“No.”
“Try and steal the pussy?”
Niyah laughed. “He was really good to me, but church is the main part of my life now.”
Shari paused in the middle of taking a seat and stared at Niyah. “And what’s that got to do with getting some dick?”
“Fornication is out of the question.”
“Honey, what part of the Bible are you reading?” Shari snapped. “Half the sex in that book is good, old-fashioned fornication, with a man ‘knowing’ a woman to seal the deal. You better recognize it and quit holding that pussy so tight that fresh air can’t get in, and a good orgasm can’t get out.” Then she punched a single finger into Niyah’s chest. “Quit playing around, woman. Let him tap that ass. God didn’t make pussy and dick to just look at them—we’re supposed to use the damn thangs!”
Point taken. “But I want a man that’s making at least a six-figure salary.”
Shari leaned back on the sofa. “Do you travel in six-figure circles?”
“Well…”
“Just what I thought,” Shari said with a grimace. “You’d do better making your own money.”
/> “And he’s…he’s not a brother.”
Shari’s hazel eyes narrowed. “Don’t make me slap you. The kitty cat doesn’t check for passports as the dick goes in. It might check for diseases, condoms, length, thickness, and curves, but not color and native country,” she said without cracking a smile. “And I still don’t understand what that’s got to do with you getting some nookie.”
Niyah thought about that for a moment. “My family would trip if they knew I was sleeping with a Latino.”
“But your family’s not the one with an empty bed.”
Damn, the woman did have a point.
Shari leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Get laid, go to church, repent, come on home, and start all over. That’s how it works for everybody else.”
Niyah held in a laugh as she plopped down on the sofa across from her friend. “But that’s not right.”
“Girl, you’d better check around. Read that book Mario gave you. You might learn somethin’.”
Memory kicked in as Niyah gasped. “A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible? Can you believe he’d leave something like that on the doorstep? Suppose my mother had come over and found that?”
“Then she could’ve learned something, too. I read it, and personally, David was a man after my own heart. Screwed everything with a striped robe and a smile and still managed to be the apple of God’s eye. Whattaman!”
“Yeah, but it cost him the life of one of his children.”
“That was because he killed a husband to get to the pussy,” she shot back. “It had nothin’ to do with sleeping with that woman. Read the story, girl. Ease your mind and go get that man before he wises up and moves on, leaving your pussy to grow dust bunnies and a layer of cobwebs.”
Niyah burst out laughing.
“Then somebody’ll need a road map and a toolkit to find it.” Shari glared at her. “He loves you, and you’re making things harder than they should be. All for the sake of a book that has changed hands and interpretations too many times to count. Before all those others came into the picture, the first commandment was actually Be fruitful and multiply.” Her friend patted her breasts proudly. “I’m doing my part.”
Others, with even less of an argument, tried to convince her to give in, but Niyah held fast. The men on the block thought a woman couldn’t go without sex for more than two months. The women knew better. New arguments and a different betting pool began. Niyah stopped going to block club meetings, especially since the meetings began to be about her and Mario.
All the while, Mario kept trying to whittle down her defenses. When his words didn’t work, he serenaded her. That would have been beautiful—if the boy could sing. Everything from “I Want You Back” to “Who’s Loving You,” sounded pitiful, just pitiful. His singing made her smile, but also a little sad.
Niyah was surprised at how much she missed him. It was just sex, right? Mind-numbing, toe-curling, speaking-in-tongues, out-of-this-world sex. Just damn good sex. Only that.
At first Niyah had been afraid to go to work, thinking there would be problems. But Mario looked at her only if she happened to be nearby, and never made a scene. She looked at him, wanting him, longing for him. Mario respected her space. He knew personal confrontation had no spot in the workplace. He brought it to her doorstep. Or more precisely, outside her bedroom window.
Mario’s voice was the last thing she heard before falling into restless sleep, and the first thing she remembered when waking in the morning. Not to mention the single white rose, which he laid on her doorstep each night and which greeted her every day as she left for work. Romantic, nonthreatening, and persistent. Then he had dropped off a book that really brought things home—And Adam Knew Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible, which only reinforced Shari’s point about sex and fulfillment. Mario made things so hard for her. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone and accept her decision? But, then, did she really want that?
She kept going to church, and kept her legs closed and her mind on the Lord. The memories of the smooth, sensual, but comforting way Mario treated her made him a temptation and pure torture at the same time. He was the reason she did so much praying.