love button was definitely giving vagina monologue. And as my eyes flitted from that one to the next few paintings in succession, each growing more and more vaginaesque to my viewing, I turned back to a smug looking Saf.

“Mmmmhmmm, you see it now right, pussy as far as the eye can see. Damn, I wish Linnea had come on this trip, this muhfuckin’ gallery got me feeling a way now,” she said with a low moan.

“Ugh, Saf really? Can you not?”

“Whateva heffa. Lemme go FaceTime my love and see if she’ll show me a titty or something to tide me over.”

I expelled a sharp bark of laughter that caused the few folks that were in the space with us to turn in my direction. I turned to scold Saf for bringing attention in our direction, but her ass had already gotten ghost on me. I should have known she was serious about FaceTiming Linnea. Hell those two rarely did anything without the other and I was lowkey surprised that Saf hadn’t pushed the issue and made Nita invite her along. The only rule that we’d had with our girls trips was that no one was to bring a significant other—even if said significant other was a woman.

Ironically enough, it’d been enacted when one of our other LS called herself convincing a dude she was fucking to plan a trip with his guy friends to New Orleans when we were going for Essence Fest so she could have the option to dip out on us for dick. He fell for it after she had him fooled thinking that the rest of us would be gang to entertain his ragtag group of friends who looked straight outta the gutter. And I didn’t meant that as a pejorative for being from the hood, but that them niggas—including the one that Nicki called herself obsessed with—legit came off like they’d just crawled out of hiding with Leonard, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Master Splinter.

I wasn’t mad at Saf for missing her wife though, lord knows I could relate to that. This little birthday trip was hella inconvenient timing in my life since right before it, I’d been on a trip away from home, overseeing the construction of a new dispensary for my company. What was meant to just be a few days turned into me spending over a week in a different city so the few days I’d planned on being face down ass up with my fiancé were interrupted. And when I’d gotten back home, he wasn’t there because he had a fitness conference that he was attending in Durham. Considering that when we were in the same space, we tended to me all up under one another as our schedules permitted, having gone nearly two weeks without any one-on-one time with my man had me feeling a way.

And Tyse knew it too with his little thirst traps and suggestive innuendo comments in every conversation that we’d had in our time apart. Any time I’d tried to shift our innocent convos into naughtier territory, he diverted our course.

“Save it, mama,” he urged me just last night. “And when you get back, you might as well call in some PTO because I’ma be tearing that ass up.”

And because he had my ass wrapped around his thick ass fingers, I’d done exactly that.

Until I was four Casamigos-based beverages deep, immensely horny, and in need of release before I completely exploded. So I’d dipped off from the girls and made my way up to my room on a mission, locking the door behind me. I’d showered and changed into lounge clothes after we’d returned from our Santa Fe excursion and we were supposed to be keeping it lowkey tonight since we had to be up before daybreak for our hot air balloon-ride, but one thing had led to another and I found myself in the current circumstance. Clumsily toppling onto the bed, I FaceTimed Tyse, each ring that passed seeming like it took an eternity, only for him to not even answer.

I gritted out a frustrated groan before I made the executive decision to just get myself off to relieve some of the tension that had my body taut. Since he knew me like the back of his hand, I was certain that Tyson would immediately be able to tell that I hadn’t held out until we were back together and honestly, just the thought of whatever “punishment” would come after he realized had me clenching my thighs together tightly. I didn’t even bother with any external stimulation, letting my imagination lead the way as my hands slid one strap, then the other of the tank I’d paired with leggings to sleep in. I’d just begun to pull it over my head when my phone suddenly sounded off. Flinching like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, I righted my shirt and picked up my discarded phone immediately, swiping to connect the call.

“Hey honey,” I crooned as soon as the call connected and his handsome face was splayed across my screen.

He’d let the facial hair that he typically kept low, grow out a bit, and the scruff was giving him an even more rugged than usual look. I bit down on my lip to suppress the wanton moan that threatened to bubble up from my throat at just the sight of him.

Damn I had it bad.

“What’s good with you, love?” he asked before squinting into the camera and taking full stock of my appearance. “What have you been up to?”

I could tell from his tone he’d known exactly what I’d been trying to get up to before I answered his call, but I tried playing it off anyway.

“Oh, just laid down after having one too many,” I replied breezily, “Wanted your handsome face to be the last thing I saw before I drifted off.”

Tyson smirked. “Are you sure about that?”

“Y-yeah,” I stammered, shifting my position in the bed a bit.

“Your head is in the arm hole and one of your titties is damn near hanging out, babe. I think you were doing a little bit more than drifting off. What’s up with that? I thought you were saving it for when you got home.”

“I can’t hold out any longer,” I whined, not even attempting to fix my clothing.

Tyson’s only response was a low rumble of laughter that went directly to my sweet spot. My chest heaved and clit thumped as we stared at one another wordlessly.

“You gonna make me beg for it?” I whispered after the silence dragged for a little bit past my comfort.

Shaking his head, Tyson replied, “And here I thought we’d finally gotten your willpower up to par. Guess you need more training.”

