Precontemplation.

Thursday evenings were family time. On Thursdays, she left the library, climbed into her little blue Honda, and toddled over to her parent’s house in Cascade Heights with a dessert she picked up at Publix or the nearest bakery. Most of the time, these evenings sucked the life out of her, listening to her academically successful parents who attended expensive private Black universities discuss the plight of African American life they knew nothing about. At least not firsthand at those levels which they felt self-qualified by academic letters to discuss as if they were the holders of truth.

They’d heard stories. Stories from students or the nouveau riche that reached out to them about making donations to cross over to civilized society. She knew tonight’s conversation would center around the rapper Killer Mike being placed on the High Museum of Art’s Board of Directors. Keoni opened the front door to find her parents embroiled in the throes of conversation on what Killer Mike could in fact bring to the table.

“Well, if Kendrick Lamar could win a Pulitzer, then why can’t this Mike Killer person be a deciding force in the development of the High? I mean really Rochester, that museum is so out of touch with reality that a jolt of new blood would do nothing but help,” Donna Wiles said to her husband.

Rochester, a staunch Republican and purveyor of waistcoats, leaned back, rubbing the middle button on the tailored vest, ask, “Yes, but help whom?”

“I mean, look how much publicity it has garnered just at the sheer idea of this Killer guy taking a seat at the table,” Donna insisted.

“Granted Donna, there is a cause to take a pause, but will he know which fork to use once he sits down?” Rochester asked, looking up to see Keoni standing there. She didn’t look at her parents because she was too busy staring at Carlton, who brought a serving dish of potatoes from the kitchen. Speaking of not being invited to the table. This was family night. What was he doing here and why did her parents allow him entry into the closed Thursday evening affair?

“Hey, baby,” Rochester said with a sideways grin.

“Hello, everyone,” Keoni offered back.

“We are discussing that rapper who just was appointed to the museum,” Donna said. “I know you’ve heard about it.”

“I have, Mom, and it could be a good thing,” she said with a half-hearted smile.

“Or there could be tennis shoes taped to a board with a street sign in the middle,” Rochester said. “As a memo to how we are all walking to nowhere in the sneaker game of life. That’s what I expect to see. Seriously, you can’t expect a museum to display such trivialities when these young people can barely look up from their phones. They know nothing about art.”

“Daddy, I think the whole reasoning behind his appointment is to introduce art to the kids in a new way which speaks to them as well as introduce street art to immovable academics who only see things their own way,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

“What are you trying to say, Keoni? That I am an immovable academic?” Rochester asked.

“If you see a book you like, you can’t determine your level of enjoyment of the material by looking at the spine,” she said.

“Spoken like a librarian,” he said. “Carlton, what do you think?”

At this point, Keoni tuned out of the conversation. Carlton’s opinion on the matter was as useless as tiny tits on a breastfeeding mom with triplets. The ducts may go deep, but you only saw the nipple. That’s how he looked to her. A big nipple on a flat chest.

Carlton, like her parents, was a product of old black money. His father, a famous African American actor, resided in Atlanta before the rush of playwrights turned actors bought and built studios in the town. Even before his father became the country’s second leading dramatic actor, the man was from money. The big money that didn’t bother with such trivialities as color lines. Old money like Vic Damone and Dianne Carroll money. He, his sister and brother were spoiled kids, who also attended the high end historically black colleges for a submersion into the black culture they didn’t grow up in, as a branding to symbolize belonging to the greater tribe. He too, in her estimation, like her parents were out of touch with the real Black America.

Her mother, a tenured English professor at Emory, went from her father’s house to Rochester Wiles’ home as his wife. She’d never been hungry or shoeless in her life. From the time she was a small child, she went to the hairdressers to get her tresses and nails tended to by a professional. In Keoni’s approximation, the woman knew nothing of real life.

Rochester Wiles, a New Yorker, raised by Black doctors who were raised by Black doctors, also didn’t understand the difference in his being Black in America and Killer Mike being Black in America. The conversations held on Thursday nights were conjecture and academic blustering by two people who had read about the taste of shit pie and tried to explain to you the mouth feel of it rolling across their tongues.

Her mind drifted to Throttle. She’d made a note to follow up on something she’d seen on his driver’s license, but set it on the counter. It had been thrown away and in the course of her day, it slipped her mind. The man didn’t. She took out her phone.

Sending a text, she wrote her address and a time.

Looking at her watch then Carlton, her skin crawled. She wanted to be anywhere but here. Her only thoughts were of that man tuning her out of the conversation amongst the black-a-demics at the table.

“Keoni, you seem to be far away today,” Donna said. “What’s sitting on that shelf in your mind?”

“I am thinking of writing a novel,” she said, looking at her mother. “On female motorcycle clubs. You know, buying a bike, learning to ride, getting deep into the subculture, telling their truths.”

