Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (16 page)

P
earl had cut his ass off after that. There were no more study sessions, no more late-night movies, no deep conversations, not even any admiration. She walked around him giving off hostile vibes like she had no respect for his humanity. Menace knew he’d hurt her young, tender heart, but he also knew it was necessary. Maybe later, he consoled himself. Maybe when she was older and out of her father’s house, and after he’d repaid Irish for his kindness and had something more to offer his daughter than sweet kisses and a stiff dick.

Menace tried to forget about Pearl, concentrating instead on his work at the center and graduating from college. Yeah, they crossed paths a lot still, but Pearl wouldn’t even look at him and she damn sure didn’t speak. He tried to stay cool with her anyway, afraid that Irish or Zeta might notice the sudden tension between them, but the only one who really seemed to notice was Diamond.

“You two been fucking?” she asked one day as he rang the bell and Pearl answered the door. As soon as she saw it was him she’d slammed the door shut and sauntered her pretty ass off toward her room.

Menace had pushed the door open himself, and shook his head as Diamond grinned from the sofa where she was playing with Sasha and Chante.

“What’s up with all that?” she said, giving him a devious look. “You got sweet little Pearl flossing? Walking around here slamming doors and shit, like she pay the rent?” Diamond giggled and crossed her long legs. “Yo, Pearl acting like you mighta gave her some of that.”

“You trippin’,” Menace had told her.

“No I ain’t.
Pearl
is trippin’. I’m just trying to find out why.”

Menace shrugged and tried to play it off, but a guilty conscience is a real bitch.

“What you doing here anyway?” he shot back grilling Diamond hard. “Somebody stole all the poles out the club? That’s why you finally came around to check on ya shorty?”

“Don’t be worrying about my shorty!” Diamond laughed as Menace walked away looking guilty. “My daughter is well taken care of!”

If Menace thought Diamond was gonna stop there, he was wrong. She had a grimy heart that fucked up heads. While Menace knew her and Pearl were close and the entire Baines fam had mad love for each other, there was some twisted shit in Diamond that had her feening hard for the street life. And no matter how much Irish talked and counseled her, she was attracted to the gutter and didn’t seem to mind living in it.

Plus, Diamond was manipulative and slick. She was so fuckin’ hot and had the kind of body that busted straight outta her clothes. Menace was a man, and of course he saw and appreciated
her bold curves and stacked frame, but there was nothing about Diamond that made him want to lay pipe on her, and he didn’t have no problem breaking that shit down to her a few days later when he was doing some work at their crib and she bust up in the bathroom with him while he was taking a piss.

“Yo,” he said, still leaking and holding his dick as she barged in on him without even knocking. Diamond was naked except for a small hand towel that barely covered anything, and she made sure Menace got a good look at her big round titties and strawberry nipples. “Why’ont you chill the fuck out, girl? Get out. Be gone! Can a niggah piss in peace?”

“I didn’t know you was in here,” she said, grinning. Her hips were bodacious and the triangle between her thighs sprouted soft, neatly trimmed light brown hair. “I’m ’bout to take a shower. Wanna wash my back?”

The yellow bitch was bold, Menace gave her that. Irish and Zeta were right down the hall in the kitchen and Menace could hear them talking. He stuffed his limp dick inside his pants, then flushed the toilet and moved toward the door.

“Cover that pussy up, Diamond. You up in ya father’s castle right now. The strip joint is down the street.”

Diamond wasn’t even insulted. She laughed as she stepped in front of him, blocking the door as she peered down at his crotch.

“You’s a piper, Menace. You got a big dick on you. It’s nice and fat, even when it’s soft.”

Menace gripped her shoulders intending to move her out of his way, and that’s when Diamond made her move.

“Yeah, niggah!” she broke free and gripped his neck. She pressed her titties into his chest as she humped her naked pussy all over his thigh. “I been wanting some of your shit for a long time!”

Menace leaned back as she tried to kiss him and she nipped at his chin and licked her tongue across his cheek instead.

“You crazy!” he said as Diamond plastered her body to his, still grinding. He tried to push her away and ended up with a big soft titty in one hand, and the phat curve of her humping hip in the other.

“Sssh …” she giggled, trying to stay glued to him as he fought her off. Still attempting to kiss him, Diamond locked her lower leg around his and squeezed his thigh between hers, moaning as she rubbed her clit all over his pants. “Daddy’s gonna hear us …”

The words weren’t even outta her mouth good when a shadow fell across the bathroom door. Menace looked guiltily past Diamond and straight into the blazing eyes of her twin.

“Fuckin’ trick niggah!” Pearl muttered and shook her head in disgust. Her angry eyes raked over Diamond’s naked ass as Menace gripped her by the hip and arm.

Pearl smirked and shook her head. “I shoulda known you wasn’t shit.”

P
earl stood in the doorway of No Limitz watching Menace as the pain he’d caused her in the past came alive in her heart and replayed in her mind. She hadn’t seen him since her family’s burial. He had been a pallbearer for her father, and had gone up to the podium with countless others and testified about what a good man Irish had been.

Pearl had barely made it through the service. It was held in a large chapel in a funeral home because Zeta’s church didn’t have room for four caskets. Countless people had turned out to pay their respects and see the Baines family off, some coming from as far away as Europe. Irish had had a real long arm and an extremely giving hand. He mighta done the criminal thing during the first half of his life, but he’d cleaned it up royally during the second half, and nobody could deny the good that he’d brought to the people of his community.

Pearl had been freaked out at the sight of the closed caskets
being rolled down the aisle, too horrified to imagine what the bodies inside must have looked like. Cole had to hold her up as large posters of her family’s smiling faces were placed on top of the caskets. Pearl had fallen out on the floor at the sight of Sasha’s school picture from the second grade. Her baby had just lost her two front teeth and she looked sweet and angelic in the photo that rested on her hand-carved, snow-white coffin.