That one word emitted from his lips instantly sent a shiver up my spine. My mind was instantly transported to the very first time he’d initiated a new element into our lovemaking a few months back. Minutes passing that felt like hours, three scarves, and a nearly unbearable amount of teasing by way of Tyson’s hands, mouth, and dick had come together in unison to make me lose my entire mind in ecstasy when he’d finally allowed me to give into the orgasm that he had been prematurely truncating until he’d finally allowed me to be fully pushed off the cliff of desire in a drenched, babbling lump of woman. His earlier directive of “saving it” for him was pushing the limit and he knew it considering that being brought to or bringing myself to orgasm was one of my tried and true methods of relaxation.

“Tyse, please…” I groaned, already knowing that despite things eventually going my way, it’d take a little bit for me to get the happy ending I so desperately sought.

“You got something you can use to hold up your phone?” he asked, ignoring my plea.

I nodded before jerryrigging my phone against the lamp on the nightstand and repositioning myself so that I was fully in Tyson’s view. I sat with my legs folded beneath me, butt touching the soles of my feet and hands resting atop my thighs, assuming the position I knew he’d have me start in. A few beats of silence passed before a sinister grin spread across Tyse’s face as he directed me to play with my nipples through the thin fabric of the tank I wore. At the first brush of my thumbs against them, my nipples beaded instantly and I let out a low moan at the first feel of the simmering cinders of sensual awareness building in my core.

“All you had was one more day before you got home, mama. You couldn’t even wait that long huh,” Tyson crooned, the sound of his voice instantly increasing the speed of my movements. “Uh uh…nice and slow circles, baby. You know the drill.”

I groaned hard in frustration, but just nodded my head and acquiesced to his directive to continue to circle each nipple with a thumb.

“You mad baby?” he asked in a teasing lilt.

Since the only sounds I emitted were the increased intake of air from my breathing and my face was screwed up into a scowl, he knew exactly what the answer was to that question. With a chuckle, he sat back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head. His shift in position brought my eyes directly to his lap where I could see the outline of his dick coming to life in the thin shorts he wore. Unconsciously I licked my lips and Tyson laughed once again.

“Now if you’d held out, instead of having to recollect exactly how my dick feels against those soft ass lips of yours, you’d be feeling it. But naaaaah, you wanted to be on some other shit.”

“You get on my nerves,” I grumbled, a pout taking over my features as Tyson just shook his head at me.

“Get your ass undressed and let me see my pussy,” Tyson said.

Like I was a winter soldier who’d heard their trigger word, I snapped to moving instantly, flinging the tank I’d been tangled up in over my head and tugging off my leggings in rapid succession. Without waiting for his directive, my hands settled between my thighs instantly seeking out my pussy as if they were magnetized to the area.

“Aht! Did I say you could touch my pussy yet?” Tyson teased.

With the last of the restraint that I had in my body, I rested my hands on my thighs, still spread-eagle, my pussy on full display for Tyson. The simmering lust in his eyes set off a fire within me that burned with wanton insistence.

“Tyse, please,” I moaned, now lightly running my fingertips along my inner thighs.

“One hand on clit, other hand on tit,” he said, then laughed at his silly ass rhyme.

I’d heard it before, already knowing not to get too carried away with my movements at either site or there’d be consequences. I gently flicked my nipple with my right hand and used the middle finger of my left hand to slide against my clit in tandem. Since I was already pathetically sopping wet, the first glancing touch of my finger against my clit made my stomach concave as I cried out sharply. With a strength I mustered out of who knows where, I continued teasing myself much to Tyson’s pleasure as I observed his increased breathing and lowered eyes when I looked up to make eye contact. Feeling bold, I swiped my clit one last time and then brought my hand to my mouth, swirling my tongue around my finger and sucking it like it was the longer and girthier tool that resided in his shorts hundreds of miles away. I smirked when I heard Tyson’s impatient groan and looked up to see that I’d been rewarded with the sight I’d been aching to see. Tyse had rid himself of all of his clothing and the only thing I now saw in the phone’s frame was my beautifully veiny dick with his hand wrapped around it in a tight grasp.

Removing my finger from my mouth, I lowered my hand to my pussy once again, teasing my slit with the finger that had been working my clit earlier. Tyson began to move his hand up and down his shaft. My eyes were riveted to the screen as his disembodied voice encouraged me to fuck myself with my fingers keeping pace with his strokes. He alternated between short, rapid-fire jerks of his hand and long languid caresses with no rhyme or reason. I could feel myself getting wetter with each tempo shift as I let out a series of modulating, keening cries that only consisted of his name and the word yes being repeated in succession.

It must’ve started feeling too good to him as well because instead of making me hold out, Tyson gritted out, “Lemme see my pussy cum for me.” With those words, my hands went to work, bringing me to climax no more than thirty seconds after his command, the walls of my pussy contracting and releasing around my fingers in vain, milking them for a secretion that would never spurt forth from the digits. I heard Tyson’s increased breathing and low groans that let me know he was close to cumming and my eyes were riveted to the small screen of my phone as he shot off, his cum seeping from the tip of his dick in a massive gush. I licked my lips and hummed, wishing I was savoring the flavor of him in my mouth instead of being separated by way too many miles and hours before we would be reunited.

I collapsed backward onto the bed, eyes pointed upward watching as the blades of the ceiling fan swirled about until I had come back into my body. A few moments later, I heard Tyson call my name and I drug myself back up to grab my phone with a silly grin on my face.

