Wild Cherry Read Free

want to keep my marriage spicy.… Are you fucking kidding me?
    A man can be good for holding you down or knocking the lining out of your pussy sideways, but they tend to be on the dull side when it came to dealing with things that they should’ve already figured out by a certain age. The comparison someone once made about men being so akin to animals because of their base natures was right on the money. They moved off instinct rather than rational thoughts. You show me a man who has 100 percent control over that little bell that goes off when a chick with a nice ass walks by, and I’ll show you a closet homosexual.
    â€œDon’t trip, Jack. I’ll go with her,” José volunteered.
    Now, of all Jackie’s people, he trusted José the most. For as long as I had known him, he and I had always had a brother-and-sister relationship. Jackie knew all of this and was generally cool about it, but tonight it was about stripes.
    â€œWhat, you trying to fuck, too?” Jackie asked venomously, cutting his eyes at Bilal before going back to José.
    â€œJackie, I don’t give a fuck how much you had to drink or smoke, but don’t come at me like that on some stunting shit, dawg. You know how me and Gina get down, homey,” José told him. His tone wasn’t hostile, but the words carried far more weight than when he normally spoke.
    The two friends glared stone-faced at each other, neither moving, only glaring. A situation was fast on the horizon, and as usual I was in the center of it.
    My rational brain told me to just go get my car keys and skate, but the devil got the best of me. “Look, nobody has to go to the store with me, I’m a big girl. Jackie, you’ll get your beers, but I’m taking these damn shoes off first.” I made sure I flung my hair extra hard when I turned to sashay toward the stairs. About eight and a half seconds later, the world exploded into brilliant white stars.

TWO
    Princess
    Yo, I’ve never been a dick rider—well, at least not in the metaphoric sense, but I loved Harlem. Don’t get me wrong, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, so my heart is always gonna be on Nostrand Ave., but I very much enjoyed my trips Uptown. Be it hopping off the A train, or out of some lame nigga’s whip, I always felt a tinge of excitement when I touched these Harlem streets. In my mind, it was like the spirits that had passed through here were reaching out to the rejected and abused child within me, telling me that it got greater later. I’ve always held on to that belief, though I have yet to see it.
    If the world were a perfect place, I’d be walking back and forth across 125th, spending money on things I wanted but didn’t need, but this world was far from perfect. In fact, I had started to see it as cruel. I was sweating like a runaway slave, though there was a comfortable chill to the air. My deodorant had melted away twenty minutes prior, and the damn duct tape pulled across my thigh felt like it was coming loose. My life had to get better than this.
    As I crossed the different avenues, I could feel their eyes on me, the hungry eyes of men. Some were bold enough to say something—lame, of course—but most of them just watched in silence, wondering at what temperature did my pussy overheat. “You’ll never find out, cocksuckers,” I mumbled more to myself than to anyone else.
    I couldn’t be mad at them, though, because I was looking especially delicious that day. Mercedes had given my hair a thorough washing before sitting me under the dryer and eventually wrapping my hair. She didn’t speak a lot of English, but that little Dominican chick knew hair like a gynecologist knows pussy. When I get my weaves, the Indonesian shit, I let her cut and style it. By the time I was ready to step out, my hair was falling just right, not even a pin mark.
    I had on a gray wool skirt that I’d picked up at Marshalls.