This is the complete cover for my next novel to be released this Spring. I would like to thank A-Marie Walter of http://www.estetikaexposure.com/ for a gorgeous, iconic cover that has been getting awesome praise from readers. I'm also grateful for my good friend, Susie Henry, for giving me the stamp of approval for my back cover blurb. I would also like to thank everyone that continues to support my current novel, "Glass Goddesses, Concrete Walls."
To show my appreciation for the people who support my work and faithfully follow my blog, here are all of the samples that I've posted so far along with a NEW CHAPTER titled, "Warm Bodies on Cold Nights." (These are still the raw, unedited chapters. I have some edits and added material that I'm saving for the final draft because truthfully, I LOVE to keep you guessing.) Enjoy, leave comments and know that I'm working hard to have this ready for you real soon.
5 cHAPTERS oF "wAR aNGEL"
bY kEITH kAREEM wILLIAMS
Chapter
0 – Blood-Smeared
|
W
|
ith his chest heaving and filled with
the frosty evening air, Lenox frantically opened the car door and got in the
back seat. Surprisingly, he still held a firm grip on the gun in his right hand
that only a few hours before wouldn’t stop trembling. The clip was still
fully-loaded except for the single round it had discharged just a few moments
before. After that, it had jammed which forced him to improvise on the fly. In
his left hand, he still held onto the kitchen knife he’d only seen for the
first time that very night. Every nerve in his body felt raw and exposed,
making it difficult for him to decide whether he was more alive than ever or
disturbingly closer to death. He strained his eyes to examine the front of his
black sweatshirt, wet with blood that wasn’t his own. Of course, in the dark he
couldn’t see it but it was there and he was covered in it. After what he had
just done, it would have been impossible not to be drenched in it. The
sickening metallic scent of the gore clawed up his nostrils and nearly forced
what little food sat in his stomach to creep up into his throat. He held his
breath until the overwhelming wave of nausea passed. He felt feverish and even
the winter chill wasn’t enough to stop the steady stream of perspiration that
trickled down the sides of his face. The pressure in his temples pounded in perfect
pace with his racing heart as part of a maniacal symphony in his pulse.
“Is it done?”
Hector asked from the driver’s seat. He kept one hand on the gear shifter and the
other on the gun hidden in his jacket. Carmen trusted Lenox but he didn’t. The
jealousy that still pumped through his veins made him wish that Lenox would
give him a reason to kill him.
“Yes,” Lenox
murmured.
“Are you sure?”
Hector asked again.
“I said it’s
done. Now let’s go!” Lenox growled, annoyed by the hint of mocking sarcasm in
Hector’s tone. There was something sinister and malicious in the question that
served as the harbinger of very unpleasant things to come. There was a long,
quiet, moment of tension before Hector grudgingly took his hand off of his gun,
gripped the steering wheel and floored the gas pedal. The car skated down the
icy, suburban road which was lined with beautifully leafless trees, decorated
with snow-covered limbs; a sharp contrast to the bloody, crimson horror that
Lenox had left behind in the house he’d just run out of. While Hector drove
recklessly to get them out of the area as quickly as he could, Lenox breathed a
sigh of relief and laid himself flat across the back seat. He longed for his
own bed but for the moment, it would have to suffice. He lay on his back, let
the gory knife fall from his hand and closed his eyes, feeling safer being low
enough not to be seen. He attempted to wipe away the steady flow of sweat with
his black-gloved hands but became disgusted when he realized that he had
accidentally smeared blood all over his face. Even though the car swerved
erratically down the dangerously slick roads, fish-tailing as hector sped
around corners, Lenox drifted off to sleep. What he desperately desired was a
respite from the evening’s awful events but instead, his dreams became
nightmares that dragged him through all of the events that had led up to the
monstrous thing he had just done.
