Jaded (17 page)

Kiki leaned her head back on the sofa and rubbed her neck.

“Don’t ever touch my things again,” said Syeesha. Tired and battered, she shuffled to her bedroom without waiting for Kiki’s reply.

***

Chapter 24

“Hold still.”

“Is it gonna burn?”

“No,” Christian said, “it’s peroxide. It’s all I could find in the bathroom.”

“How bad is it? I’m afraid to look in the mirror.”

“Hold still, I said.” Christian dabbed her cut lip with the moist cotton ball. “Not too bad. But it’s definitely cut. She got you good.”

Syeesha touched the scar that sliced through his brow.

“Are you ever going to tell me how you got this?”

“In eighth grade there was this quiet kid in my class who got picked on all the time. At lunch, a guy we called Blade tripped him. Food went one way and the kid went another.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t remember. He hit his nose on the floor, and it started bleeding. Kids laughed. I was pissed. And scared of Blade just like everyone else, but in that moment I was mostly just pissed. So I said something. We had words. We fought. I discovered why they called him Blade.”

“Was it bad?”

“Not really. Thank God he didn’t get my eye. He got kicked out of school, and last I heard he’s doing eight to ten for burglary.”

“So you’re a hero. Great. Just what I need.”

He grinned and kissed her softly.

“I gotta get out of there.”

“You know I’d like you to stay here but it’s cramped enough with me and Jonesy.”

“I wasn’t trying to hint at anything.”

Syeesha looked around his bedroom. Everything was in its place, but he was right, there was only enough room to breath.

“Not to mention how miserable it’d be for you to live with two guys.”

Christian tossed the cotton into the trash and sat next to her on the bed.

She turned to him. “I don’t think living with you would be miserable. I can tell you’re a neat freak, just like my sister. On second thought, maybe it would be a little miserable.”

He chuckled. “I am a little obsessive.”

Christian touched the crease in his slacks. Then he walked his two fingers from his leg to Syeesha’s thigh. It reminded her of those old Yellow Pages commercials. He played with her fingers. “What’re you going to do?”

His soft touch felt like the warmth of a candle. But she had to stay focused. Making out with a girl with a bruised face was probably the last thing on his mind.

“I don’t know. There’s so much I have to think about right now. I don’t want to deal with any of it.”

“Like what? School?”

“Uh! Don’t add to the list.”

“Tell me.”

With little prompting, Syeesha told him Jade’s plan.

Fuck it!
she thought.
If the word hits the street then Jade can sue me for the shirt on my back.

She remembered the shoes.

Fire-engine-red Louboutins.

Did Jade buy me those because she wanted to or were they a bribe?

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“I said, you told Jade to go to hell, right?”

“Not in so many words, but I refused.”

Christian placed a finger beneath her chin and turned her face to his.

“I love who you are.”

“Right now, I’m battered and confused.”

“Right now you are beautiful and vulnerable and totally willing to let me exploit the situation.”

She giggled as he moved closer. Her face hurt, but the rest of her felt like pudding—all soft and malleable. His tongue slipped inside her mouth. After all these weeks, she still thought he tasted succulent, like a ripe papaya bursting with juice.

Christian eased her tank top over her head and suckled her neck. She was intoxicated by his scent. Clean, like perfumed soap. Heat flared inside her and she shivered at its strength. Christian must have sensed her desire because he snapped off her bra and eased her onto her back. His fingers were smooth as a feather against her skin. Agile caresses of his tongue enflamed her entire body. She arched her back, urging him to take the whole of her inside his mouth. Seemingly intent on driving her mad with desire, Christian dispensed with her shorts and thong and stroked two strong fingers within her. In. Out. In. Out. When she couldn’t restrain herself any longer, Syeesha cupped his head with both hands and pushed him from her breast.

Christian tracked kisses down her torso. Syeesha pulled at his shirt until it slid easily over his head, revealing a sculpted back and defined shoulders. Christian hiked her legs over his shoulders and leaned his head down, licking her with a nimble tongue until she cried out his name in unrestrained pleasure.

***

Chapter 25

“Up already?”

“I’m an early riser,” she said. “It’s a curse.”

“You going back over there this morning?”

“Yep. Gotta go back sometime.”

He turned onto his back. “Let me know what time you want to go. I’m gonna get a little more sleep in.”

“Mind if I turn on the TV? Will it bother you?”

“I’m willing to suffer for your happiness.”

She smiled. It’d been a long time since she’d felt so incredibly delicious, inside and out. Despite her sore lip, the rest of her felt as though she’d been through an intense workout. A dull ache lingered over her body. But it was worth it considering the trifecta of orgasms she’d enjoyed the night before.

Syeesha flipped through the television in search of visual cotton candy. Which meant nothing heavy. No news. No pundits. No unsolved murders. She had enough heaviness going on in her life, what with the very real possibility that she’d be back to collecting three hundred bucks a week in unemployment very soon if she didn’t find a gig to replace the one she had.

Think again, Toots. You can’t collect unemployment if you quit. Damn. No wonder everybody hates The Man!

Christian turned onto his side, his back toward her.

“When I said I was willing to suffer you spared no expense.”

“Hmm?” Syeesha realized she’d flipped to MTV. “You don’t like KaCee? I love this song.”

