Page 37 of Keeping Busy
She moaned incoherently.
“Tell me what you like, Mecca.” I said, while my hands traveled her body, my fingertips and sometimes even my fingernails gently moving across her bare skin. After I touched everything, I stuck my hands back into her hair, resting my fingertips against her scalp, periodically tugging at random locks.
“What your hands are doing, what you’re doing to my neck.” She breathed.
“Yeah? What about this?” I moved one hand from her hair, and rubbed my right thumb across her left nipple. Even though I asked, I already knew she liked it, because her nipples were swollen to hard peaks before I even touched them. Slowly over her perfect mound, my thumb teased and tantalized, and even though I loved the way her arousal felt under my finger, I held myself in check. It wasn't about how I felt, it was about how she felt. I took my mouth off of her neck, and moved it to her nipple, replacing my thumb, covering her nipple through the fabric of her top. My hands moved down to her ass, cupping handfuls, dragging her up to her tip-toes.
“Everything about you is good, Mecca.” I said into her chest.
She didn’t respond, so I lightly circled her nipple with my tongue. Her hands left my neck, and involuntarily went into my hair. I liked the reaction, so I licked her nipple again, and followed that with a pulling suck. My right hand left her ass, and moved up her back until I came to the back of her bra. Quickly unclasping it, I pushed up her top and bra, then attached my mouth to her bare breast. I felt her knees slightly buckle, when I nipped her there. With hands as determined as heat seeking missiles, I found the top of her shorts. Sliding inside her panties elicited a vibration from low in Mecca’s throat. That sound did something to me - caused my dick to go from semi-hard to completely bricked up in mere seconds. Mecca’s pussy was bare. I was a sucker for a hairless pussy. When my hand made contact with her skin, I looked down at her and our eyes met.
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes and her grin clearly communicated,“Yeah, that’s right.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “You got me.” I admitted. “I definitely like that. But don’t start celebrating, stay right here with me.”
She nodded her agreement, but her energy had already switched, so I pulled my hands out of her panties and hugged her to my body.
“What?”
“You know what.” I told her.
“I’m sorry.” She apologized, looking remorseful.
“You ain’t gotta apologize. You were right there with me for a while. What happened? When I touched your pussy you got nervous? Decided to pull back? Cuz you could’ve let me make my little discovery and keep going.”
“I know.”
“You know it’s a choice to stay engaged, right?”
“I know.”
“As long as you know.” I told her with a shrug of my shoulders.
“You giving up on me?” She tried to keep her expression blank, but her eyes were too revealing. She was concerned.
“Hell nah.” I leaned in and kissed her lips. “We’re just getting started, Ma.” I took her by the hand. “It’s been a long day, let’s head upstairs.”
I left Mecca in the guest bedroom, and headed for the master. Once inside my room, I spent a minute gathering up things to pack for training camp. I was an organized person like that. It probably came from having so much chaos in my life as a shorty.
Once my mother got really sick, and everything was left to my dad to handle, shit just started slipping through the cracks. The first thing to go was household upkeep. Our house was my mom’s showplace. She kept it clean and orderly, “a place for everything and everything in its place” was her life motto. Moms was a neat freak - probably borderline OCD. My dad loved that about her, he was always hugging her up and telling her how she took such good care of her four guys.
When she got ill, it was obvious that he didn't have the same predisposition to cleanliness that she had. It didn't take long for our house to fall into despair. Dishes piled up in the kitchen, clothes piled up in the laundry room, dust piled up on my mom’s decorative knick-knacks. Shit just went straight left in a matter of weeks. Somebody had to step up, it was obvious that my mother couldn’t do it, and my father wouldn’t do it. Xavier was two and a half, he couldn’t do it. That left Brandon and me. At seven and ten years old respectively, we became full-time students, part-time housekeepers and fill-in nannies.
In all honesty, I don’t know where my father was or what he was doing while my mother fought the most harrowing and hopeless part of her illness. I just remember not really seeing him at home. I remember getting up every morning, showering and dressing myself for school, then waiting for Brandon to do the same. Next, I would get Xavier clean, fed and dressed, then put him in his stroller. The three of us would walk to Xavier’s daycare, then Brandon and I would head to school.
You couldn’t do that now. Somebody would definitely report my father to DCFS if he pulled some stuff like that in this day and age - having his ten year old drop off and pick up his 2 and a half year old brother from daycare. But back then...nobody said a word. Nobody cared, as long as my father paid, and that was the one thing he managed to do...pay. He kept the lights and gas on. Kept a roof over our heads, picked up groceries, paid my football, paid Xavier’s daycare, and Brandon’s computer class, but he damn sure didn’t pay attention, or check in to see how his sons were handling watching their mother waste away. So,Ichecked in with Brandon. Used my fifth grade knowledge to help him with his second grade homework, laid out clothes for him, made sure he ate and showered and just tried to be a “good” big brother.
Things went from bad to worse after my mother passed away. The strand (as precarious as it was) that was holding my father together snapped, and the bottom fell out. But I guess he realized that he was ill-equipped to continue to front like he was handling things. He sat Brandon and me down, and told us that we were going to stay with our grandmother - his mother, until things “settled down.”
Less than six months later, he enlisted in the Marines and never looked back. The irony of him enlisting in the military wasn’t lost on me, even as a ten year old. His way of dealing with being too cowardly to face his wife’s death and raise his sons was to do something that on the outside seemed very brave. I couldn’t honor the shit. There was nothing brave about bouncing out on three vulnerable, scared, motherless little boys...even if it was to go to Iraq or Kuwait or wherever the hell he ended up. The war he needed to fight was right in his own heart and mind, not somewhere in the Middle East.
Personally, I thought the nigga had a death wish…he was trying to join my mother up there in heaven, so he didn’t have to face the pain of losing her down on earth. He had a death wish, right up until he didn’t...when he met Tiffany. Married Tiffany. Had three more kids with Tiffany. Kept it pushing with Tiffany and never looked back for my brothers and me.
I mean, he showed up at my NFL draft party in grandma’s backyard with his new family in tow. That was an awkward as fuck encounter that I tried never to think about. He tried it again when Brandon got his law degree. My grandmother invited him to the graduation and to his credit, he showed, but again, we didn’t know him...or his new family. So again, it was awkward. But apparently, the military gave him a “never give up - can do” spirit, because he was front and center again when Xavier was drafted and grandma threw that backyard turn-up a second time. That was less awkward, more stilted, because again, we didn’t know him.
Whatever. My childhood left an impression on me, and part of that impression was to be neat, clean, orderly and prepared. So, I spent about an hour packing and arranging one of my suitcases. When I was finished, I headed downstairs to make sure all of the lights were off, check the alarm system, and handle whatever else needed handling before I laid it down. As I passed the guest room, I noticed that the door was open, and the lamp was on. I made my way down the hallway and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Mecca was curled up in the middle of the bed, messing around on her iPad. She’d changed out of the shorts and matching top, and was in what looked like a sleep t-shirt.
“You cool?” I asked her.