Chapter
1 – What Eyes Don’t See…
|
I
|
f
one more guy calls me Mami today I swear I’ll scream, Jahaira
thought while embarking on her daily trek to her father’s bodega with the food
her mother had sent for him in a brown paper bag. She was annoyed, almost to
the point of rage by the men who had tried to flirt with her. She could feel
their filthy thoughts crawl all over her skin as they undressed her with their
eyes. She hated it. The only person she wanted looking at her like that was her
man. She never desired or sought those types of stares from strangers. She
couldn’t help how curvy her hips were any more than she could do anything about
how big her butt was. Dark jeans were supposed to be slimming according to the
fashionistas but in truth, they didn’t do much to hide her shape. Her short,
black leather jacket stopped just above her waist and felt like a corset the
way it hugged her and compressed her large breasts. It made her look at least a
cup smaller but her thighs were still enough to catch most men’s eyes. It also
didn’t help that she had a naturally sexy walk that had been turning heads
since ever since she hit puberty. Over the course of the ten years since her
fourteenth birthday, she’d heard every crude remark as well as every polite,
pick-up line imaginable.
With a
well-practiced scowl, she cautiously continued on her way with confidence but avoided
all of their eyes because she knew too well the nature of men. If she looked
directly in their faces or even worse, dared to smile politely, they would
assume that it was an invitation to become more aggressive. To avoid the
problems she turned her eyes to the ground.
The city was
much cleaner than it had been when she was growing up but it was still filthy
enough. Its discarded things and garbage told its ugly truth. The glitzy,
glamorous images that seduced droves of tourists annually was actually the
beautiful lie. Every person that had lived long enough within the confines of
the decadent metropolis could see through all of the illusions. When she was
little, her father walked her back and forth to school every day to make sure
that his baby, his only child, got there safely. However, he couldn’t protect
her from everything. There had always been an air of unwholesome corruption
that crept through the streets like a living thing. Jahaira remembered stepping
over dirty, discarded needles that had been used to pump heroin into the veins
of people enslaved by the liquid demon’s embrace. In her teens, when her daddy
had grudgingly allowed her to walk home alone daily, the needles had become
scarce, replaced by tiny, empty vials that once contained crack-cocaine. During
that era, there seemed to be even more drug addicts than before but these
preferred to smoothly suck their heaven into their lungs through glass pipes.
Now that she was all grown up, she often walked over the crushed, brown trash
of gutted cigars that had been used to roll weed, the gateway drug, as they called it on the news. Apparently, it
opened the doors for more dangerous vices for individuals already inclined to
addiction. Most recently, those doors had opened up a Pandora’s Box that unleashed
a plethora of pills, all seductively named, that granted many different kinds
of highs. There were no traces of those to be found in the gutters or streets.
It suddenly
started to drizzle which killed any chance of her mood improving. She hadn’t
brought an umbrella with her when she left the house, even though the dark grey
faces on the clouds had all suggested that they would weep heavily. She had
already traveled too far to turn back so all she could do was pick up her pace
and try to walk in-between the droplets. Fortunately for her, she reached her
father’s store right as the light rain became a heavy downpour.
“Hey sexy,”
Hector called out in Spanish from behind the front counter as Jahaira stepped
inside, wet and grouchy.
“How many times
I have to tell you not to talk to me like that? I don’t like it,” she told him
through gritted teeth.
“You should let
me take you out sometime,” he suggested as he tried to reach across the counter
and touch her chin before she slapped his hand away. “Ouch,” he shouted before
he pulled it back. He shook it as if it was hot and then ran it across his
thick, slick, black hair tied up in a bun that almost made him look feminine.
Jahaira thought that he could have passed for a girl if it wasn’t for his dark beard.
He calmly subdued whatever anger he felt but she thought she saw a hint of it
flash momentarily in the green of his eyes.
“No, and my
answer ain’t changing so stop asking! For one, you work for my father. He’d
fire you if he heard you talking to me like that. Secondly, I have a man
already and I’m really tired of reminding you. Are you slow?”
“Yeah, whatever.
You have a boyfriend that nobody has
ever seen. You sure you ain’t a lesbiana?”
“You know what
Hector? A woman has a better chance with me than you. Where’s my father?” she
asked impatiently.
“He’s in the
back with a client.”
“Client huh?”
she repeated sarcastically. “Well, my mother sent his lunch. Since he’s busy,
I’ll just leave it here with you then.”
