The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts and giving her a slight reprieve from the confusion and pain. When she grabbed the receiver, her next-door neighbor’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Girl, you’re passing up a lickin’? I know you’re losing your damn mind!” Shari snapped in her famous Southern drawl. “Church or no church, girl, if it’ll soothe your damn conscience, don’t look at it as oral sex, just consider it baptism—by tongue. Give that boy some ass, so we can all get some sleep around here!”
Niyah could imagine Shari’s golden skin flushed with color with every uttered word. She wasn’t the only one losing shut-eye.
Niyah had been sleeping with Mario, the mailroom manager, for nearly two years—with an occasional movie and dinner thrown in for good measure. Then misery began three months ago with six simple words: “Mario, I can’t see you anymore.”
His expression crumbled, causing her heart to restrict, then pound wildly. A sudden stab of pain flashed through the muscle in the center of her chest that signaled the ultimate sign of life. Deep in her heart she knew she didn’t mean a single word.
Everything else in Niyah’s life was going haywire. Her finances had taken a serious nosedive. Family members were driving her crazy, pulling her into the middle of one dispute or another to mediate madness and bullshit. When her downtown Chicago law office started laying off people left and right, she almost went into a panic. Her life was a stalemate at best, inching slowly backward. Time for a change. She distanced herself from her family’s bickering and greed and decided she needed religion to get her life in order. The first step was going back to church, the second was cutting out the greatest temptation in her life—Mario Barajas.
She had decided, after a string of bad relationships, that being alone was safe, that masturbation was safe. These days, a man and his dick had to be worth dying for. And she hadn’t found many she trusted—until the gorgeous, curly-haired man had set a brother straight one day after an argument in the office cafeteria.
The argument was about an age-old subject—the preference of men, skinny women versus plus-size. Mario, in a strong, certain tone, made heads turn in his direction when he defended his love of fleshy, voluptuous women: “Say what you want about what I like, but I can tell you this: they don’t smell, they don’t swell, they don’t tell, they’re grateful as hell, and they make love real well.”
Sisters, Latinas, and white women alike stood and applauded. Niyah was among them. She noticed Mario a lot more after that. And he found it a lot easier to pursue her. She didn’t resist. Curiosity wouldn’t allow her to take a backseat to her needs—which by that time were plentiful. Masturbation could fill the void, but the real thing could put a vibrator or dildo on the unemployment line in a Chicago second.
She felt warmed when his dark brown eyes drank her in the moment she walked past the mailroom. Her mocha skin, fleshy and generous hips, and full breasts, which lifted teasingly from her bra in such a way that the average man screamed “Milk!” when she walked past, combined in such a way that even a few of the slimmer sisters eyed her with envy. The proud chin, full, sensual lips, arched eyebrows, and high cheekbones were classic.
But what stirred the attention of men was her walk—especially if she ventured out wearing three-and-a-half-inch heels—allowing her hips to sway sexily and her smooth gait to range somewhere between businesswoman and high-class hooker. Sometimes she could almost “hear” the question as she walked past: does she or doesn’t she make love as well as her hips promise with each sway? Yes, she damn well did.
Fortunately, Mario was not one to boast of his conquests—so speculation still ran high. And she’d like to keep it that way.
Their law firm was extremely conservative. She wouldn’t lose her job over an office romance, but she could gain the disapproval of people who signed her paycheck—and that would be most unfortunate.
Younger than her thirty-four years, Mario could make love like no one she’d ever known. But for Niyah, his talents stopped there, even if he truly loved her. She was hell-bent on a man with a six-figure salary. A mailroom manager just wouldn’t do.
As he stood in the center of her bedroom that day when she told him it was over, she watched him fight for control. Finally, his handsomely chiseled face, reflecting only calm, looked up at her as he asked in his lightly accented English, “Mi vida, why end this?”
He had called her his life. God, how could she end this?
“I’m not going to have sex again until I get married.”
Mario didn’t blink. “Then marry me. What’s the big deal?”
Shocked that he would be so easy about things, Niyah searched his face for signs of humor.
“I didn’t say that to get you to propose to me. I want to find a man in church, turn my life around.” She blamed her currently bleak situation on being with the wrong man—in the wrong way—and not setting foot in church for years. But how could she explain that to him?
He had been her first venture into interracial relations—a sister’s way of saying she’s crossing from “brothers” to “others.” She had weathered the brothers’ storm as they glowered at her if she happened to be hanging on Mario’s arm. Inside, she felt a little self-conscious, but that went away when she realized that the brothers who were angry weren’t the ones stepping up to move Mario out and take his place. A dick in the hand was worth the promise of dick to come—so she could tough it out. And Mario had been worth it—then.
After she broke it off, Mario refused to stop seeing her even though she returned his letters and wouldn’t take his calls. For ten minutes every night for more than three months he stood just below her bedroom window calling to her in his accented English that she had come to love.
“I just want to be with you. I want to marry you. Just let me in. Talk to me, Niyah. We can work through this.”
Some nights he said he missed her, needed her, and loved her. Mario sounded so sincere, but Niyah knew getting back on the righteous path required some sacrifices. Sex with him was one—but oh, what a sacrifice!
The neighbors started commenting on Mario’s nightly chants. They were the talk of the block, with men hoping Mario would take the hint to move on because he was giving them a bad name, and with the women cheering for him, praying he’d get positive results because it was romantic.
Much to Niyah’s chagrin, people actually began placing bets. The stakes got higher every night when Mario walked away with no results.
One night, Shari finally banged on the door.
“All right, spill it, girl. What the hell has he done that you’re leaving that fine specimen of Latino out in the cold like that?”
“He hasn’t done anything,” Niyah said, stepping aside to allow the petite woman into her fashionably furnished town-house.
“He didn’t hit you?”