Commitment (7 page)

“Don’t you dare make fun of my bra,” she laughed, seeing the look on his face.

He grinned and leaned forward to kiss her between her breasts, lingering there when he felt encouragement in the subtle push of her hips
toward him. When Shawn raised his head, Riley’s eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted. He kissed her, reaching between them to unfasten her pants and slip a hand inside
.
She was already wet;
h
er
fingers worked frantically to unbuckle his belt
.

Shawn stopped her by gently shoving her back onto the bed and
peeling
her cargo pants
down
by the
waist
. In his eagerness, he’d forgotten
about those damned
boots.

“Oops,” Riley said.

They both laughed out loud and he reached up the pant-legs that had been turned inside out and
unlaced
them
, which seemed to take an inordinately long time
. Riley kicked
them
across the room and threw herself backward onto the bed once again.

Looking at her lying there in her funny Catholic school bra, he wanted her as much as he ever had.

After all this time, why wasn’t it going away?

He sank to his knees in front of the bed and peeled her underwear over her hips, kissing a path down her legs until he got to her knees.
Her breathing was audible now, her excitement matching his.
Shawn
pushed
her legs
back against her chest and buried his face in
to
her, teasing, licking and gently nipping her until she was quivering, moaning and
gasping
his name.
She tried to move, but he held her fast by
the
ankles, keeping her knees pressed apart so she was wide open to him.

Soon she was bucking beneath him, convulsing as though she wanted to throw him off, but still he held her there until she cried out and went limp.
He moved up
and
res
ted
his head on her stomach,
feeling it rise and fall as her breathing returned to normal, closing
his eyes as she raked her fingers across his scalp. W
hen
she reached
down toward
him
, this time
he gave in.

Riley drew him into her holding him in place, her nails digging into his buttocks. As he
began to move, slowly at first
, she moved with him, her mouth against his neck, legs locked about his waist. He wasn’t just inside her, he was surrounded by her – he could taste her, smell the citrus scent of her hair, feel the
smooth
softness of her skin. In this place and time, there was nothing else
. S
he was everything.

Afterward, Riley lay on her side facing him, her eyes half-shut and heavy-lidded. Shawn reached out and traced a finger down the center of her forehead, along the bridge of her nose and over her lips. She opened them and pulled his finger into her mouth, sucking the tip for a moment before
releasing it. His body responded immediatel
y, even to this small gesture.
She
traced a
raised scar on his arm and lifted her head for a moment to kiss its length.

“What’re you up to tomorrow?” he asked. “I don’t have much time in town.”

“Tomorrow morning I’m interviewing a very boring young man who works for the Queens Borough president and who wants to see his name in print, so he shares information he probably shouldn’t. What’re
you
doing
later
?”

“Playing a show at the Mellon Arena.”

“And yet all my friends say we have nothing in common,” Riley
joked
.

“You tell all your friends about me?” Shawn asked.

“Well. Tracy.”

“But no one else.”

Riley shook her head.
Shawn was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment.

“Nope. Unless you count my mother. But that’s just incidental.”

“Incidental how?”

“Incidental because
really
it’s just that I tell her everything about my life.
And you’re part of my life.”

“Am I?”

“One of the best parts,” she said
, moving closer
.

g

Riley was gone when he opened his eyes the next morning. She never stayed. Work was generally her excuse but most often there was no reason, just her absence. They’d been up for much of the night, exploring each other and filling in the blanks since they’d last been together. Around three in the morning, Riley
announced that
she “needed” vanilla bean ice cream so there’d been a quick trip to a 24-hour grocery store
.

When they returned to the hotel, she’d
turned on MTV and
danced around the room in her underwear to a Gwen Stefani music video, ice cream carton and sp
oon in hand. Shawn watched her
, laughing until she collapsed
into bed and
he
peeled away all traces of clothing so they were skin to skin once again. He fell asleep with her leg draped across his torso, her fingers tracing circles on the back of his neck.

Now, the message light on the phone was glowing red and Shawn
vaguely remembered the ringing sometime during the night, right after he’d let his mobile phone go unanswered. Only Brendan would be that persistent. He hauled himself out of bed and headed for the shower thinking of the mere six hours he had in New York before he would have to be on the way to Pittsburgh. 

An hour later when he opened the door to his suite in answer to insistent knocking, Brendan was standing there, his face carefully devoid of expression

“So how’s she doing?” he asked, taking a seat in front of the television and switching it on.

“Do you care, or are you just trying to start some shit?” Shawn said.

Brendan shrugged. “I like Riley. You know that.”

“But? Just get it out of your system, man. We go through this every single time, so why make this trip any different?”Shawn said impassively.

“It’s just . . . you’re K fucking
Smooth
, dawg.
You know how many bitches are dying to get next to you?”

