This shit is disgusting.
Not that I cared. By the time I arrived in Brooklyn, I’d already made a dent in the repulsive tasting bottle of alcohol. I’d told my driver not to wait, so when Jelani didn’t answer his buzzer, I took up residence on the stoop of his house and proceeded to swig from the brown paper bag like a homeless person. Oddly, as I sat there for more than an hour in the dark, I started to wonder if this was what a homeless person felt like on the inside. Granted, they didn’t have a multimillion dollar penthouse overlooking the park to go home to, but I felt homeless at the moment—like I had no anchor, no one to turn to. In the months I’d known Bianca, she’d somehow become home in my heart and having an actual place to go had become meaningless. I took another big swig from the bag and relished the warmth that traveled through my body. I could see how people used drinking to replace warmth in their cold lives.
I must have nodded off for a while, because one minute I was contemplating the meaning of life while drinking my new cinnamon tasting best friend, and the next my feet were getting kicked.
“Trying to see how the other half lives, my friend?” Jelani was standing over me and smiling as he roused me back to consciousness. I stumbled as I climbed to my feet, feeling the full effect of the alcohol on my balance now.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Jelani nodded as if he understood and invited me in. He spoke as he unpacked some groceries from a canvas satchel that was slung across his chest. “Woman or family problems?”
Isn’t that ironic? “Both.”
“How about some coffee?” He motioned to the bottle I was still clutching. “I think that might be a better idea than whatever you have in that brown paper bag.”
Jelani ground some beans and put up a pot of coffee in an old silver percolator on the top of his gas stove. While he was busy, I took a seat and checked out the new carvings he had lined up on the kitchen table. The first one was a small walrus, the same spirit animal Jelani had suggested I buy the first time we met. “I bought the billy goat, but you were right in suggesting the damn walrus.”
“Ah. The keeper of secrets.” He set two cups of black coffee on the table and slid one in front of me. “Your lady friend has some skeletons in her closet that have brought you to question if she is the right woman for you?”
“You could say that.”
Jelani sipped his coffee, contemplating me over the rim of the mug. “We have an old saying where I come from. Smooth seas do not make a skilled sailor. As men, we become stronger by learning to ride the waves while keeping the ship on course.”
“Yeah…well…” I scoffed. “This one is more like a tsunami. You got a lot of sailors who survive a tsunami?”
“There is no problem too big that God cannot solve.”
I sipped the bitter, black coffee and decided it needed a little something if God was going to get involved in this conversation. I was pretty pissed off at the big guy in the sky at this point. Pouring a shot of Fireball into my coffee, I stirred it in with my finger while Jelani looked on. After a medicinal gulp from the mug, I set it on the table and looked at my unlikely friend. “I fell in love with a woman.”
Jelani smiled.
“And tonight I found out she and I…we very likely might have the same father.”
Jelani’s smile fell. Then he slid his mug to my side and motioned for me to pour him some Fireball.
“You wanna know something screwed up?” I’d just explained the whole sordid mess with my father to Jelani.
His brows arched. “There’s something more screwed up than that? How much of that nasty stuff you have left in that brown paper bag?”
We both laughed. “I’m not sure I care if she is my sister. Even drunk and thinking we might share DNA doesn’t make me want her any less.”
“Many royal families keep their blood lines intact by marrying within family. The Monomotapa monarchy in Zimbabwe practiced incest on a regular basis. The king frequently married his daughters and his sisters to produce pure-blood offspring.” He paused. “Cleopatra married both of her brothers.”
“Got anything more recent? Say in the twenty-first century?”
Jelani forced a smile. It was then that I realized how much the bones in his cheeks had become pronounced. I’d been so caught up in wallowing in my latest drama, I hadn’t even noticed he’d lost more weight. “You’re not eating. Is your treatment making you feel worse?”
As usual, he acted casual. “It has its bad days and good days.”
“When was the last time you ate a real meal?”
“Not too long ago. Soup is my friend these days.”
I stared at him. “Tomorrow night. I’m taking you to dinner at my favorite restaurant.”
“I suspect you might be the one feeling too nauseous to eat tomorrow after drinking that stuff.”
We were both quiet for a minute. Eventually it was Jelani who spoke. “You need to tell her.”
“I know.”
“Everything will work out how it was meant to be.”
I sure as shit hoped he was right. Because today, more than ever, I realized what was meant to be was me and Bianca.
