Illustration and cover design by Totsymae. Copyright 2011

That saying of everything coming up roses rang true  for Desperita. She thought about Bootleg Man without trying. Like, when she woke up, he was there. When she was in faculty meetings, he was there. When she cooked dinner, he was there. Even when she sat on the toilet to shit her dinner out, he was there. By the end of the week, she was prettying herself up with designer whatnots she’d bought from some high end store to let him know she was all that and then some.

“Why don’t you talk to this man and get to know him better before going out? There’s no hurry, Dee,” her mother told her over the phone. She was so damn tired of singing this tune to her daughter, it didn’t even come out with a sense of urgency the way it used to. She fucked up real good on raising this one when it came to men folk.

“Wait for how long, Mom? Do you realize I’ll be forty before the year is out?” Desperita checked out how fine she looked in her bedroom’s full-length mirror that showed every curve she had in that fire red dress she had no panties underneath. “My clock is ticking. Can you hear it?”

“I hear something all right but it sounds more like the ticking of a suicide bomb to me.”

Desperita rushed that old heifer off the phone after that. She wasn’t in the mood to hear shit more she had to say. By the time she finished lining her lips with color and puckering up and shit, Bootleg Man sent her a text, letting her know he was in the driveway and he would be at the door faster than she could say Big Daddy. Ooh, that sent chills all over her horny ass and she was too giddy she’d decided to go pantyless. She felt a bit of heat rising between her thighs at the ringing of her doorbell singing Hot in Here.

“Hey, you.” Bootleg Man grabbed her real gently and shit. He was already standing at attention below his beltline and wanted so bad to tell her to meet him at the car but he wanted to get a quick peek inside the crib he was gonna be moving into. And he wasn’t disappointed one bit either.

His baby, which he called her now ’cause he couldn’t remember how to say her name half the time, had a nice ass crib. He could see himself laid up in there and her swinging that big ass around in the kitchen, cooking for him and shit. Damn, if he hadn’t run up on a pot of gold in meeting what’s her face. He just hugged her and she was loving the feel of a man’s arms all over her. She sunk into him and pushed her front all up on the man like a damn retired whore who’d been scraping by and now had somebody hard to grab on to.

Naturally, he got to grinding against her but uh uh. He stopped himself ’cause this shit could happen right there in the foyer and they hadn’t even closed the front door. Plus, he had a rental car he needed to get back before midnight. He’d be pressed to do dinner and fuck her. His boy wasn’t able to hook him up with a free ride and since he was paying out all this damn money on a bitch that had some, he wanted to get the car back before 12:01 to avoid the fees. See, he’d gone to some jacked up rental lot ’cause his credit reflected he wasn’t trustworthy of shit.

But damn, if his boy had been able to hook him up, he was willing to bet if he’d licked her in all the right spots, he could load up a U-Haul to be moving in by the end of next week.

“Come on, Babe,” he told her. “I got us set up at Emeril’s in Buckhead. Nothing but the best for my baby,” he said, guiding her to the door with one of her pones in the palm of his hand. He took one last glance at all the expensive shit in Deperita’s house and got nervous that $100 might not be enough spending money on the prepaid AMEX card he’d bought from Wal Mart. Backstory on that was, he owed a few banks overdraft fees and banked at the Wherever Corner Check Cashing, that was usually anchored in some raggedy ass parking lot. The Wherever part coming from it being a mobile service that parked itself where the hell ever it could to charge twenty cents to every dollar from folk who, on looks, didn’t appear to have any ties to knowing much of shit about balancing a dollar.

“You’re spoiling me already,” she giggled, as his hand spread like a fan from one no-panty butt cheek to the other.

“Eating at Emeril’s not spoiling you, girl,” he pulled her around to face him, removing all intentions of eating from a plate in a restaurant to enjoying the main dish wrapped in his arms.

“You have something else in mind, I see,” said her too easy ass, and going into another of her giggling frenzies.

“Umm hmm.”

He got to licking his tongue at her like a damn snake, as he kicked the door closed, thinking he’d at least be able to save on gas by not going across town and could still get the car back in time to catch the late bus back to his place. Now that he thought about it, she wouldn’t see what kinda car he was driving either. This would fix the dilemma of explaining why he was always driving different cars, like he was rolling in dough, which he was so far away from having. He just had to make sure he left her house when she was on the heavy side of sleep after he tore that ass up with all the good loving he was about to whip on her.

Copyright 2011 Totsymae