Just as Jahaira
put the damp, brown paper bag on the counter, her father’s client walked out from the back room of the bodega but she didn’t
look like one of his regular customers. She was way too young and way too
pretty; a sharp contrast to the old harpies that usually sought out his unique services. The girl tried to
smooth her sandy-blonde hair back into place and straightened her blouse as she
scurried past Jahaira who looked on in disgust. The girl’s brilliantly blue
eyes never connected with Jahaira’s dark-brown eyes but she felt the venomous
look of disdain which made her pale-as-snow skin flush pink. (Jahaira might
have been cute but she was terribly intimidating when she wanted to be.) She
was so used to her father’s infidelities and indiscretions that it hardly
bothered her any more, or at least that’s what she told herself. She was more
disappointed in her mother who was also aware of them and passively pretended
that she didn’t. In her opinion, her father only did what her mother allowed
him to. Before she left, the young girl stopped at the counter and collected a
stack of singles wrapped in a rubber band from Hector. He grinned and held onto
her hand until she pulled her fingers from his clammy grip. He blew her a kiss
before she switched her hips as she sauntered away and left.
“Blankitas now
too?” Jahaira asked, surprised to find out that her father’s taste now seemed
to include young white girls.
“Every flavor
sexy,” Hector answered.
“Disgusting,”
Jahaira mumbled.
Hey Pumpkin!”
Mr. Caesar Ruiz called out to his daughter as he appeared from the back room of
the store with his belt unbuckled. His roundish belly, the result of too much
beer-drinking, hung slightly over the front of his pants.
“Fix your
pants,” she told him, handing him his soggy lunch. He took the food and opened
his arms wide to hug her but she backed away. Her father was a handsome,
incredibly charismatic man. They grey that was mixed in with his black,
low-cropped hair and sprinkled in his perfect goatee didn’t diminish his looks
in any way. She imagined how the women must have lusted for him in his prime.
Even now, they seemed to have a hard time resisting him.
“What? No kiss
for papi?” he asked.
“Hell no! God
only knows where your mouth has been
today,” she told him and moved the side of her face away from his lips. Without
another word she turned to leave.
“You’re not gonna
say anything, right Pumpkin? I mean, you don’t have to tell your mother,” he
started to say.
“Of course not.
I never do,” she answered. “Besides, I’m sure there’s nothing I could tell her
that she doesn’t already know.” The bells above the door jingled as she pulled
the handle and left.
Chapter
2 - …Hearts Don’t Grieve
|
I
|
t never took long for Jahaira to stop
being mad at her dad. Just before she walked out of the store, she had glanced
over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of his sad smile that always softened
her heart. She knew that he prayed for the survival of her happiness and did
whatever he could to shield her from the horrible things he feared could happen
to her but never spoke of. The world is
filled with more monsters than you would believe, he would whisper to her
in quiet moments when she had stumbled on him at home on the couch, alone,
tipsy, somewhere half-asleep and deep in thoughts he never shared. In the whole
world, she might have been the only female that he loved in the purest way. For
a long time she struggled to understand how that could be because of the way he
seemed to view women as a species. From what she’d seen from him as a man, he
was a womanizer and lusted for every woman in the world. As a father he was
different. She was his only child and in her entire life she had never seen him
express any desire to have any more. Although she hated her parent’s
relationship, Mr. Caesar Ruiz always made sure that Jahaira knew that she was
precious and treasured by him above everything else in his life.
“Did you see
your father?” Mrs. Carmen Ruiz asked her daughter as Jahaira walked through the
front door of their house, wet and already annoyed.
“Of course I
did. It was all soggy by the time I got there but he got his lunch,” Jahaira
answered, shivering as she took off her jacket.
“Was he alone?”
Carmen asked, her eyes never leaving the enormous flat-screen television on the
wall.
“Hector was
there too, as usual,” Jahaira answered dryly as she walked across the living
room as quickly as she could. Recently, she found that she purposely avoided
eye-contact with her mother. It often felt as if they both harbored some secret
shame that they feared would be revealed if they looked at each other for more
than a few moments at a time.