“Are you happy now?” Tyson asked with a smirk on his face.

I couldn’t do shit but nod with a big grin, my eyelids feeling heavy with the weight of being completely sated and imminent sleep.

“Gon’ and take your ass to bed, mama. And be ready to make up for not saving this one for me when you get in tomorrow night. Love you.”

“I love you more, honey,” I replied around a yawn.

The sound of the FaceTime disconnecting was all I got back as I settled beneath the covers, giddily falling into slumber knowing that many orgasms greater than the one I’d just had awaited me as soon as I touched down at home.

Welp, allegedly I have a new novella coming sometime this month, so I suppose a sample would be nice, eh? LMAO! Meet Tyson (a personal trainer) and Troian (his favorite client and current obsession). [insert all of the normal disclaimers of this not being the final product, unedited so there may be errors, etc. here] Enjoy!

“There’s an open bar, food on the back wall, and T will be here soon,” Raya called over her shoulder to me as she rushed up to a gathering of three other women near the back of the room.

[***]

I didn’t have long to wait as the door opened and a tall, willowy woman with bright teal hair walked through the door followed in quick succession by Troian and…goddamn. I’d thought she was fine fresh out of the office and soon after a workout, but I was not prepared for “night out on the town with her friends” Troian. She was downright dangerous in the body-hugging dress that hit her mid-thigh and sky high stilettos she wore. I felt like a damned middle schooler, with the way my body just involuntarily responded to her nearness. I had to will my dick to behave as she made her way around the room, greeting everyone who’d gathered. When she reached the group with Raya in it, I saw Raya pointing in my direction as she whispered something in Troian’s ear. Whatever it was made her face light up with humor as she threw her head back in a loud laugh before shoving Raya away from her.

Her greetings to the rest of the folks in the room were briefer than her initial contacts and soon she was standing right in front of me.

“You made it,” Troian remarked with a shy grin.

“Of course, I’m a man of my word,” I replied, reaching into my back pocket to retrieve the small gift box I had for her, “Congratulations, again.”

“You didn’t have to…” she trailed off, her eyes ballooning as she took in the name engraved on the box, “You know what…actually, I’m just gonna be gracious and say thank you because anything Louis Vuitton is way more than you needed to get me.”

“Nothing but the best for my favorite client,” I vocalized smoothly, bringing forth a quick grin to Troian’s face.

“Oh, I’m your favorite, huh?” she quipped, tucking my gift into the clutch she grasped. Moving closer to me, she sniffed at the remnants of the drink I had in my glass, “What you been over here drinking to make you tell that tall tale? No way am I your favorite with the way you torture me!”

I laughed along with her, insisting, “It’s not torture, Troi. It’s me knowing you can do it and pushing your limits.”

A quick look of something I couldn’t quite discern flashed in her eyes before she excused herself to greet the remainder of the folks in the room that she hadn’t personally spoken with.

Before walking completely away from me, she said, “I want you to meet my friend, Jay. He’s looking to break into personal training, and I think you could give him some good insight.”

“Wooooow, so now we get to why you really invited me here,” I joked and Troian aimed a playful punch to my arm.

“Shut up! I invited you here because I wanted you here,” Troian replied, her eyes low and her lower lip pulled between her teeth. “I’ll be right back with Jay though, okay? So don’t get lost.”

Shaking my head, I laughed at her once again, trying to figure out what seemed different about her. At the gym we always had our little back and forth banter, but something about her tonight seemed unlike our normal dynamic. Perhaps it was the two of us being somewhere beyond the gym. I couldn’t quite put a finger of what had shifted though it was definitely noticeable. Before Troi made her way back to me, the volume of the music being piped in from the main space decreased and Raya – flanked by five other women – tapped a mic to get everyone’s attention.

[***]

Troian made her way up to where her girlfriends were gathered amid cheering and clapping from everyone in attendance. When she reached for the mic that Raya held, Raya shook her head.

“Not yet chica, I got one last thing to say to you and I want you to listen to me when I say these words. You’re brilliant and talented and I am proud to call you my sister. There is nothing in this world that you want that you can’t get, you hear me? Nothing. Love you, T,” Raya finished before pulling Troian into a tight hug and whispering some other things that the rest of us weren’t privy to directly into her ear.

[***]

All the women near her pulled her into a massive group hug as a dude approached me.

“Tyson?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Jayveon,” he said, extending a hand for a shake, “TT said she was gonna introduce us, but I got a little anxious. Since yours was the only face I didn’t recognize I figured I’d do the honors myself.”

“Nice to meet you, man. Troi briefly mentioned that she’d wanted us to speak—said you were looking to get into training.”

That was all he needed to launch into his long-winded explanation of how he’d come to looking at fitness and training as a viable career option and now was looking for a mentor of sorts of shepherd him through the process of getting certified, working in a gym, and eventually opening his own gym in the future. I loved what I did so it didn’t take long for me to get caught up in the conversation, offering to step in and help Jay along in his process. Kenny and I had been talking about expanding and hiring more trainers, so this meeting was lowkey right on time for the both of us. We’d been rapping for about twenty minutes when Troi walked up saying, “Oh good, y’all met, so I don’t have to do all of that.”

