Make You Mine. Niobia Bryant

      Julius leaned his head closer to the bedroom door as he listened to the awful sounds of Caress retching. He came upstairs to retrieve fresh linens from the hall closet and overheard her. He fought the urge to barge in and go to her. It was obvious she wanted distance from him.

      Still, it wasn’t until he heard the toilet flush and her moving about with normalcy inside the bedroom that he finally moved away from the door to retrieve his linens and make his way back downstairs to sleep on the couch.

       Chapter Five

      Caress was tired with a capital T.

      She used her key to enter the house and dropped her purse and winter coat on the foyer table before she made her way to the guest bathroom to relieve herself. She had two inter views today—and that made four this week—and Caress was praying like crazy that one of them panned out. Looking in the papers for apartments was all well and good but without money it was all just a dream.

      She was just finishing up when she heard her cell phone ringing from her purse in the hall. Hurrying to wash her hands, Caress made it back out to the hall in record time. “Hey, Tam. What’s up?” she greeted her friend after seeing her number on the caller ID.

      “Just checking on you. How’d it go?”

      Caress kept the phone pressed to her ear as she jogged up the stairs to her room. “Girl, to hell with complaining pimps. It’s hard out here for everybody.”

      Tamara laughed. “Tell me about it.”

      Caress bent over to dig a pair of sweats out of her hamper of clean clothes that she still had to fold. She saw a yellow tank and she grabbed that too. “I just can’t believe I’m in this mess.”

      “Shit happens.”

      “Yes, I know and usually to me,” Caress drawled as she put the phone on speaker and then set it on the nightstand next to an unfinished bottle of Snapple.

      “How’s everything at the house?”

      Caress quickly removed the black sweater dress and high-heeled boots she wore. “If our baby is half the neat freak his father is then my womb is spotless.”

      “Julius can be very… particular .”

      Caress started to say anal was the better word, but who was she to complain? The man was doing her a huge favor and she hadn’t forgotten that once in these last two weeks since his return from Africa. “Well, I hardly see him. We just do our own thing you know. We pass each other like ships in the night.”

      Tamara got silent.

      Caress gladly slipped on the sweats and tee. She instantly felt better. “Tamara? You there?”

      “Umm-hmmm.”

      Caress froze in pulling her hair up into a ponytail. “What?” she asked, waiting for whatever it was Tamara wanted to say.

      “Nothing,” her friend said simply. Too simply.

      Caress arched a brow. “Oh, it’s something.”

      “Well…I just wondered how you guys feel, you know, being around each other and…stuff and you know memories and…stuff comes drifting back and…”

      “Yeah, I know. Stuff?” Caress bent down to the floor to find her left slipper somewhere under the pile of shoes under the bed. “We’re not screwing, Tamara, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

      “Hmmm. Pity.”

      Unable to find the slipper, Caress settled on a fresh pair of thick white ankle socks instead. “Pity?”

      “You told me that morning after y’all’s big night that the sex was amazing . That was your word, right?”

      Caress bit her bottom lip. “And your point is?”

      “None of that old fire has blazed up between y’all…yet?”

      Caress looked up and caught sight of her reflection. There were a gazillion wrinkles in her clothes from being balled up in the basket after she took them out of the dryer. Her ponytail was as crooked as a politician and she had a zit as big as Mount Everest on her chin—she added acne to her list of side effects from pregnancy. “I don’t how Julius can resist all this,” she said sarcastically.

      When it came to their interactions in the house, it was as if that night at her apartment had never happened. There was nothing remotely sexual between them. Most of their conversation was limited to greetings or general pleas-antries. Most of their time was spent either passing each other in the house or closed off in their own worlds—him in the darkroom or his bedroom and she in the living room or her bedroom.

      Caress barely knew much more about the father of her baby than she did before.

      He listened to jazz music.

      He was a neat freak.

      He liked sports.

      He didn’t have much company.

      He liked to read mystery novels.

      Oh and the one fact she knew from the first night. The man was devastating…absolutely devastating in bed.

      Caress winced just a bit as she thought of this hot little move he did with the tip of his tongue. She shivered at the memory of it on her neck, her nipples, her clit. Caress fanned herself. Yes, his tongue should be licensed to thrill.

      “Uh…earth to Caress.”

      Her eyes darted to the cell phone on the dresser as Tamara’s voice filled the air. She picked it up and left the room in search of her favorite past time. Television. “I’m here, girl,” she said, taking the phone off of speaker.

      “So…no nookie?”

      Caress rolled her eyes heavenward. “Maybe you and Kendrick need a little freakfest because you sure have sex on the brain.”

      “You might be right,” Tamara agreed. “He’s been working a lot of overtime lately.”

      Caress jogged down the stairs and walked into the kitchen to grab a fresh bottle of her beloved fruit punch Snapple. “Well, tell Kendrick to stop punching that time card and put in some work at home.”

      “Sounds to me like Julius has got some cleaning up to do around there,” Tamara shot back playfully.

      Caress opened the bottle and took a deep swig of it before she headed back out of the kitchen to the living room, the lone room in the entire house with a television. “Yes, but Julius is not my husband. Hell, he ain’t even my man. Hell, he ain’t even my friend with benefits.”

      “Aww, poor baby,” Tamara teased.

      Caress grabbed the remote from atop the leather ottoman in the center of the spacious masculine-styled room. “Listen, you’re using up my minutes. Call me later,” she said, turning on the flat screen over the fireplace.

      “Let’s go to Mahogany’s Friday night. My treat,” Tamara added softly.

      “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. Caress had her pride and she hated charity, but during her working days she and Tamara had treated each other often. Besides, she could use a night away from the house.

      She closed the phone and set it on the arm of the chair as she used the other hand to flip through the channels.

      She had just settled on a rerun of Run’s House on MTV when she heard the front door open and close. Julius. He was home early. She looked over her shoulder expecting him to peek his head inside the living