“No, I mean…was
he alone? You know what I mean.” There was always a split second when she asked
that question where her heart beat pounded hard enough to reach the brink of
breaking. Deep down she knew that if her daughter ever decided to be cruel
enough to tell the truth, those words would pierce her like bullets.
“Every time you
send me to the store, I come home and you ask me the same thing. Why don’t you
ask Papi later? Whenever he decides to come home that is. Ask him what he was
doing at the store when, and IF he even comes upstairs to your bed instead of
sleeping on the couch,” Jahaira answered as she started to walk upstairs. She
wanted to get to her bedroom and shut the door before she ended up in a heated
argument.
“Forget it.
Forget I even asked. You’re always defending your father little girl.”
“I’m not defending
him. I just don’t care anymore. He does what YOU let him do and you’ve been
letting him do it for years!” Jahaira snarled. Her knuckles turned white as she
gripped the bannister tight enough to make the wood creak.
“What do you
know about it?” her mother asked calmly, dipping a chocolate chip cookie in her
glass of milk with her eyes still safely fixed on the television.
“Nothing!”
Jahiara answered sharply. “I don’t know anything about it and I never will.”
“That’s what you
think sweetie,” Carmen told her. She didn’t like that her brat of a child had the audacity to judge her. “You’re young and
there’s a lot you don’t understand,” she scolded, her voice still even and calm
which drove Jahaira to lose her composure.
“Like what? Like
letting my husband cheat on me with every money-hungry girl that he sees”
Jahaira asked, practically spitting venom. Her words were hurtful but Carmen’s
expression remained unchanged. A very long time ago, she had learned to hide
her love and hate behind a mask of indifference.
“One day you’ll
understand. You think you’re going to be the prettiest girl your man has ever
seen forever? No sweetie, that position is only temporary,” Carmen coldly
warned her.
Hater! Jahaira thought as she stormed up the
stairs, her footfalls louder than an elephant’s despite the plush carpet
beneath her feet. The pictures on the wall shook on the nails they hung from
when she slammed her bedroom door behind her. In a rage, she sucked in her
belly and opened the top button of her jeans. They were slightly tighter than
they had been a week before and she’d been telling herself that she needed to
shed a few pounds. Her mother’s words felt heavier as she unbuttoned her blouse
which was also a little tighter than when she had worn it last. She flung it across
the room, jumped onto the bed and screamed into her pillow. Her mother always
managed to effortlessly frustrate her to the point of madness. There was
something deliberately foul about the way she smoothly passed passive
aggressive comments with perfect timing to inflict mental harm. As soon as
Jahaira stopped using her pillow as a silencer, she sat up and violently
slapped all of the stuffed animals off of her bed. Every time she’d put them
away, her mother would come into her room, call it cleaning up and put them back.
After she once
again had her bed all to herself, she lay on her back rubbing her chunky tummy and realized that her
bedroom looked like a grenade had gone off, sending fuzzy, colorful creatures
in every direction. She climbed out of bed and started cleaning up. She crammed
the stuffed animals into the closet, right in with the dresses her mother
insisted on buying that either made her look twelve or sixty-five. She hadn’t
worn anything that even closely resembled those outfits since the sixth grade
but Carmen continued to consistently waste money on things that her daughter
would never wear. It was her way of protesting Jahaira’s fashion choices which
she felt were too revealing at times. All of her efforts were in vain of
course. To Jahaira, her mother thought she was just a doll to be dressed up and
played with, not even a real person at all. That was how it had been her entire
life. It showed even in the way her mother usually talked at her and never really to
her. She had made up her mind not to live in the fantasyland that her mother
had tried to create for her. As it was, she believed that too many delusions
dominated Carmen’s reality and it broke her heart as she helplessly watched the
woman who was supposed to be her role model, allow life to blow her wherever it
would as if she was a feather trapped in a perpetual breeze. She had never met
another human being who seemed so eager to accept, ignore or casually brush off
every bad thing that happened to her. A million times she’d told herself that
she would never be that way.