Jay laughed at her statement, remarking, “Please don’t tell me your lightweight ass is drinking tonight.”

“Blame your sister and her insistence that we do shots,” Troi said with a little giggle.

“They know damn well you shouldn’t be doing shots of anything but water,” Jay said as Troian rolled her eyes at him.

“Anyway, if you’re done monopolizing Tyse’s time…” she said, working her way between us, wrapping an arm around my waist in a move that surprised me. “I’d like to spend some time with my friend.”

Recognized he’d been dismissed, Jay dapped me up before promising to holler at me on Monday via text since we’d also exchanged contact information.

“Ooh, this is my song. Come dance with me!” Troian said suddenly, clasping my hand into hers and dragging me into the middle of the space with no room for me to decline if I wasn’t into the idea.

I didn’t recognize the shit playing through the speakers, but to be fair if the music wasn’t hip-hop made prior to twenty oh six, the chances of me recognizing it was slim to none. The lil beat was smooth though so I kept it simple with a slick two-step as Troian moved with her hands in the air, hips winding, ass grinding against my groin as she sang the lyrics at the top of her lungs along with every other woman who had started dancing and singing along shortly after Troi had turned up. We kept that up for a few more songs, Troian’s moves becoming more and more risky as each song transitioned, her girls cheering her on from the sidelines as she lost herself to the music.

Each sway of those luscious thighs and that fat ass that was just barely covered by the itty-bitty dress she wore sent me closer and closer to the brink as I tried putting a little bit of space between us so that she wouldn’t feel the evidence of what being this close to her was doing to me. I hadn’t felt this out of control of my own shit since I was a damned shorty; employing tactics I hadn’t resulted to in about twenty years so I wouldn’t be sporting a fuckin’ woody for the world to see. I leaned down to speak into her ear, about to beg off for a quick drink break so I could pull myself together. A move I quickly regretted as that brought my dick flush against the pillowy softness of her ass, the already painfully hard muscle growing even tighter at that quick brush. Tossing a naughty smirk at me over her shoulder, Troi grabbed my hands, lacing them across the slight pooch of her tummy as her hips wound, inviting me to catch her rhythm and grind.

I gave up trying to resist, allowing myself this brief moment of indulgence—knowing that the softness of her skin combined with the floral sweetness of the fragrance she wore would be forever embedded in my spank bank for later reference. We weren’t trainer and client right now, just a man and woman engaging in a powerful exchange of sensual energy fueled by the music of the moment. Turning in my arms, Troi looped her arms around my neck, pulling my head down so she could speak into my ear.

“Has all of my hard work so far paid off?” she asked in a breathy sort of whisper as she moved in closer to me; the answer to that question hard and heavy against her thigh.

“Troi, I don’t think…” I started, but she cut me off with a fleeting press of her mouth against mine.

“Don’t think; just act,” she implored me before turning back around, an arm carelessly flung into the air to bring my head down to nuzzle her neck.

Social media is for the highlight reel right? You’re supposed to brag on yourself, show off the shiny things in your possession, high moments only.

Well, not for me.

Sometimes I like to share missteps, failures, tales of falling just short because those things are helpful. At least I find them to be anyway. The above picture is my whiteboard that sits on my desk that I’m supposed to use to:

a) help me keep track of what day it actually is (meaning of the week AND date since WFH life has me in a perpetual state of every day is Saturday)

b) help me keep up with deadlines (both self imposed and those handed down from others)

You’ll see that I have the “release date” for my forthcoming project on there twice. Because when I feel grounded in the story that comes to me, I set a release date. It’s weird and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone but it typically keeps me focused enough to see a thing through til the end. But what I didn’t count on was malaise. It slowly crept into my life just days after the euphoria of beating my January deadline and completely upended my February plans. FAAFO was supposed to be a Valentine’s weekend release, as you can see, but how about the bulk of it wasn’t written until well after the 14th had passed. 😂

And chile I was over here sick about it. Never mind about the fact that I’d LITERALLY just released a project—instead I chose to obsess about not meeting some arbitrary deadline that nobody but me and Jesus knew about. And honestly? If I had met that deadline? I don’t think I would be as in love with the final project as I am now. While I hate that I had to plummet into the depths of sadness that I’d experienced, this was a true blue lesson in slowing the fuck down & breathing.

Remembering my purpose and recalibrating. Exorcising emotions that didn’t serve me well.

Because sometimes we get so caught up in what we aren’t doing (well or at all) that we don’t celebrate what has been done. And as someone who constantly encourages my friends to take a moment to remember just how fucking dope they are, I wasn’t doing that for myself.

Quelle tragique.

But we off that. I remember now. And by sharing this, I hope that you too will take that moment to remember your dopeness. And that where you are is where you are supposed to be in the divine plan of it all. What’s for you to have is just within your grasp. No need to rush it because it WILL come. You just gotta exercise a little patience and wait for it. Keep doing the work in the meantime though. Because the reward follows the doing; not the whining/complaining/what iffing/why not meing.