Her father choked. Her mother dropped the ladle of gravy, and Carlton closed his eyes in disbelief.

“Why not? It sure as hell beats sitting around here listening to you all dissect the Black experience you know nothing about. I know nothing about it either, and I’m going to learn. I’m going to live a little and walk on the wild side, let life course through my veins as I sit astride a powerful hog and let the wind whip past my face,” she said.

“I forbid it!”

She heard the words, and they did not come from her parents but from Carlton. Keoni burst into laughter. The laughter continued as her phone chimed. Throttle had responded. He was en route to her house. So was she. Keoni stood up.

“Goodnight, everyone,” she said, gathering her things and leaving the table with three blank faces staring after her. This weekend she would be on the back of a hog, riding to the lake, and sleeping in a tent next to a man she barely knew.

The skin on her arms pimpled with gooseflesh at the thought of loving him in a bed versus in a big fucking chair with handle bars.

Her parents called after her.

Carlton begged her to wait.

She was through waiting.

“I want to be a Lady Guardian,” she said to the night air. “But first I have to learn to ride a bike.”

Keoni knew just the man to teach her.

Throttle had been thinking about her since he’d taken his grandfather home. Poppa J couldn’t stop talking about her, and the more the old man talked, the harder his shit became. He wanted to see her. Be with her. Smell her skin and taste the honey he knew would seep from that golden pocket that he couldn’t wait to slip his fingers into. Staring at the phone, he realized he didn’t know where she lived. It was too late to get back to the library and catch her as she left.

“Call me, damnit,” he said through gritted teeth as he made Poppa J dinner, then set up the movie.

“What are you doing here with me? Call that pretty gal and get over there. Man, that sure is a fine-looking woman,” Poppa J said. “Those lips and hips are enough to make a man want to settle down and have some babies. Your Grandmomma did that for me.”

He’d heard the story a million times and had no desire to hear it again. He wanted to hear from her. Keoni. The Librarian. His phone buzzed.

It was her.

An address.

A time.

A rendezvous in one hour.

He replied with slow languid letters via text that he was on the way. It wouldn’t take him an hour to get there, but he did plan to stop and get flowers, a nice bottle of wine, and a good box of chocolates. Giving Poppa J a salute, he secured the door and made his way, arriving at her driveway in a little bit over an hour.

Keoni heard the motorcycle and raised the door to the garage. Throttle eased the bike inside, cutting the engine as the doors lowered. From his saddle bags he removed the fresh bouquet of flowers, the bottle of red wine, and the expensive box of chocolates. He looked up to see her waiting for him in the back door. The slip of a dress she wore, thin, almost threadbare, clung to her generous curves, and he felt himself nearly drool at the sight of her.

“Hey, Hot Stuff,” he said, stepping through the back door to an inviting kitchen bathed in soft hues of green.

“Oh, flowers, wine, and chocolates,” she said, removing the bouquet from his hands. Taking them into the kitchen, she reached high on a shelf for her favorite vase, which raised the hem of her dress, allowing the base of a butt cheeks to peek out at him. A low groan escaped his throat. “Take you boots off if you don’t mind.”

The silver tipped Snoot Toe Doggers were hard to put on and even more difficult to take off. He pointed to a kitchen chair, asking silently for permission to sit.

“Of course,” she said. “One, I don’t want your scuff marks on my floor, and two, it will be easier to get out of those pants.”

“Is that your plan, to get me out of my pants?” he asked, his heart thudding in his chest, the tightness of the pants becoming almost unbearable as blood rushed to his nether regions.

“Your pants, underwear, comfort zone, and anything else you are willing to give up, tough guy,” she said absentmindedly as she arranged the flowers in the vase. The words flowed easily as if this was a conversation she had every day.

“You scare me, Hot Stuff,” he said.

“I hope in a good way,” she told him, reaching into the cabinet again for two red wine goblets. Keoni placed the glasses on the table with a wine bottle opener, then she reached for the box of chocolates, opening the container. “I love these, especially with the little diagram that tells you what is what. It’s like a chocolate treasure map.”

As much as his dick was talking to him at the moment, his brain was screaming louder. The soft, blemish free skin, the supple lips, and gentle hands which had never seen a hard day’s work were red flags to him. Either she was packing a shitload of crazy or she wanted something from him. A big something.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Throttle?” she asked, picking up a caramel, biting half and shoving the other half through his reluctant lips.

“Tell me what this is,” he said, chewing slowly on the sweet delight. “What am I doing here, Keoni?’

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said, watching him pour just the right amount of wine in each glass, not waiting for it to breathe.

“Fuck no!” he said to her surprised face. “Well, one thing is obvious…I…this don’t feel right. You are good. Clean. Wholesome. A librarian, for fuck’s sake. I run a bar and ride a motorcycle. Outside of me fucking you senseless and putting you on the back of my Harley to ride you around, what are you planning to do with a man like me? I know you don’t plan to take me home to Mom and Dad.”