Jahaira growled
as she punched a pink bunny in the face and slammed it down on top of a
gigantic stuffed elephant. A doll’s head at her feet got knocked off when she
forced the over-stuffed closet door shut. She giggled then kicked it under the
bed where, as a kid, she believed that monsters lived. The notion seemed silly
as she sighed, sat on the edge of her mattress and smoothed her long, dark hair
out of her face. Eventually she relaxed when she thought about where she was
going to be later on that night and who she was going to be with. She reached
under the bed for one of the suitcases where she kept her real clothes stashed. She only had a few hours to get pretty. She
didn’t know what her mother was talking about because her man looked at her like he had just seen her for the first time,
EVERY time he looked at her.
Chapter
4 – Mall of Mannequins
The only reason Lenox found himself in a
crowded mall with the masses on a Friday evening was because she wanted to go
dancing. For him, the perfect night would have been a quiet and intimate one
spent entirely in a private space but he had given in to her request because he
felt that she deserve anything she asked for. Make every woman jealous of the things you do for, with and to your
woman was his philosophy when it came to his relationship. Jahaira was good
to him, the best for him and everything he cared about. Some of his friends
would ask him why he was so caught up which was understandable for the ones who
were entangled with the worst kinds of women. For the ones who actually had
wonderful women in their lives he would ask how come they weren’t. In his heart,
it just made sense to treat the right one
the right way and even long before her, he had treated the wrong ones fairly. In
his mind, there wasn’t anything illogical about loving a woman that showed in
everything she did that she loved him just as deeply. That was why he was
racing around the mall, surrounded by swarms of strangers, shopping for
something to2 wear so that he didn’t look out-of-place standing next to her. It
wasn’t that she was materialistic at all. Her family was well-off so all of the
nice things that she was accustomed
to. It was all she had ever known. It was what she was used to. She wasn’t a
victim of the hollow consumerism that poor people sometimes got caught up in,
covering themselves in expensive things they couldn’t afford to hide the fact
that they were ashamed that they didn’t have much. Later on that night, she was
certain to be wearing some gorgeous designer dress that matched some expensive
handbag that her daddy had bought her. Lenox hated feeling and looking out of
place. Tonight he wanted them to look like a couple.
After he was
satisfied with what he had picked out, he paid for everything and hurried to
the parking lot to get his car. He navigated his way through waves of human mannequins caught up in emulating
the plastic life they saw in music videos and felt guilty for being momentarily
caught up in it himself. He quickly shook off the feeling. He still had to get
cleaned up at the barber shop, take a shower, get dressed and finally pick up
Jahaira from her grandmother’s house. She actually lived at home with her
mother and father but even after being together for almost two years, she still
kept him away from them. In fact, he had never met them at all. He meant to
speak to her about that. He wondered if she simply wanted them far removed from
her private life or if it was something else. Whatever it was, he meant to
straighten it out, sooner than later. That weighed heavily on his mind as he
drove up to the booth at the parking lot’s exit.
“Hi, how’s your
day going?” he asked the parking attendant as he handed her two dollars and
waited for her to raise the wooden arm. She looked into his backseat at the
brands on his bags and was impressed by his taste. She smiled, pleasantly
surprised that a polite person still existed in the world. Most people shoved
their money at her through the booth window as if she wasn’t a living person.
“It’s going.
Thanks for asking,” she answered. “Found everything
you were looking for?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did,”
he answered cordially. She was fairly attractive and obviously flirting but he
swatted away the faint impulse to entertain it as he would swat a fly. That was
how complete his dedication to his woman was. It was a rare thing in a world
where no one believed in honor, relationships were open, love was lost and lust
tore millions of confused hearts out of chests and dragged them down to their
ruin.
“Too bad,” she
mumbled as she hit the green button in her booth and raised the wooden arm so that
he could drive away. Lenox sped off and raced through the rain that the
weatherman predicted would become snow later on. He hoped that the barber shop
wasn’t crowded because his barber talked way too much and worked way too slow.
He was already running late.