Syeesha watched as KaCee writhed on top of tables, urging the object of her affection to understand how she feels about him.

“There’s really no limit to what the recording industry will do to make money,” he said. His head was buried beneath a pillow.

“You’re seriously picking on a dying animal?”

Christian flipped onto his back. “They’re still a billion-dollar industry. That girl is under eighteen, dressed in next to nothing and telling a guy—who looks older than me—that he should know how much she wants him.”

“It’s like a schoolgirl fantasy. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’d know a little about schoolgirl fantasies,” he grinned. “It’s been awhile since you’ve seen your sweetheart, hasn’t it?”

Playfully, she smacked him on the chest. Syeesha hadn’t thought romantically about Professor Asher in weeks.

“For your information, KaCee is nineteen. And I don’t see anything wrong with her looking sexy and making millions while she still can. She’s not always going to have that body or that money-making ability.”

“All I’m saying is that I think she’s being exploited. Of course, she doesn’t see anything wrong with it. But the men who run the industry should have better judgment than a nineteen-year-old girl. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s been around for a few years and has always played the sexy ingenue.”

He placed an arm over his eyes.

“You’re definitely a lawyer. You could argue about this all day, couldn’t you?” Syeesha said.

“I’m not a lawyer. And I’m not arguing. I’m just saying.”

“I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes.”

Christian looked at her. “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” she said, slipping on her jeans. “I just have a lot I need to do today and I want to get home.”

“’Cause it kinda seems like you’re annoyed.”

She was annoyed. But what bothered her the most was that she didn’t know exactly why she was annoyed.

“I’m fine, really.”

Christian slept on the train to her house. He should be tired. He worked full-time, went to school, and did far more studying than she did.

When she cracked the door to the apartment, she was pleased at the welcoming silence. She flicked the light switch as she walked inside.

“I can’t stay. I need to get back to my place and sleep,” he said.

“That’s—“

Before she could get the words out she was stunned cold.

“What the fuck?” Christian asked.

They stood frozen, looking around the room.

The totally empty room.

No sofa.

No tables.

No television.

No nothing.

The floor was littered with a few magazines and writing reference books that had been on the coffee table. An empty water glass, a couple of candles, a clock radio, and cheap artificial flowers that had adorned the end tables were dumped on the floor.

She went into Kiki’s bedroom.

Only dust, a few nails, and curtains remained.

Syeesha went back to the front room.

“Your room is intact,” Christian said. “She broke the lock but everything looks in order to me.”

A quiet alarm sounded in her head. Syeesha couldn’t quite put her finger on the cause for that awful nagging. Her eyes shifted through the things on the floor again, and when she spotted her thesaurus her eyes widened.

She ran to her bedroom. Her breath caught.

It wasn’t there.

She looked underneath her bed, knowing that it wouldn’t be there either.

She opened each of her dresser drawers and tossed out the clothing.

“What’re you looking for?”

Her hands instinctively covered her mouth as she looked around her bedroom again.

Everything looked in order.

But she knew it wasn’t.

Kiki had cleaned out the living room, broken the lock off her bedroom door, and taken with her Syeesha’s most prized possession.

Her laptop.

***

Chapter 26

“Do you have the serial number?”

“Huh?” Syeesha looked at the police officer but didn’t really see him.

Christian wrapped his arm tighter around her. “The serial number, babe. From the laptop. Do you have it written down somewhere?”

Syeesha refocused her attention on the young police officer. His thin moustache was an unsuccessful bid to make himself look older, more mature. Instead it just made him look like a desperate teen that had scribbled a permanent marker above his lip. It had taken the officers a tediously long hour to arrive. Now that she was standing in the empty room with them, they looked as if they were the creative muses for the old cop show
21 Jump Street
.

“The serial number?” The older-looking teen cop—Officer Rinzo—must have been the senior partner. He asked all the questions and jotted down her useless answers in his notepad. “If you have it, then it’ll be easier for us to track the laptop down if it lands in a pawnshop.”

Syeesha buried her head in Christian’s chest and started crying again. The laptop held so much of her life: her law school homework, her personal journal, her manuscript . . .

She sucked up her tears and tried to pull herself together. “No, I don’t have a serial number. It used to be under warranty but it’s not anymore.”

“Do you have any more information you can provide about your roommate, Kiki?”

Syeesha wiped her eyes. “No. Mrs. Leachum may. Only my name is on the lease, but Mrs. Leachum keeps a record of all roommates and subtenants.”

“Maybe we can track her down when we get her social security number,” the senior teen-cop said to the other.

She heard what the officer was saying, but she couldn’t focus. Besides, she knew it was no use. She’d lost everything.

“It was all mine,” she rambled. “She took everything.”

“Ma’am,” Officer Rinzo’s partner asked, “do you have receipts for any of your furniture? I mean, can you prove these things were yours and not hers? Credit card statement, maybe?”

His words punched her in her gut. She’d have to prove
her
property was hers? Was this standard operating procedure or just a stupid line of questioning from two cops who barely looked drinking age? What did it matter? It wouldn’t bring anything back. “No, it was mostly secondhand.”

“We don’t mean to give you a hard time,” the senior teen-cop said. “It’s just that I know theft happens a lot in this city and if you can’t prove that the stuff is yours, then it just boils down to your word against hers.”