It reminded Suro of the gongfu or Kung Fu classes he had taken as a boy at his Chinese mother’s behest, with their sifu calling out instructions to he and his fellow students, which they all performed together with precision timing. Except this was a lot more fun.
Lacey was laughing, as were Sparkle and Kenji. Even Spidey was giggling, especially on the turns.
Suro’s heart warmed at the scene before him, one he could never have hoped for, much less imagined a year ago, and this caused him to do something that brought Lacey to an immediate halt.
“What?” he asked as she stared up at him with comically wide eyes.
“You’re smiling,” she said. She cupped one side of his face in her hand. “I’ve never seen you smile before. It’s beautiful.”
No, Lacey was beautiful, and he had never wanted any woman as much as he wanted her. He dipped his head towards her to taste her sweet lips, momentarily forgetting Sparkle and Kenji, and Spidey. The music faded away and there was nothing left but the two of them, him smiling, her smiling back, their lips almost about to touch—
The harsh screech of the doorbell sounded and Lacey snapped out of their daze, pulling back from him.
“I wonder who that could be?”
Sparkle answered the door, while Lacey went to turn off the music. So it was in dead silence that Sparkle revealed Spidey’s mother, Candy, standing at the door.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Lacey demanded as soon as she stepped into the hallway with Spidey and closed the door behind her.
Candy held out her arms, “Give me my son.”
“Your son who I’ve been taking care of for the last twenty-four hours?” Lacey pointed at her. “I think you owe me an explanation first.”
“I don’t owe you shit! I’ve been doing what I had to do to make sure my son and me get the money we need.”
You haven’t been…” Lacey lowered her voice. “You haven’t been selling your body, have you? Because, Candy, the drugs aren’t worth it. We can get you help.”
“I don’t need help,” Candy said. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be asking you for it, Tasha.”
Her blood ran cold. “What did you call me?”
“You heard me,” Candy said. “I knew I’d seen you before some place. At first I thought maybe you used to strip and you just didn’t want everybody to know. But then the other day it came to me. You was the girl behind the counter at Cofi’s! My mama used to love that place and we were up in there all the time. She was real pissed then when your dad closed up his shop out the blue like that. And she was even more pissed she didn’t know where you went, because Hector Mendez had his guys showing your picture all around the neighborhood, saying he’d give anybody with information about your whereabouts a real nice reward. I was still in high school, but I remembered the story about how you shot that poor man’s only son.”
Lacey shook her head. “I don’t know who you think I am, but you must have mistaken me for somebody else.”
“Stop lying, bitch.” Candy rolled her neck. “You want to know where I was? I was back in Trenton, getting a nice grip of cash from Hector Mendez. He didn’t believe me when I called and said I had information about your whereabouts. Flew me out to New Jersey and everything to get the whole story and make sure I wasn’t lying. I told him all about you working in Chicago now and about that Rain Man daughter of yours.”
She smiled when Lacey’s eyes widened in horror.
“Yeah, he was real interested in his granddaughter, since he don’t got no other family,” Candy said. She then glared at Lacey with barely contained hate. “I knew you was putting on a front from the first day I met you. Acting all prissy, like your shit don’t stink.”
Lacey trembled, unable to believe after everything she had done to stay hidden, one disgruntled addict had blown her cover. “Why do you hate me so much? I’ve never done anything to you.”
“You fucked with me, so I fucked with you,” Candy answered like it was a simple math equation. “You know how we do it in West Trenton.”
Candy snatched Spidey out of her arms, and the little boy immediately started crying in protest. But all Lacey could do was stand there frozen as Candy walked away with the child.
What was she going to do? What was she going to do?
She re-entered the apartment in a daze.
“Where’s Spidey?” Kenji demanded as soon as she walked through the door.
“I had to give him back,” she heard herself say. “He’s with his mother.”
Somehow she managed to tell them a version of what had happened and then make small talk in the gloomy mood that followed.
“We’ll get him back,” Suro said to her quietly after they said good night to Kenji and Sparkle. “I’ll make calls first thing in the morning and we’ll get this solved. Spidey deserves better.”
She looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “I love you,” she whispered.
“What?” he said, surprise written clearly across his normally passive face.
“I love you,” she said again. “I’m sorry it took me this long to tell you.”
He came to stand next to her, searching her face for several moments, before finally releasing her hair from its bun. It was so quiet between them, she could swear she heard his heartbeat, strong and steady. Then he pushed her hair behind her ear and said, “I love you, too.”
And this time it was she who threw herself at him, pushing him back on the bed, as she unbuttoned his shirt and stripped him out of his clothes as fast as she could.
“I love you so much.” She barely gave him time to get on the condom. It felt like everything in the world came down to her lifting her dress up and pulling him inside of her. “Touch me, please touch me,” she begged.
But he did more than that. He flipped her over onto her back and pushed into her with hard, strong thrusts, letting his hands roam her breasts, her sides, then down to her thighs as he did so. “I love you, too. You’re the first woman I’ve ever loved. The only woman…”
Then his words got lost when she pulled him down to kiss her. For once it didn’t feel like it was her warming him up, instead the heat of his passion flowed into her, filling her up with sweet light until she exploded with it into a thousand stars all pulsating with incredible feelings.
He came a few minutes later, swelling and releasing into the condom. “I love you, too,” he said again, kissing her until every drop of cum had shuddered out of him.