Chocolate Flava (Chocolate Flava 1)

I looked at Nikki like she was crazy. “Anyway, what do or did you want?”

Nikki had this blank look on her face, like she had forgotten her question. “What you doing?”

“Now I know damn well you wasn’t calling my name like that ’cause you wanted to know what I was doing.”

“Yep.”

All I could do was smile, ’cause she was serious as hell.

“Fuck you, Nikki.”

Nikki was five-eight, 150 pounds, light-skinned, with matching light-brown eyes. Nikki thought she was God’s gift to the femme world. She had a short fade haircut, which brought out the Indian side of her family (her grandmother was full-blooded Apache). I must say that if I myself were not butch, I would be on her jock, too. We had been friends at UC Berkeley when we came out to each other by pure accident. We saw each other at one of the gay clubs, then again in a math class. Nikki and I became best friends fast and in our sophomore year, we got an apartment off-campus. After graduation, both of us ended up in the computer field. Nikki moved to the east coast for a few years to work, but moved back to California to work at Cisco, a large computer company, while I went on to work for Sun Micro.

I already had a house that my father bought for me as part of the “you graduate from college, you get a house” deal. What other incentive does one need? It was a four-bedroom, three-bath, split-level home that I’d spent two years renovating; much at the expense of my dad, who happened to own a real estate company in L.A. I put a pool in the backyard, put in a BBQ pit from hell, and a Jacuzzi. Things were definitely looking up.

Nikki moved in about two years ago. Her lease was up on her apartment so it just made sense for her to take the other master bedroom. Hell, we ruled shit in college, and now we had our own private funhouse to rule.

“Hey, Nikki!” I was at the top of the stairs yelling down to her. She talked about me. Shit, she could be just as deaf.

Nikki came to the bottom of the landing, wearing some boxers and a sports bra.

“Wassup?”

“Hey, did you invite Kim?”

“Which Kim? We know two different Kims.”

“Yeah, but only one has been on my jock since Tanya and I broke up.”

“But, Jay, I don’t think you know this but the other Kim, the one with the short haircut and green eyes, told Lisa that she wanted to holla at you, too.”

“Damn, well, is she coming?” This party was going to be off the hook.

“Now, Jay, don’t be in here starting no shit. Which one are you trying to get with?”

“Well, hell, if I’m lucky, both of them.” I smiled and walked back to my room. As my boy Ice Cube would say “Today was a good day.”

Nikki yelled back up the stairs. “Play on, playa!”

The sun was blazing hot, the pool and Jacuzzi had been cleaned the day before, the grill was heating up, and our guests would be arriving soon. Oh, I forgot we are talking about black people. Even when there is food on the table, we still manage to be late.

Nikki came out of her room and knocked on my bedroom door.

“Hey, Jay, you dressed?”

“Nope, but you can come in.”

Nikki walked in wearing some FUBU shorts with a matching jersey, and some Nikes that she’d bought the day before when we were out shopping. I was sitting on the side of my king-sized bed, wearing some black silk boxers and a T-shirt.

&nbs

p; “Wassup?”

“Hey, before you get dressed, can you come and clip the back of my nugget?”

“What, your arms too short to reach back that far?” I said with a wide smirk on my face. “What you trying to get all dressed up for? Is Stacy gonna be here?”

“Fuck you, man. You know I like to keep my shit tight, and plus you know we’re going to have mad honies up in this house. You know this playa will not let the night go by without getting some pussy. That’s my mission, and should I choose to accept it, and you know I do, I will get lucky with a capital L.”