That’s my $.02 anyway.

hi friends. been gone for a minute, now i’m back with the jump off. first things first, i gotta say that i had no designs on writing this story…more on that later, but for now, here’s a wee sample of my forthcoming release, f*ck around and find out - a companion novella to a crowd favorite, f*ck and fall in love. this time we’re following Jane’s bestie Ebonée & her journey to happily ever after. of course we get snatches and peeks of Jane & Nigel along the way, but they’re not central to this narrative. FAAFO is now up for preorder, releasing on Friday the 26th! ok enough of my spiel, keep reading if you’re interested in getting a lil sample!

There were nearly ten years between Emory and me, so he was like my little baby as well as my little brother. With the age gap between us, however, our friend circles had never really overlapped so while I’d remembered his homeboy, I wasn’t exactly close to him, especially with them being on the tail end of elementary school when I was graduating high school. I probably couldn’t pick him up out of a lineup these days since I hadn’t seen him in so long and Emory wasn’t one for social media, so it wasn’t like I’d seen any recent pictures of Floyd via his profiles or anything. Curiosity had me doing a quick Google search of him as I made my way over to Palmer Alley and…gahdamn.

Baby boy had grown up.

Rocking just beyond shoulder length, pencil sized locs, Floyd was handsome as hell with his smooth Nutella colored skin, deep-set, almond-shaped, deep-brown-damn-near-black eyes with a gaze so intense that it felt like this picture was staring through my soul. All of that combined with an aquiline nose, full, pouty lips, and a chiseled jaw made him look like he’d been handcrafted in my wet dreams and delivered to me on a silver platter. Maybe doing my little brother this favor wouldn’t be as much of a hardship as I’d initially thought. The moment that thought crossed my mind; my phone buzzed with a text from Emory snapping me back into reality. The last thing I needed was to get wrapped up in another man any time soon.

After a disastrous marriage and an even more disastrous rebound relationship, I was on a miatus—a man hiatus. The immediate attraction I’d felt from just glancing at a picture of Floyd was out of the ordinary. I wasn’t a woman typically easily swayed by looks, preferring to get to know a man on a deeper level before giving myself over to being taken in by his level of attractiveness. And where the hell has that gotten you, I thought ruefully. Absolutely nowhere. All of that, “I’m looking for substance over everything” bullshit that I’d ascribed to had only led me to consistently getting my face broken by men who seemed to be one thing, but turned out to be a wholly different other.

I approached Palmer Alley seeing what looked like folks dispersing instead of gathering for an unveiling. Staring up at the hundreds of twinkling lights and twisted, colored metal that looked like an approximation of Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole, I pulled out my phone to double check the time. Seeing the time that Emory had sent me and noting that I still had about ten minutes before that hour struck, I was confused as hell. The installation was beautiful as I peered up at it while counting down from ten to soothe some of my irritation. It was then that I noticed that some of the elves were moving, “fixing” the toys in their possession.

“Ebonée?” I heard a male voice ask in a low timbre.

I turned and was face to face with Floyd who managed to look even finer in real life than he had in the pictures I’d seen online. Before I could open my mouth to confirm I was me, he was hauling me into him, banding his arms around me, pulling me flush against the firm chest of a man who definitely didn’t take any days at the gym off. I felt my eyelids flutter as he pressed a quick kiss to my cheek, then pulled back. “You are…a sight for sore eyes,” he breathed looking down at me.

His brand of forwardness was something that usually turned me right off, but there was something about his touch that felt…familiar.

“It’s,” I squeaked before clearing my throat and continuing, “it’s good to see you too, Floyd. It’s been so long.”

Licking his lips, he murmured, “Too long.”

I raised a brow as he shook his head, chuckling.

“I was trying to come show support since your boy Emory couldn’t be here, but I guess I got the times mixed up,” I said from the comforts of a loose embrace Floyd had still held me in.

The mention of my brother’s name made him release me, setting off a feeling of some sort of loss that I quickly tamped down because what in the entire fuck, sis?

Shaking his head with a grin Floyd said, “Typical Em. That man just refuses to understand how time zones work. He definitely sent you off. We just wrapped not too long ago.”

“I cannot wait to cuss him out later,” I tutted with a roll of my eyes. “Well, I won’t keep you. It was good seeing you. And this,” I trailed off gesturing to the decorations floating above our heads, “looks amazing. How did you even come up with this idea?”

“If you know somewhere I can get a decent Old Fashioned around here, how about I tell you about it over drinks?” Floyd replied.

I pointed ahead of us. “About a block that way is my favorite happy hour spot. I’m sure they can hook you up with your Old Fashioned while we catch up.”

“Shall we?” Floyd asked, extending a hand in my direction that I looked at for a second before settling my hand into his massive one.