Chapter
4 – Grandma’s House
|
L
|
enox sat in his car outside of Jahaira’s
grandmother’s house and waited impatiently for her to come downstairs. She
actually spent more time there than at her own home because her own mom made
her uncomfortable. To her, Carmen was too secretive and delusional but in her
grandmother’s aged eyes, she saw no secrets or lies. Her mother’s mother was a
sweet, even-tempered, tolerant woman who warmly, eagerly took in all of the
family’s wayward children. Eight of
Jahaira’s cousins, ranging from ages nine to nineteen, currently lived there.
Granny had always been a housewife and never regretted her choice to make
keeping a home in order her full-time job. She was proud of all of the little
ones she had raised including the ones who had turned out bad because if not for her, they would have turned out worse.
Jahaira had been
text-messaging him all evening to find out how long before he picked her up and
now that he was outside, she was nowhere to be found. She had him waiting so
long that he had listened to an entire album in the car. He had sent her two
texts that she apparently ignored which drove him absolutely crazy. Just when
he was about to blow his car horn furiously and risk Granny’s wrath at the
excessive noise, Jahaira strolled through the front door into the chilly night
air with her coat tucked under her arm. She wanted him to get a good look at
what she was wearing. He almost wanted to forget about the club and take her
straight back to his place as he watched her walk down the stairs. Just when he
thought she couldn’t surprise him, she completely amazed him instead. Her
short, tight, black dress hugged her hips and barely covered her thick thighs.
The thin straps that held it up showed how smooth and sexy her dainty shoulders
were. His mouth almost watered when he saw the open back of her dress as she
walked in front of the car to get into the passenger seat. She opened the car
door, sat down and buckled her seat belt. When Lenox looked at her as if she
was food, she thought back on her mother’s comments earlier and laughed inside.
Jahaira clearly recognized the adoring, almost worshipful love and lust in her man’s eyes.
“You like?” she
asked as she noticed how he stared at her cleavage right where the seatbelt
strap sat, directly in-between her full, d-cup breasts.
“Do you even
have to ask? You sure that we can’t just go straight to my place?” he asked.
“Just drive,”
she giggled.
“You sure? I
won’t take long. We can still go to the club after.”
“I worked too
hard to look this good to let you drag this dress off and get me all messy
already. Relax,” she told him while rubbing his thigh.
“Tease.”
“Whatever!” she
laughed. “Anyway, we both look good so let’s go make a whole bunch of people
jealous,” she said and flashed the mischievous smile that always got him
excited.
“I do look good
don’t I,” he answered, checking his reflection in the mirror embedded on the
inside of the car’s sun visor.
“Shut up and
drive!”
Chapter
5 – Warm Bodies on Cold Nights
|
T
|
here were two
separate lines outside of the club. One line was long and full of thirsty men
who didn’t know how to keep their eyes to themselves as they used their
imaginations to strip every woman that passed by naked. The other line was
shorter than the skirts of the women who stood in it with their legs freezing
in the night air, eager to get inside where the drinks purchased by their admirers would warm them up. The club’s
security let the scantily clad women right in with minimal harassment but made
the men wait like hungry dogs behind a waist-high metal barrier. This was to
ensure that there were more females than males inside. Parties were more likely
to remain fun and civilized that way.
“See anybody you
like?” Jahaira asked Lenox as they stood in line together, holding hands on
opposite sides of the divider.
“Of course I
do,” he answered. Even though she was covered by her long winter coat, he had
committed every one of her curves to memory.
“Who?” she
asked. There was no shortage of fresh flesh all around them. She would never
admit it openly but her mother had succeeded in planting a disheartening seed
of doubt within her and the fear of her eventually finding herself in the type
of frost-bitten arrangement her
parents shared had begun to creep up on her. She really wondered if the day
would really come when he didn’t believe that she was the most beautiful girl
in the world.
“I’m holdin’ her
hand right now,” Lenox answered, squeezing her fingers as she giggled. He loved
the sound of her laugh and the genuine joy that flowed from her soul whenever
she was with him. She was one of the few, truly good people he had ever known
and it made him glad that he could make her happy. It was easy to love someone
who loved him back just as passionately as he loved them.
“So, you think
she likes you too?” she whispered, leaning over the waist-high barrier and
pressing her breasts up against his chest. She knew his answer when gripped her
waist firmly with both hands.