And the burial had been even worse than the funeral.

The cemetery was quiet and Pearl had felt like she was moving through a thick gray haze. Her ears were buzzing as the preacher prayed over the bodies for the last time and the sympathetic mourners expressed their condolences into the grief-filled air.

All four bodies were being interred in the same burial plot, and when someone handed Pearl a bunch of roses and led her over to the edge of the grave, Pearl did more than throw the flowers down into the open pit.

Her baby was down in there! And so was her loving mother. Pearl reached out to toss the flowers, and in that instant something came over her and she wanted to jump down in that hole right along with them.

She didn’t even remember moving, but Pearl found that she had broken free of the gripping hands that had tried to hold her back. She plopped down on her butt and tried to slide into the open grave where her whole family was waiting.

“Baby,
no!”
mourners screamed and cried out as they lunged for her. The preacher sent loud prayers toward the heavens, and Pearl kicked her feet and dug her fingers into the fresh, soft earth, wishing she could go to sleep and let it cover her too.

She was hauled out of the grave dirty, screaming and crying. One of the ushers got in and hoisted her out while another usher grabbed her arm and dragged her over the edge of the hole. Pearl
lay at the edge of the grave and tasted dirt in her mouth. She plunged her face down into it, praying it would fill her throat and nose and choke the breath from her body so that they’d leave her right there where she belonged. Right there with her precious family.

Pearl was out of her mind with grief, and one of the church mothers knelt down beside her. She brushed the dirt from Pearl’s face and urged Cole to call an ambulance. Pearl remembered very little after that. She had been whisked off to the hospital and sedated, so she didn’t get a chance to talk to Menace at all. He had gone back to Philly without coming up to the hospital, and Pearl was so deep in her grief that she hadn’t even noticed.

Seeing him here now was a surprise. A good one, Pearl reluctantly admitted, but still a surprise.

Menace was the last physical connection that Pearl had to her past. He had practically grown up in her house and was her only living tie to her family, and that alone meant so much to her. Everything about him was familiar, and the firm but understanding way he handled the street-hardened youngheads sitting at the computers reminded Pearl why her father had loved and trusted him so.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted out the moment Menace was free. Their love-hate relationship had lasted for years and Pearl had gotten in the habit of spitting harshly at him whenever she spoke.

And Menace had some shit with him too. He’d been wrongly accused and he refused to take any heat from Pearl, so he bit back every single time she attacked.

Pearl mean mugged his ass. She knew he’d seen her standing there the whole time, but he’d igged her until he was done talking and had dismissed the young’uns for the day.

“’Sup, Pearl,” he finally responded. “I’m in here running shit. What it look like?”

His voice was deep and butter-smooth, and every time Pearl saw him she couldn’t help but notice how much he’d matured since the day her father took him in. Menace had graduated from Manhattan Community College and gone on to Columbia University, where he studied finance and economics. He’d gotten a prime job, then opened a financial consulting firm, all while still putting in work part-time at the center for Irish.

Being around the young’uns and staying close to the streets had kept Menace hard-nosed and hood certified, but he was also a thinking, well-educated black man, the kind of cat that Pearl and many other black women found intensely attractive.

But even with all his accomplishments, his rugged, handsome face, and that ferociously sexy body that could break concrete, Pearl couldn’t forgive him. She let that shit he was talking slide right off her then rolled her eyes and gave him the shitty face.

“How long you been back in Harlem?”

He shrugged. “A minute. I went to the cemetery on Tuesday, and I came by and opened up the center day before yesterday.”

Pearl swallowed a knot of sorrow, remembering the taste of grave dirt in her mouth. She wasn’t strong enough to go back to that cemetery yet. It was too soon. Not yet.

“Well, I remember telling Cole,” she said, shaking her sorrow off, “to make sure this place was locked up tight after the funerals. Who gave you permission to bust up in here and open it again?”

Menace stared at Pearl for a quick second, then shrugged again.

“I didn’t need no permission, Pearl. And I didn’t bust the place open neither. My name is on the lease and I got a key. Your pops
made me a partner in the bizz years ago, but your selfish ass was prolly too wrapped up in your own dreams to notice.”

“I was busy in
college
, Menace.”

He shrugged. “I went to college too, yo. But I ain’t the type to stray too far from my fam. I got my degree and then stuck around out of gratitude for the man who raised me. That’s more than you can say.”

Pearl got heated. The only reason she had stayed away for so long was to better herself, and who the hell was this gaming niggah to cast judgment on her anyway?

“Look, I didn’t come by here to kick shit around with you—”

“So,” he cut her off with a hard glint in his eyes, “why your lips still flapping then?”

Pearl eyed him. His fine face was tight and he was giving her the killer glare.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she said, squaring up to him. “Why you looking at me like you got some mafia in you? I’m the one who should be catching a damn fever! I’m the one who lost my whole fuckin’ family!”

Menace closed the gap between them in two strides. He got up in her face and Pearl got ready to fuck him up. This niggah mighta been a hand-to-hand martial arts champ in the tristate area, but he’d never seen Pearl get down.

But when he grasped her upper arms and pulled her close enough that she could smell the cologne coming all off his neck, fighting him was the last thing on Pearl’s mind.

“
We
lost our fuckin’ family, Pearl!
We
lost them! Irish was the only daddy I ever
had
. And Zeta was so good to me she woulda made my dead momma smile. You so fuckin’
selfish
, you know that? It’s always about
you
. I lost just as much as you did in that fire, Pearl. Just as fuckin’ much!”