“Let’s.”

this’ll be a bit stream of conscious, so I hope you can roll with me.

i battled with myself about whether or not i wanted to do an end of year wrap up mainly because i have worked very hard to stifle many parts of this year from my memory. i thought about doing it in video form but i look like brother shaquille sunflower by the head and i’d rather not subject y’all to that, so instead you get the words. a behind the curtain look at how all of the projects i released this year came to fruition and my hopes for the year that’s on the horizon. but before we get there, we first must revisit 2019 also known as the year in which i decided to go full-time as an author. it was a decision made with much fear, but also a heaping spoonful of faith.

i knew that my first release of 2020 would be my 20th project and i was very excited for it to be The Restart. Miss Blair was one of my favorite heroines to write because she was really unfiltered. her story’s trajectory took a turn and gave me the fits while it was unfolding, but all in all i was very proud of where it all ended up. and then i decided that I wouldn’t dither and get Parker’s story out immediately after. and baby, when i tell y’all these characters direct the flow and not the girl? believe it. Parker went mums the word onna bitch QUICK. and then Chenoa popped up like “hey, i got a lil freaky sneaky tale you can share with the masses” and thus y’all got A Dirty Valentine and the birth of the Falls Sexy Holiday Shorts Series.

a twitter friend suggested i take time to write a st. paddy’s day story and since that holiday holds a special place in my heart, A Good Luck F*ck happened. and while i was writing AGLF…a fucking pandemic happened.

& as writers are wont to do, a group of writer friends and i collaborated on a group of stories that faced the ideas of the pandemic and quarantine head on. not to make a quick buck or make light of a serious situation, but in order to channel our anxiousness (in my case, anyway) into the one place where we can always make the world make sense. the luminous cruise chronicles featured stories by AshleyNicole, Chencia C. Higgins, D. Rose, Diana W, Honesty Price, T. Key, Turtleberry, & me. My story, Love Under Quarantine , was supposed to come out near the beginning of the releases, but shortly before we were set to launch my father was rushed to the hospital and there for days - thankfully nonCOVID related - but no less scary since because of protocols we couldn’t lay eyes on him beyond a phone’s screen. as such i feel the stain of my utter panic and anxiety all over that tale, but collaborating with those ladies was a fun ride, one of the year’s highlights for sure. :)

you know how we all thought on/near 3/13/20, “oh we’ll be locked down for a couple weeks then it’ll be business as usual?” lmfao. all of the cool shit i had planned for the year? all of the ways i thought i would be able to expand my brand and ascend in my career? poof. gone. i didn’t adjust well, but made do with what i had available to me.

through it all, i kept writing. if you’ve seen the broadway musical hamilton, you’ll know that his relationship with writing was categorized as an almost pathological act. and i felt that shit. i needed the normalcy of opening up microsoft word and then listening to the characters. it wasn’t always the things i wanted, needed, or expected, but i turned to the words for solace. through my absolute frenzied thoughts in the beginning stages of the pandemmy i was able to release what was my favorite release of mine this year, release some tension. the story came to me while listening to the swv album of the same name that’s a smooth like twenty-three years old. Ayumi’s trajectory was singing loud and proud to me through those lyrics though, so i hunkered down to see what i could see.

i tried going back to Parker and Kelly’s story in June and July. they kept telling me to fuck off. I was an unhappy camper, but then DJ sauntered her ass onto the scene and was like “ok sis, i know you’ve always wanted to write a book inspired by your fave, so saddle up, bitch!” the pleasure principle took me on a ride. what i thought it would be and what it ended up being were two separate circles; instead of a venn diagram. but DJ’s journey was something really special that i hoped readers could follow, maybe relate to in some ways, and perhaps pick up a gem or two along the way. unfortunately, i’d never know since i also doubled down on my resolution not to read reviews.

i’ve been beat over the head with the messaging that reviews are for readers and not authors, so i try to stay in a child’s place and eschew reading any that are not placed upon my doorstep via tagging on the various socials or what have you. every now and again, i give in and take a peek at reviews and undoubtedly see one that makes me wonder what the hell i am even doing. it’s wild that the dissonant voices always ring the loudest, right?

after DJ came another word drought til mickey and vic decided to stop playing and come with it in bounce back. i gotta say…i am a little disappointed at how disconnected folks seemed to be from that book, but it’s my own doing really. because yes it was a romance, but it wasn’t just a romance for me as writing about Micaiah’s professional trajectory was equally as important to me as her reconnection with Victor, but apparently I was too hyperfocused on that and fell short on accurately portraying the kinetic energy between my leads. i can eat that, but i also wrote the fuck out of that book, so there is also that. LMFAO.

and apparently all it took was Victor having a kid for Parker and Kelly to trust me because they legit started yelling almost immediately after i typed the end on bounce back. the recovery fka the sweet spot was probably my second favorite book to write this year just because of the FUN i had with parker and the stewards. not to say that i don’t have fun during my writing process all the time, coz i do, but this one hit different.

and i think it’s because they taught me my biggest lesson of this year. which is i don’t own these characters, they own me. they may pop in and say hi, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to sit down in the red table of my mind and unload the intricacies of their lives quite yet. and as much as i think i know what they got going on, i really don’t know a damned thing until they’re ready for me to know it all. this year also caused me to interrogate my writing rituals and approach to what is achievement wrt to writing. i couldn’t get far in any project if there was no point (to me). as soon as i found the point was when the words started bubbling over.

which takes us to my thanksgiving short (which i knew would be my final contribution to the holiday shorts series) that i’m certain folks that would be a bit sexier considering its predecessors and girl me too. but instead, a feast for the senses saw a sneak peek into the beginning of Ant & Ari’s ceding to the undeniable power of love. were i given more from them, it would have been longer, but alas they just wanted to give us a taste.

which was another lesson learned this year. i can’t control how much these folks give me no matter how hard i try. it was something i learned with bounce back especially as i fell short of a self-imposed minimum that the title needed to hit & they were like “nah sis this all we got, be #blest”.