“I’m not sure but
I know I’m gonna try to take her home with me later on tonight.”
“We’ll see.
Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“I hope so,” he
answered, sliding his hands behind her so he could squeeze her ass with the
authority of a man claiming what was his and she loved it. She blushed and her
cheeks flushed pink when she felt the strength of his hands.
The club’s
security, oddly and unusually large men dressed in all black attire, towered
over the crowd outside of their establishment as they surveyed everyone that stood
in their line. As soon as they
recognized that Lenox and Jahaira were a couple, they took them off of the line
and let them right in. The last thing they needed was for some group of rowdy
hooligans to touch somebody’s girlfriend or say something disrespectful to
ignite a fight that they would have to break up.
***
Inside, the
music was so loud that it was almost impossible to hear anyone’s voice but the
language of club was unique. People spoke with their eyes and bodies. The
hard-hitting base that pounded from the speakers made the entire place vibrate.
Women rotated their hips and made their bodies sway seductively as the men who
danced with them matched their rhythm. The DJ closely monitored the crowd’s
reaction to the songs he played in his rotation as he tried to work them into a
frenzy. Bright lights from above flashed hypnotically to the same tempo as the
music. Women’s hair lay flat against their faces from perspiration and men’s
shirts were soaked with sweat. Both bars on both ends of the club were so
crowded that people had to elbow their way through drunken bodies to get a
bartenders attention. The men with money bought expensive bottle after bottle
of premium liquor while the boys without watched them and tried not to choke on
the hate they fought hard to subdue.
Jahaira and
Lenox noticed none of this. In the middle of it all they managed to mentally create
their own space where no one else existed. If they could have seen, immediately
outside of that space, the crowd seemed to be various unmistakable shades of
green. As the two lovers danced, women who had left their husbands at home
wished that their significant others enjoyed partying with them and would dance
with them, non-stop and passionately. For some, the men who were strangers
looked at them with more desire than the men they were going home to later.
Some of those women occasionally bumped their body parts against Lenox out of
spite. He ignored the sea of legs, thighs, breasts, asses, pretty faces, short
skirts and flirts who wanted to be Jahaira. Meanwhile, the gleam in many of the
men’s eyes was greener than anti-freeze as they watched Jahaira move her body
against her man’s. Even in the flash of the intermittent disco lights, they
could see how soft the flesh beneath her dress was. They envied Lenox as his
hands explored every voluptuous curve while she smiled and loved it. They
couldn’t help but wonder how powerful her sex must have been to have her man so
enthralled and seemingly blind to all of the other beauty around him.
Still oblivious
to it all, Lenox and Jahaira kissed as they danced with too many drinks to
count flowing freely throughout their systems. While caught up in their cozy
closeness they couldn’t have noticed the man who watched them intensely from
afar as he drank liquor at the bar. Although this man had never been introduced
to Lenox, he clearly recognized Jahaira, even in the crowded club from way
across the room. In truth, he even saw her when he closed his eyes sometimes.
Watching her dance with another man made the hairs on his forearms and the back
of his neck stand on end as he growled inside. Hector was not pleased. With
every shot of liquor he gulped down, his skin tingled, his vision blurred and
he turned into something different than what he usually was when he was sober.
His playful jealousy, which was usually harmless, evolved into something way
more dangerous.
“I gotta use the
bathroom,” Jahaira yelled in Lenox’s ear so that he could hear her over the
music.
“You’re gonna
leave me here by myself?” he asked, looking around at the female opportunists
in the immediate vicinity.
“Oh please. I
ain’t scared of none of these bitches!” she answered with supreme confidence
before she planted another wet kiss on his lips.
“That’s why I
fuckin’ love you. You’re the baddest bitch in here.”
“I know,” she
joked before she pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.
The women’s
bathroom line was a mile long. Jahaira waited with chicks that were filled with
alcohol, unstable on their feet and covered with glitter mixed with sweat.
Without a mirror, she knew that she probably looked the same. None of their
cute outfits, make-up or hair looked quite the same as when they’d left their
homes, neat and well put-together. One or two of them even stood barefoot.
