for next semester. Getting my degree online has always worked for the busy pace of my life, but Dr. Israel Hammond, renowned criminal justice activist, will be a guest professor at NYU, and I need to be on campus. His book about racism in America completely rocked my world, and I need to take that class.
Rationally, I know it won’t wreck us if I spend a semester in New York and Bristol stays here in LA. We survived eight years of games— chase, hide and seek, pin the tail on the donkey, with each of us playing the role of jackass from time to time. You name it, we played it. We survived Parker’s sick attempts to destroy us, and he’s stewing in a minimum-security resort-like prison suite because we figured out how to shut him down. We survived contempt and condemnation from people as distant as Black Twitter trolls and as close as members of my family who didn’t want to see us together. They are slowly, surely, one by one, coming around. Jade will be the hold out; I know this, but eventually she’ll see the light, too.
We win. Love prevails. I get it.
But that doesn’t make the reality of me being on one coast while Bris lives on the other any easier to accept, even for a few months— not with the way I need her.
I flip our steaks, losing myself in thought and the smoke rising from the grill. Do I have to go? I’m a rapper, an entertainer . . . do I really want to uproot my life for five months just to sit at the feet of some professor I don’t even know?
Hell yeah I do.
When I’m forty years old, I don’t want to still be just rapping. Jay-Z is a hip-hop unicorn. Who else is out there rapping and relevant at almost fifty?
I’ll wait . . .
Yeah. Like I said. Dude’s a unicorn.
I’m passionate about the causes affecting my community, and I’m educating myself now, equipping myself now so I don’t squander this platform I’ve been given, but use it to do some kind of good. We have problems, and Dr. Hammond may have solutions. He’s a brilliant man who, even as he rails against the system, is smart enough to work within it, who cares enough to reform it.
“Mmmmm, that looks good.”
The comment grabs my attention, and I find myself smiling for the first time since I left Bristol. As she walks toward me, the approaching sunset paints the roof in shadows, but I see her clearly. Dark hair, burnished in places, falls around her shoulders. She has already discarded the dress she wore at lunch today in favor of a T-shirt and nothing else; it’s the one I just tossed into the hamper.
She tugs at my HABITUAL LINE STEPPER T-shirt, the hem landing at the top of her thighs. Where the T-shirt stops, my eyes keep going, past the lean muscles of her legs and the cut of her calves, the delicate bones of her ankles and to her bare feet. I love this girl, head to toe. Beyond this gorgeous packaging, it’s everything beneath that makes me beyond grateful she’s mine. The loyalty, the bottom- less pit that is her heart, her sense of humor. The toughest girl I know is also the most tender, and I’m so honored I get to see both sides, all her sides.
“You out of clean clothes?” I nod to my T-shirt. “You gotta wear my dirty stuff now?”
An impish smile tugs at her bare lips. She’s washed away her makeup, and with it, all the sophistication she wraps around herself for her job. Up on this roof in my T-shirt, she’s just my girl. I love her in every iteration, but this is the one only I get to see, so it’s probably my favorite.
“I have clean clothes.” She steps close enough for me to smell her scent and mine mingling in the fabric. “I like the way this shirt smells.”
I drop a look over her, my eyes resting on the curves of her breasts in the soft cotton, where her nipples have gone taut under my stare.
“How does the shirt smell?” I ask, my voice as smoky as the steaks I should be paying attention to.
“Like you.” She leans forward until her breasts press into my chest. “It smells like you.”
My hands are twitching to touch her, and I finally surrender, slip- ping under the shirt to grasp her waist, pulling her up the few inches until our lips meet. I’ve been thinking about these steaks all day, and before Bristol arrived, I thought I was starving—but this, what I feel having her in my arms after hours apart, this is starving. It starts in my balls and tunnels up through my chest, infiltrates my heart, and presses its way to my mouth, which is open and devouring in a lips- searching, tongues-dueling kiss. I grip her by the ass, grinding our bodies together until the texture of her skin and mine, the scents of her skin and mine meld into this one panting, voracious thing that never seems to get enough.
“You better not burn my steak,” Bristol pants in between kisses.
I angle my head to send my tongue deeper into her mouth, holding her still, teasing her until she’s straining up, open and begging when I pull back.
“Grip.” My name is a whimpering complaint. She cups my neck and tugs my head back down.
“Oh, no.” I resist, laugh, and turn to the grill. “You were so concerned about me burning these steaks, Ms. Medium Rare.”
“I am.” She slides her arms around me from behind and I feel a sweet sting, her teeth gently biting my shoulder through my T-shirt. I love it when she bites me, but I’m not giving her that satisfaction yet. “But that doesn’t mean you get to stop kissing me. You have to multitask.”
One slim hand slides over my abs and past my belt to cup me through my jeans.
Damn. Not sure how long I can keep up this charade that I don’t want to screw her into the wall on the roof where anyone with half a telescope could see.
“Wow,” I say, keeping my tone unaffected, though she’s gotta feel me getting longer and harder in her hand. “Somebody’s horny as hell.”
She makes a sound that’s half outraged laughter, half indignant grunt before stepping around to stand in front of me by the grill.
“I will not be slut-shamed by my own boyfriend.” Amusement lights her eyes, turning them to quicksilver.