“No,” Shawn said. “Tell me.”

“A’ight. I forgot that this one subject is off limits,” Brendan held his hands up. 

“So
what we’re
doing today again?”

“
KISS FM
. That’s all we got time for.”

“What time are we done?”

“About one or so.”

“Good.”

Radio interviews were among the easiest, but also
among
the most tedious
things
he had to do for career maintenance.
They
were
also
essential. Currying favor with disc jockeys meant getting your music played
, and
there was no substitute for having the fans
listen to
you talk to someone just like them over the airwaves. Whenever he had a limited stop in a major city, Brendan
would
set up an appearance on the most popular hip-hop show in town.

Since New York set the tone for so many other markets, he had to be
on
his game here of all places. Good thing it was second nature for him now. He could give them the full K
Smooth
flavor without even thinking about it. And he defini
tely wasn’t thinking about it.
He was thinking instead about his travel schedule. After Pittsburgh, all of the remaining cities were out
west
, and he wouldn’t be back on the East Coast until December. Damn
near three months.

g

“So what you do when you’re
jus
’ chillin’?” the fan on the phone was asking. 

“That’s right,” the deejay chime
d in.
“
What’s a multi-platinum recording artist do when he ain’t workin’?”

Shawn began to answer
when something caught his eye.
An issue of
Power to the People
was sitting in front of one of the mikes. Without thinking he reached out to pick it up, and by then there ha
d been four seconds of silence.
A big no-no in radio.

“I golf,” he ad-libbed.

The deejay and sidekick roared. 

“For real?” the fan asked, sounding skeptical.

Shawn laughed. “I ain’ tryin’ to say I’m Ti
ger Woods or nuthin’ but, yeah.
I golf.”

“Charles Bark
ley golfs,” the sidekick said.
“Hell, every Black man in America golfs nowadays, so that’s cool.”

“Well, if K
Smooth
golfs, it’s
definitely
cool,” the deejay said.

g

“Golf,” Brendan said, as they exited the studio. “That’s some funny shit.”

“Think of it this way. Now you’ll be fielding offers for me to be on the cover of
Golf World
magazine.”

Brendan thought about it for a moment. “Could open up a completely new market for you.”

Shawn glanced at the face of his cell phone. It was just after one o’clock, as Brendan had predicted. 

“Let’s head downtown,” he said.

“What for?”

Shawn looked at Brendan, who was tapping out a text message. “Riley’s office.”

He ignored Brendan’s obvious exasperation and opened the issue of
Power to the People
that he’d lifted from the radio station, flipping through until he found what he was looking for. There was a small thumbnail photo
of her above her byline. Instead of the short curls she had now, her hair was in shoulder-length dreadlocks, and her face was slightly rounder.

The article was titled “Post-Racialism & Paradox.” Shawn read a random sentence:
The very notion of a post-racial society is a paradox, presuming as it does that we must maintain race-consciousness if only for the purpose of denying its significance.

His eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. He had never looked at any of her stuff before – hadn’t even read the article she wrote about him – and didn’t realize until this moment, just how out of step a piece on a hip-hop artist was with her usual work.

He looked up to see Brendan looking at him quizzically.

“You ready or what?”

“Yeah.” Shawn rolled up the magazine and stuffed it into his back pocket.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of her building and double-parked out front. Brendan immediately made use of the time to respond to email and Shawn punched ou
t Riley’s number on his mobile.
With midday traffic there was no telling how long it might take to get out to Long Island to the airstrip for the flight to Pittsburgh, so this would have to be quick.

“C’mon down a sec,” he told her when she picked up.

A couple minutes later Riley came bounding out of the building, her colorful scarf trailing behind her. She looked no worse for the wear, even after being up most of the night. After quickly scanning the vehicles at the curb, she spotted them in the rented SUV and drummed a quick beat on the passenger
side window with her knuckles. Brendan released the locks, giving Shawn a weary look. When the door swung open, Riley climbed in and astride his lap. Before he could speak, she was kissing him and Shawn felt a gradual loss of tension that he hadn’t even known was there. 

“I missed you,” she said as though they hadn’t just seen each other the previous evening. 

Then she seemed to notice for the first time – but only peripherally – that Brendan was there as well and pla
yfully punched him in the arm.
Shawn held her by the waist for a moment then ran his hands down over her hips, hoisting her up and pulling her closer.

“Hey,
hey
,” Brendan protested. “You need some privacy or what, man?”

Riley laughed. “It’s just about lunch time,” she said. “You
want to take
me out?”

“After Pittsburgh I’m going to L.A.,” he said ignoring her question. “Come with me.”

Beside them, Brendan was
suddenly
very still.

“You know I can’t,” she said, avoiding his gaze.