Their feet ached from dancing in shoes that were a few sizes too small. There
was a silent sisterhood between them all as they stood in line, legs crossed in
the struggle to hold their pee. Passed out on a leather sofa a few feet from
the bathroom was a girl who seemed like she had sadly given up the struggle.
Her friends seemed to be arguing over who was going to either wake her up or
take her home.
Once Jahaira
finally got to use the bathroom, she had to wait in line again just to wash her
hands. Every sink and mirror was occupied by women taking cell-phone pictures
of themselves to post online so they could prove
how much fun they were having. When she finally escaped the gauntlet of bathroom mirror models she searched for
Lenox as she bumped, squeezed and pushed her way through the crowd that seemed
to have doubled in size. Just as she passed the bar, from the corner of her
eye, she caught a glimpse of someone who made her heart pound hard enough to
explode in her chest. Suddenly frozen in place, she turned her head slowly and
made eye-contact with Hector. He raised his shot glass high to toast her. She
wanted to run back to Lenox and fly out of the club but now that Hector had
seen her, she couldn’t. He waved at her and signaled for her to come over. She
wasn’t sure if she should but finally decided that it was best that she did, if
only to see what he wanted. By the time she got to where he was, she was already
disgusted by how many times she had inadvertently been felt up while fighting
her way to the bar. That’s why Hector’s touch felt extra slimy when he grabbed
her arm and pulled close enough to hear what he was about to say. His breath on
her ear and neck as he spoke annoyed her.
“You look good
tonight,” he told her, admiring her little sexy black dress. The compliment
along with how he stared down her cleavage made her cringe.
“Yeah, thanks.”
She put her hand up to her chest to cover up the exposed flesh of her breasts.
“What you
drinkin’? Let me buy you a drink,” Hector slurred, waving to the bartender with
the huge hoop earrings, neon bright make-up and the coke bottle shaped body
packed tightly into her pink body suit. She bounced over to take his order but
Jahaira waved the woman off.
“No thanks,” she
told Hector. “I’ve had enough tonight already.”
“Oh, ok. Is that
why you let that dirty, black muthafucka put his his hands all over you?” he
asked, disgusted, confirming her fears. When she had spotted Hector at the bar,
she wondered how long he’d been there and if he had seen her with Lenox. Her
family, especially her father, didn’t know that the boyfriend they had never
met was black. Now, because of Hector, it was only a matter of time before the
truth came out. She also knew that before he let her secret loose, Hector would
attempt to use his discovery as leverage against her with malice and sleazy
intentions. However, she had no intentions of giving him that much power. Her
initial impulse as she listened to him disrespectfully refer to her man was to
viciously rake her nails against the side of the tan flesh of his face until
she drew blood and ripped to the pink beneath. Instead, she violently grabbed
him by the chin before he could speak again.
“Watch how the
fuck you talk about my man!” she told him, her nose practically pressed against
his before she shoved his head away from her. She flipped her hair in his face,
turned around and walked away from the bar. His eyes smoldered like hot coals
as he watched her blend back into the crowd in search of her man. She quickly
found Lenox not too far from where she had left him. In her absence, two girls
had decided to put on a show for him as they danced with each other, touched
tongues seductively and winked at him. Jahaira stepped in-between them like a
bully to break up the girl-on-girl action
taking place. She put her back to him and pressed her butt up against his front
as she gave them both the evil eye. She stuck out her tongue at them and smiled
when turned away. Better had! They don’t
want problems, she thought to herself. She had made it known that he was
her food and not their prey.
“You like that?”
she asked, referring to the lesbian-ish girls she had just ran off.
“Why would I
like that when I have all of this?” he asked, grabbing her ass firmly with both
hands. She reached back and put her hands on his hands, encouraging him to
squeeze harder.
“Let’s get outta
here,” she said.
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now!
Let’s get our coats and go home.” Then, they kissed like lovers do and the
world of the crowded club all around them faded.
***I hope you enjoyed these 1st six chapters. I'll continue to share smaller excerpts until the book is ready for release.***