The coffee had woken me up, but not completely sobered me—which as far as I was concerned was a damn good thing. The Uber dropped me off in front of Bianca’s building, and I stood there motionless for a solid twenty minutes staring up at her window. I could see from the street that her bedroom light was on, but I wasn’t sure if she had left it on when we were leaving earlier in the evening. I needed to grow some fucking balls—actually go into the damn building and check if she was home—and then suddenly the light flicked off, and I got my answer. She’s home. I took a deep breath and went for it before I changed my mind.
“Dex?” Bianca opened the door just as I raised my hand to knock a second time. She took one look at me and was immediately concerned. “Are you okay? Is the sickness worse or something?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course. Of course.” She stepped aside.
Bianca locked the door behind me. “You look terrible. You should be in bed.” She reached out to feel my head. God, I’m so fucking in love with you. “You’re not warm. No fever, at least.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her against me, giving her the biggest, tightest hug I’ve ever given anyone. I might have been crushing her a little, but I couldn’t let go. After a long time like that, she finally attempted to pull back a little.
Our noses were barely inches apart when she looked up at me. “You’re not sick. Are you?”
I shook my head.
“What’s going on? Does it have something to do with my mother? Was it freaking you out that you were going to see her and knew what she had done? I had a feeling it was going to upset you more than you realized.”
I nodded. Suddenly I was a fucking mute even though I had so much that needed to be said.
Her beautiful eyes turned sad. “Go sit. I’ll pour us some wine, and we can talk.”
She extricated herself from my arms and headed toward the kitchen. Just before she was out of reach, I suddenly grabbed for her and caught her hand, pulling her back against me. She smiled, thinking I was being playful, but I was dead serious. If this was going to be our last moment as who we’d become to each other, if everything in our fucked-up lives was about to change, I wanted one last kiss.
Taking her beautiful face in two hands, I kissed her until there was no doubt that she meant everything to me. After, she blinked a few times as if she had to work to get herself back into reality. “You’re scaring me, Dex,” she whispered. “That kiss felt an awfully lot like goodbye.”
If this was the beginning of the end, it was not how I wanted her to remember our last kiss. I caressed her face. “I love you, Bianca. I fucking love you so much.”
She looked surprised at my declaration. Hell, it surprised the crap out of me, too, that the words slipped from my mouth. But even after I’d put it out there, I was glad I told her. She needed to know the truth. The whole truth. Bianca pushed up on her tippy toes and kissed my lips softly, then pulled back to look into my eyes. “I love you, too, Dex.”
I wished I could freeze time and stay in this moment forever. But too soon, Bianca was readying for our talk. “Go. Go sit down, and I’ll pour us that wine so we can talk.”
She smiled at me from the kitchen. Was I a total asshole for dumping on her that I was in love with her a few minutes before I said what I came to say? She was beaming as she poured two glasses of wine. It seemed that my affirmation had quelled the worry she’d had over what I’d come to talk to her about, and here I was about to rip her apart. God, I hoped I didn’t make things harder because I was a selfish bastard and wanted one last kiss if things didn’t turn out for the best.
Bianca set two glasses of red wine on the coffee table and settled onto the couch across from the chair where I sat. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing until that moment. Rather, what she wasn’t wearing. Namely—very much clothes. She had on skimpy, black boy short underwear and a light pink, spaghetti strap tank top that hugged her beautiful, naturally tanned skin. When she raised her glass to sip her wine, I saw she wasn’t wearing a bra under the tank and her nipples were fully erect and pointing at me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
My mouth watered staring at them. It was agony to force my eyes shut and remind myself: She could be your sister. She could be your fucking sister. When I reopened my eyes, I could have sworn her luscious nipples had doubled in size. I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Do you think you could put a robe on or something?”
Bianca looked down and noticed what I was seeing. “You don’t like my nipples?”
“I like them very much. Too fucking much. I can’t concentrate while they’re taunting me.”
She laughed as though she thought I was amusing but then went to grab her bathrobe. I chugged my full glass of wine in the two minutes that she was gone. When she came back out wearing a sexy, red silk robe that was hanging open, I grabbed her glass and finished it off, too.
Seeing the two empty glasses, Bianca fastened her robe and sat. “Talk to me.”
I didn’t know where to begin. I took a deep breath, followed by a mental snapshot of her as if it was the last time I might ever see her, and then opened my mouth. “Your sister is the spitting image of my father.”