my final release of the year, eight naughty nights, was honestly me just letting go and having some fun. i legit went into it with the mind frame “no strict plot, just vibes” and baby, octavia and lance showed up like “oh no worries, mama. we just finna fuck our way until some thangs jump off”. i ain’t gonna front like i was mad about it because (whispering) sex is one of the most fun parts to write, but of course i wonder how many people will write it off as unrealistic instalove whatever.

which…well, we won’t even get into that.

at top of 2020 i declared my word for this year to be “bag”. as in i would get in and stay in my bag, writing my ass off and hopefully introducing y’all to characters, plots, and experiences that were enjoyable. despite the pandemmy trying to convince me that i hadn’t done just that, i think that i’ve done a good enough job of hunkering in my bag this year. i leave 2020 with a sense of unsteadiness. i haven’t the slightest what 2021 will bring (don’t have a word in mind for it quite yet), but i can only hope for abundance and a real live settling into my current occupation in more fulfilling ways.

whew okay this is long as hell. so i’m out til the new year. may you and yours stay safe, secure, and well-hydrated. *gently sets mic down*

coming soon…blah dee blah dee…here’s a snippet of a scene between my heroine and her bestie who is a whole ass mess LOL!

***

“So what’s the word with this Victor guy? You finna let him slam dunk in your pu—”

“Ky!” I broke in before she could finish her statement.

“It’s a valid question.”

“I’m here for work. The only slam dunks I need to be worried about are ones that happen in that ninety four feet of hardwood.”

“I don’t know about ninety four feet, but I’m certain he’s got plenty inches of hard wood.”

“Kyra Denise…” I groaned, laughing.

“So you’re not gonna let him penetrate your lane is what I’m hearing.”

“I swear sometimes I hate that I even asked you to learn proper basketball terminology so you could understand me when I went on rants post-game.”

“C’mon Mickey…you gotta admit those were some good ones. I’m proud of myself for it, honestly,” Kyra cackled.

hey y’all. been gone for a minute now i’m back with the jumpoff…or yanno a sample sunday! my fave & i are back in n&t-ville! coming when? soonish. for now, meet mic & vic.

lightly edited. subject to change.

**

“Well damn, look at us. The whole lot of us single as a dollar bill,” Victoria observed.

Something about the way she’d said it and nudged her brother had me on edge, but I shook it off. I was sure that she was just making conversation, but I didn’t necessarily want to continue this conversation so I sharply veered the subject onto something else.

“Victor, was that adorable little girl with you earlier yours?” I asked, turning the conversation from me onto him.

“Yeah, that’s my baby,” he replied with a proud, broad grin. “Navijah Victoria, my pride and joy.”

“How old is she?”

“Eight going on thirty-eight it seems some days,” he replied, that grin still stretching his face.

“She wasn’t not happy with whatever was going on earlier, which was why I hightailed it out of there,” I cracked.

She’d streaked up to us running .38 hot and all I’d heard was “I do not like her” and that told me everything I’d needed to know.

“Girl, that nurse bitch got a little too familiar with niecy pooh. But you know how the girls have always lost their minds over Vic,” Victoria chimed in with an eye roll.

Unfortunately I’d known just how much the girls lost their minds over Victor Covington since I’d gotten into it with one of the most popular girls in fifth grade when she tried to get me to stop being friends with the twins because she wanted Victor to be her boyfriend. It was so silly because one – we were children, but two – and most importantly – I didn’t know who’d raised her to harbor an insecurity behind the guy she’d set her sights on having female friends, but I wasn’t the girl to try about that. The Covington Twins and I had gone way back and I wasn’t ending my friendship because she couldn’t handle a little competition. Not that I was really competition for her since I had carried a crush on Victor from the first time I realized what a crush even was, but he never gave any indication that he saw me as anything but a friend. I wasn’t too pressed over it, but Jenice Franklin was steam pressed. So much so to the point of setting up a fight with me on the playground. I wasn’t really the fighting type as a kid, but I definitely didn’t back down from somebody trying to punk me, though. Only one of us regretted that fight after school. Let’s just say the cute little pink bows that held Jenice’s ponytails together ended up a casualty that day as they were scattered all over the playground before the aftercare ladies were alerting that we were fighting and broke us up. The only people who’d known that fight was about Victor were Victoria – because she was my bestie at the time, and another girl named Carmen Jenkins who was Jenise’s bestie.

“Maaaan, get outta here with all of that,” Victor said, throwing a hand in the air brushing off his sister’s teasing. “I ain’t down here for any of that. I’m here to work, dassit.”

“Okay Ebony,” I cracked up at his impersonation from The Players Club, “but speaking of…how in the hell did you end up working in the W as a trainer? I thought for sure you’d be in the league, too.”

“So did I,” Victor replied sheepishly, “but a crazy ass landing from trying to do too much on a dunk completely shattered my patella and I was never the same on the court after that, so I hung it up. While I was rehabbing my knee though, my PT was cool as fuck and I ended up bonding with him and we’d kept in touch after I was healed. After getting my first degree in accounting and being bored out of my mind working as an entry level accountant at an oversized firm, I went back to school and got a second degree in physiology.”

