I toss an arm toward the kitchen door, where on the other side is a houseful of people Grip has known all his life.
"Does Grip seem like he's forgotten where he came from?" I demand, fire licking under my words. "Like he doesn't understand his culture? Like he's running from it?"
Her lips part to reply, but I don't even wait for her answer, because what can she say but no?
"Well, all right then," I barrel ahead. "Our kids won't be that way either. I haven't once tried to take Grip away. If anything, I'm constantly trying to get in. Can't you see how much that matters to me?"
I pause, hesitant to say my next thought, but I press on since I'm already in the deep end.
"And by the way, our first black president is half white."
"Huh?" Confusion puckers her expression. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means that his mother was a white woman from Kansas, but who would know that looking at him? He looks like any other black man, and there's a good chance that my children will too. They'll probably have to navigate this world as black people, and you know what that means a lot better than I do."
I pause while my words settle in the air and hopefully change her mind.
"Instead of criticizing me for mistakes I haven't even made yet, waiting for me to fail at raising black children, why not help me get it right?" I ask. "They'll be your family, Jade, just like Grip is. You may not think of me as your family, but they certainly are."
She doesn't get the chance to respond because the door swings open and Grip walks through. Stopping short at the threshold, his eyes do a slow sweep between the two of us, like we've probably been fighting and he's checking for bruises and bald spots.
"Uh, hey," he says with deceptive ease. "All good?"
I bend an inquiring look on Jade, asking her silently if we are indeed all good or not. She sighs, adjusts her cap, and tips her head in a nod.
"We good." The cousins hold a stare for a few seconds before relinquishing grins simultaneously. Grip walks over and hooks his elbow around Jade's neck, stealing the cap from her head and playing keep-away for a few laughing seconds.
"I'm hearing good things about you," he says, his smile lingering and wide.
Jade shrugs and replaces the cap, playfully swatting at his head when he tries to kiss her face.
"Well I'm doing good things." She laughs at her own cocksure response and huddles deeper into his chest.
"I missed you, girl." A serious inflection strips some of the humor from his voice.
"I missed you, too." An impish twinkle leaps in Jade's eyes. "We gon' exchange recipes or some shit next? Bristol got you so whupped you talking like a chick now?"
Hearing my name in the context of a joke, of her teasing him, jolts me into the conversation. It's an olive branch of sorts, the first she's ever extended to me.
"Don't blame me." I lean against the sink, folding my arms over my chest and laughing. "He came to me like that."
"I came like what?" Grip asks, trying to appear affronted.
Sweet. Considerate. Kind. Thoughtful.
All the things I'm thinking, I see reflected in Jade's eyes, too, as she looks up at her cousin, still tucked into his side.
Yes, we both love him. We have him in common, and maybe one day, it will be enough.
32
Bristol
Weak light filters through a gap in the drawn drapes, illuminating a sliver in our darkened bedroom. Dawn bathes the room in gray. There's no color in the sky yet, no brightness. Hundreds of mornings like this already stretch behind me, with Grip asleep at my back, folded around my body in protection, in possession, and I can only hope for a million like it to come. Some of those mornings, I'll hear banging on our bedroom door. I'll see little legs flying across the room and feel little bodies sliding between us under the covers. Having Grip's children and sharing his life is a privilege that, years ago, I never imagined I could have, and now every morning I wake up envisioning it.
"You awake?" Lingering slumber roughens Grip's voice, deepening the timber.
"Yeah, a little," I slur sleepily.
His chuckling breath skitters over my neck, waking up parts of my body moments ago at rest.
"What's ‘a little' awake?"
"I'm awake, but I'm trying not to be."
"Oh." Disappointment coats his whisper. "Go back to sleep then."
I roll over to face him, picking out the planes of his handsome face hidden in the shadows of half-light.
"What is it?" I ask. "You wanna talk?"
"No." The smile I can't see is easily heard, and a warm hand traverses the curve of my hip. "I wanna fuck."
I'm immediately ready, my nipples tightening and my toes curling at the crude answer. I wrap my hand around the stiff length between his legs.
"Is that a yes?" He feathers kisses over my shoulder, licking at the ink he can't see but knows by heart is there.
"Whatever you want," I whisper, my hand setting a steady, tugging pace.
"Oooooooh." Grip's breath mists my nipples. "Even anal?"
My hand stops abruptly, apparently striking into him fear that I will abandon the mission.
"Just kidding, just kidding," he says hastily, laughing over a nipple. He suckles vigorously then languorously, the varied pace driving me wet and crazy. "You're gonna breastfeed, right?"
I gasp when his teeth lightly graze the sensitive underside of my breast.
"Is that really what you want to talk about right now?" I ask breathlessly. "My breasts as a source of nourishment?"
"I'm down to talk about these breasts twenty-four seven."
His tongue flicks over my ribs, and he slides lower until all I can make out is the shape of his head under the covers. He licks into and then blows over my belly button, and I feel his breath whispering over my stomach. He's having a conversation with the baby again, but before I can demand to know what he's saying, he lavishes open-mouth kisses over the small mound above my pelvis. He scoots even farther down, gently lifting my legs over his shoulders and opening me up, pressing his face into the weeping center of my body.
I hear him draw a long sniff. I stopped being self-conscious about that a long time ago. Now it just turns me on that he loves the way I smell. His big hands cup my ass and he brings me to his mouth, tasting me with lazy laps of his tongue like a big cat and I'm his sugar-rimmed saucer. My hands wander up to my breasts, circling my palms, massaging them the way he does. The darts of pleasure radiating from my nipples in harmony with the unbearable pleasure of my pussy make me drip. The stubble coating his jaw, an erotic scrape, leaves an illicit burn. He moans against me, hastening the pace of my hips. He flattens his tongue on my clit, spreading the wetness all along the slit, dipping lower to lick that tiny puckered hole. His tongue there sets fire to nerve endings that have been cloistered away, sensations I've never felt. One thick thumb slides in and I lock up, unsure of what he's about to do.
"Relax," he whispers, raining kisses across the lips. "I got you."
Before I can think more of it, his thumb starts moving in tandem with his lips and teeth feeding on my clit.
"God!" All the air whooshes from my body and I buck, my torso and hips lifting under the covers. He ruthlessly lays an arm over my waist, keeping me in place while his thumb and mouth conspire, driving me to madness, a mindless creature gnawing on her fist, clawing at the sheets, and wailing into the dawn. His thumb works its way into some heretofore undiscovered inner sanctum, and the pleasure is pyrotechnic. It explodes, its wick burning through my belly, up my back, and lighting up the muscles of my thighs. Just like a firework, once ignited, I streak across the sky, bright and flaring, then land motionless . . . still . . . spent.
He handles me tenderly, turning me to my side, enveloping me, chest pressed to my back. He palms the shallow valley between my breasts, sandwiching us together until there's room for nothing. Only love could slip into a space this small. He lifts my leg and passes his dick between the cheeks of my ass and over my pussy repeatedly, a sensuous prelude that elicits moans from my throat, tight with unshed ears.
"Grip, please." I'm literally panting, begging, reaching behind me, grasping at his neck and head, desperately reaching for something to anchor me. I don't care which hole he's about to fuck, I just need him inside. The space between us throbs with need. My nerves are stretched to gossamer, the anticipation blazing through my patience, and I'm pressing my ass into him. I thrust back in a rolling rhythm meant to tempt him, meant to hurry him, but when he finally slides inside, it's slow and measured. He's feeding himself to my body in stiff inches, in short pumps, agitating me.
"Faster." I twine my fingers with his between my breasts. "Please go fast. I need it fast."