“What?” I’d expected a bit more hostility, an argument.
“We haven’t been apart. Go ahead and go. You have my full support.” She kissed me on the cheek and turned back to her book.
Now I know any other brother on earth would say I should’ve taken this quick approval and run with it all the way to floor seats at the game, but Kerry seeming not to care whether I was going to be leaving our bed was a bit of a jab at the old ego. See, it was one thing for me to kinda-sorta want to be out with the fellas, but for Kerry to want me to go out? That just went against the point of wanting to be out. I was a mature man, but I was a man who wanted to be wanted by his woman. I’d always felt that Kerry needed me there, really needed me there to protect her, but I was beginning to feel like that wasn’t true anymore.
“You cheating on me?” I asked—half-joking after watching her read for a few seconds. “Hello . . .” She wasn’t even looking at me. “Oh, now you’re so into that Terry McMillan you can’t hear me? Don’t care if your husband lives or dies, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” She put down the book and slid off her glasses. “I do care if you go, but I do kind of need some time to myself. I have some things I need to do around here.”
“Like what?” Kerry was still working with me as my first assistant, but we’d hired two more girls beneath her, so she didn’t have much to do.
“Well, I need to start deciding what things we’ll be taking to the new house, for example,” she said, referring to the dream house I’d just bought her. I’d saved for three years and bought the house outright—no loans, no price haggling. It was one of the proudest days of my life.
“What you mean ‘decide’?” I asked. “We’re taking everything.”
“Jamison, we can’t take this old stuff to the new house,” she said. “That’s Cascade. We’ll need all new things . . . well, a few of my antiques will be able to make the cut, but . . .”
“My green couch?”
“Oh, that’s not even on the list,” she said laughing.
“Kerry, that was my first couch!”
“And when you leave for the game, it will be the last time you’ll see it.”
We were both laughing together. I jumped on top of her in the bed and began tickling her.
“Stop, Jamison,” Kerry cried.
“Not until you take that stuff back about my green couch.”
“No, no, no,” she cried. “That couch is out.”
“Really?” I stopped tickling her and held her hands down above her head on the bedsheets.
“Yes, really . . .” she said.
“Really?” I bent down and kissed her on the cheeks.
“Yes, really.”
“Really?” I kissed her on the lips and as I ran my tongue over her lips, I spread her legs apart with my knees.
“Really?” She took my line. Her body shuddered as my tongue went from her lips to her earlobes and then to the tips of her nipples, which I kissed through her shirt.
“Really, yes,” I said, releasing her hands. She wrapped them around my neck and raised them around the backs of my ears as she looked into my eyes.
“Really?” she said. Her hands were on top of my head, gently pushing it down toward her breasts.
“Really, yes,” I said.
I didn’t bring up the green couch again. In fact, nothing green ever made it into the dream house.
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