“Oh wow,” I breathed, “it’s dope that you found a backup plan to your backup plan, though.”

“Oh, see the league was actually my backup plan. Unlike you and Lisa Leslie over here, I wasn’t ‘the man’ on the court. I just happened to be big with nice hands,” he laughed.

“Well, it coulda been different. You coulda been ‘tall for no reason’ like Mikey’s clumsy ass,” I quipped and we all burst into laughter at my brother’s expense. 

Micah was the only Kennedy who wasn’t athletically inclined in the least. Jojo had played soccer and could have done so professionally, but it wasn’t his passion. Zebby and I were the basketballers, following in our father’s footsteps, and Jahel was into gymnastics and dance.

“Oh my god, your twin was legit the worst. The only reason why he was in the rec league was because your pops was coaching,” Vicki laughed, “How has he been though? Hell, all of your siblings? Well, not Zeb because I know exactly how that fool is doing, but Jonah, Micah, Jahel…they all good?”

I spent the next couple minutes updating them on my siblings and we just sat there talking until the staff was tryna usher us out of the café so they could clean up for the night. I hadn’t expected to run into these two, but spending the night reminiscing about the old days with the Covington Twins was much better than sitting in my room sulking about the earlier events of the day.

“Aight y’all, I gotta try and catch a shuttle back over to the villas. I’ll see y’all,” Victoria said as we were walking out.

“Oh, you’re not staying here?”

She shook her head. “I’m the den mother in a house full of rookies,” she cracked with a grin. As we were walking out we saw one of the trams pulling up. “Actually, let me try to convince them to give me a ride.” 

“Hey, I thought you were gonna take Navi’s bag over to CP’s for me.”

“Sorry, bro. You shoulda brought it with, I gotta blast,” Victoria called over her shoulder.

Shaking his head, Victor angrily mumbled under his breath.

“I’ll see ya,” I said, heading toward the elevators.

Victor strolled after me. “Yeah, in the elevator. I’m staying here.”

“Oh,” I said, dumbly, pushing the call button and then staring up at the LED screens above the three elevators in the bank waiting for one to reach us.

All during dinner and our shit talk afterward, I’d had to stop myself from damn near drooling over Victor. Like, he was cute as hell when we were younger and that, along with how kind he always was, made up a major part of why I’d liked him so much back then. But that cute had morphed into grown man fine and it had me feelings things with a capital T. Victor’s skin was the color of manuka honey, a warm, light brown tone that was stretched across broad shoulders, a taut chest that tapered into a narrow waist, powerful ass thighs, calves that were so well developed that whatever injury had occurred in his past clearly hadn’t gotten him down for too long. His facial features were the perfect mix of both parts of his heritage, the slight slant of his eyes belied his maternal Filipino lineage paired with his dad’s snub nose and sensually full lips. And of course there were the curls. I should have been turned off by the man bun, but at some point during dinner he’d taken it out and shaken his curls free and I’d had to swallow back an audible groan. I’d never been into long hair on men, but he made the shit look appealing. I’d wanted to do nothing more than run my fingers through the long ringlets as his lips placed lingering kisses all over my body.

I blinked and shuddered, shaking off that thought as we stood side by side in silence in the elevator bank until the ding let us know that one had arrived at the lobby level. We stood aside to let folks walk off before Victor braced a forearm against one side of the doors and gestured for me to enter before him. I walked onto the elevator and headed straight for a back corner, standing there looking silly before Victor turned to me and asked, “What floor?”

“Oh…my bad, I just got on like you knew where I was going. Seventeen, please.”

Victor turned to me with a grin after he pressed the button. “Oh, me too, actually. When did you say you got here? I’m surprised we haven’t seen each other at all and we been right here in the same place…on the same floor.” 

“First day out, remember?” I squeaked.

He gave a slow nod as he trailed his gaze over me. “Right.”

Once again silence descended on the elevator as we rode up to seventeen. My eyes were darting all over the elevator before finally focusing on the climbing numbers on the LED screen inside of the car. I could feel the heat of Victor’s gaze on me and I finally stopped being nervous long enough to meet his gaze head on. If I thought that would intimidate him in any way, I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Instead I got lost in the clear desire that was apparent in his gaze as his eyes traced every inch of my form from head to toe before biting his lip and shaking his head.

“What?” I asked, unnerved by his silent perusal.

“Just…enjoying the view,” he crooned in a low rumble.

That simple statement sent a zap of arousal straight to my core and in a flash, he was no longer standing on the other side of the elevator, but right in front of me as he lowered a hand toward my face, cupping my chin to reestablish our eye contact.

“Still the prettiest girl,” he said in a hushed, almost hallowed tone.

Before I could gather a response, the doors to the elevator opened at our floor and he stepped back, letting me go ahead of him. 

“See you around,” I said, scurrying off the elevator and heading in the direction of my room. Victor was right behind me, his room apparently in the same direction. Luckily I reached my door before I made an even bigger fool of myself. I swiped my keycard in front of the sensor and damn near rocketed into the room. I could hear Victor’s chuckle as he called out for me to have a good night.

“Real smooth, Mic. Reaaaaaaaaal smooth,” I said aloud to myself as I began peeling off my clothes to head directly into the shower.