“I dunno,” she said. “You fuck me well enough, I may take you to New York to meet my Republican grandparents.”

Throttle laughed.

“Tell me, David…Dave…Throttle, or Mr. Big Dick Wielder, out of all the libraries in this city, two which are closer to where you live, why did you drive all the way to my branch to get your Granddaddy some movies?” she asked.

“I wanted to bring you that packing list,” he said.

“You could have snapped a photo and texted it to me, then called to make sure I understood,” she told him.

“Not following,” he said.

“Yes, you are,” she said, picking up the glass of wine. “My plans for a man like you are the same as your plans with a woman like me. The better question is why are you here with wine, chocolates, and flowers? You could fuck me senseless without dropping damn near a hundred bucks on all this stuff.”

“My dick told me to buy you all that stuff,” he said, standing and moving closer to her.

“What is your dick telling you to do next?”

“Take you into that bedroom and test which senses are sharpest in you and which ones I could put on hiatus for a minute,” he said. “But…”

He got quiet as he stared into her dark brown eyes. Her full mouth and hardened nipples were distracting him. A fuck buddy he didn’t want or need. The rational portion of his brain demanded he screw her hair nappy, but the more which he sought kept kicking him in the ass.

She hadn’t moved.

Keoni just stood there with her lips slightly parted, the wine tinting them with color, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Throttle couldn’t remember what he was going to say.

It didn’t matter. She sat the glass on the table and unzipped his leather jacket, draping it on the back of the kitchen chair as if this too, were an everyday thing, and she slipped her hand into his. Instead of leading him to her bedroom, she led him to the couch. He sat, expecting her to straddle his lap, but she didn’t.

Her presence was missed as she left him there in his jeans, socks, and tee. Coolness swirled around him, leaving a feeling of vulnerability; foreign to him as he silently prayed some big Black dude wouldn’t come out the back room to rob him then shove a ball gag in his mouth. The thought of what could happen next made him begin to sweat.

Hot Stuff returned with both glasses of wine and the box of chocolates. She didn’t sit in his lap or grab at the hard on laying down his leg. To his surprise, she reached for the remote, turned on the television, and queued up a movie. She flung a long, lovely, lean leg across his lap as she snuggled close, leaning into his strength as she pulled up a comedy show.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Isn’t this what you said you wanted? A movie and conversation on the bullshit of life,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied, frowning.

“This is boring as hell, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Throttle said, laughing.

“I have had a lifetime of this, Throttle—sitting on my couch watching movies,” she said. “I want to live. I want to learn to ride a hog. I want to be a Lady Guardian, but in order to do that, I need to know so much more. Teach me. Mentor me. Show me how to be a part of that world. Your world.”

“My world is a far cry from shelving books,” he told her.

“Good,” she said. “Shelving books is how I make money to put a roof over my head and have health insurance.”

“Once you are in, Hot Stuff, you are in for life. It is a world that no one can know you are a part of and you keep your job,” he said. “Are you willing to risk all of that to be on a hog?”

“I can be on a hog and not risk all of that,” she said. “Lady bikers have day jobs, just like male bikers.”

“There are monthly meetings, dues, long rides and more. You have to be active to stay a member,” he said.

“Teach me all I need to know,” she said. “Help me buy a bike, learn to ride it, and be a badass.”

“Hot Stuff, you are a badass all by your lonesome,” he said. “You have me sitting on your couch sipping wine in my socks and a tee shirt like a love-sick bitch. And I ain’t even complaining.”

“That’s because you know later you are going to screw me senseless,” she said.

“My concern is that you may have already done that to me,” he said, sipping at the wine he didn’t even like.

“I take it that means yes, you are going to help me do all those things,” she said, touching the hardened shaft in his pants. He watched her hand move back and forth over the thing that was keeping him from thinking straight. A few more rubs and she would finish what he started this morning.

“Yeah,” he sighed, giving in to her touch.

“Yay!” she exclaimed, taking the wine out of his hands. On her feet, she yanked the dress over her head and stood in front of him butt ass naked. Giggling, she threw the flimsy dress at him and took off running down the hall.

Throttle sat there for a moment, disgusted with himself because he was going after her. He wasn’t going to giggle or run, but when he got there, he planned to teach her a few more things as well about toying with a man’s emotions.

“Gosh damn it,” he said, getting to his feet. He removed his shirt, leaving it draped across the back of the couch and he walked down the hall, unfastening his jeans. A sly smile crept across his face as he entered the bedroom to find her sprawled on the bed face down, that delicious ass aimed at him and glistening of moisture on those beautiful girl curls. Senseless she wanted. Senseless she was going to get.

He wasn’t the type of man to let a woman down.