One Safe Place (15 page)

In his hotel room, Tylowe reviewed all the information that Psalms had gathered again. He needed to get out of his room before he went over the plan, yet again, to rescue the kids and contemplate all the things that might go wrong.

The idea of things going wrong revolved in his heart and mind. As he dressed, he found himself staring in the mirror of his four-cornered room. He went to the window and eyed people walking, trying to get lost in the moment.
What if I get hurt or even die? Me trying to save Elliot's other children…The trauma Meeah and my daughters would experience… Life for them would change forever in ways that could tear their lives in to shredded emotions and beliefs. All we have built to become family could be destroyed.
It saddened his mood.

He went down to the sports bar and placed a bet on Floyd Mayweather's upcoming fight, and decided to walk the strip. It felt nice to have on a thin, knit short-sleeve shirt without needing a coat at night. The Vegas night lights and nightlife had taken over the strip.

Entertaining his visual senses, Tylowe smiled at how women loved to come to Vegas to sport attire they would never wear in their hometown. Stilettoes pinched toes and strained body parts, but they strolled the strip. It's sexy to see, but damn how does a woman walk from hotel to hotel? Tylowe laughed as women openly flirted with their lips pursing, smiling and eyes latching on to way-too-long stares. Most of them knew damn well it was only flirting, with no end game other than going home and claiming to have met a hot guy.

Tylowe recounted how hundreds of times, he had heard men claiming they had come to Vegas and other vacation spots and met the finest and the hottest women they had ever seen. In truth, most of these men were stuck in a fantasy land. If ever a man had come to Vegas and scored, it would be rare. If anything, men had paid for a piece of ass at a dude ranch, kissing women who had condom breath. Maybe a few men had paid a woman to come to their hotel room. Paying for it was not the same as saying you got a hook-up because you were such a hot guy with exceptional skills and good looks. Most men and women walking down the strip and hanging out in Vegas hotels, bars, and lounges had a ball because they spent a lot of money, and that qualified as a good time.

Tylowe viewed the women walking down the strip. Most were letting their hair down, relaxing from the constrictions of their daily life. He walked over to the nightclub where his old college mates told him they'd met at a Neo-Soul night going on with a live band.

The previous night, he had been on a ferry cruising Lake Washington with his beautiful wife, the two of them struggling to flow as one. He told her he was going to Vegas with Suzy Q for business. That had never been a problem, and it wasn't this time, either. Suzy Q protected Tylowe and Meeah as if they were her blood family.

On board the ferry in Seattle, the women had been pretty, friendly, and beautiful. Tylowe turned the corner into the lounge area of the Vegas nightclub and saw a packed house of women that most men would label as not just pretty, friendly, and beautiful, but fine.

These women had perfect makeup, perfect nails, perfect lip gloss and perfectly batting eyelashes. The women all fit in to perfectly stylish dresses covering varying body types, and were all wearing tall heels.

Tylowe smiled as if someone had told him a good joke, and reflected on a saying, “What happens in Vegas…” Of the women in the club, most were near his daughter's age, in their mid-twenties, and some were his friends' daughter's age, in their thirties. The other women in the club were forty-ish, and were trying to look as young as someone's daughter in how they dressed and flirted with the men in the lounge. Some pulled it off well, he had to admit.

Some of the men were in suits, and some wore XXXL shirts and pressed, creased oversized jeans. Tylowe felt a bit out of place wearing a knit shirt with a collar that fit his body and jeans that hugged his physique nicely.

Tylowe arrived a half hour earlier than his old classmates had scheduled to meet. He headed to an empty spot at the bar and ordered a beer. The band was playing an oldie, Grover Washington, Jr.'s “Mister Magic,” with added funk to the groove.

A tap on his shoulder distracted him out of his musical moment. “Hello, Mr. Dandridge. Is that you, with that sprinter's behind still staring at me after all these years?”

At first he wasn't sure that someone was talking to him. The band was playing, people were talking, and drink glasses were clinking. The noise slowed his response. When he did turn around, he
saw a face he had not seen since college. Erika Corwin had been a hurdler on the girls' track team and a former lover—or what people today refer to as a booty call. She and Tylowe were the same age, nearing fifty. True to the saying that black don't crack, Erika had not aged since maybe she had turned thirty. Tall and still looking athletic, the only thing different about Erika from back in the day was that where she once had a huge afro, now was a short, curly hairdo.

“Erika, how are you? It's been a long time.”

“It's been way too long, and how have you been? ‘It's Been A Long Time'—that's a song you and I used to listen to.”

“Yeah, you're right. New Birth. We wore that record out—and a few other things.”

“I know that's right.” They both laughed.

Tylowe and Erika hesitated for a long second, not sure how to react to each other. When they did reach to hug, it almost felt like going back in time. Tylowe ingested her scent. Strangely, he remembered it from thirty-plus years ago. She kissed his cheek: it wasn't an aggressive kiss, but a soft, slightly seductive, long peck on the cheek.

“Oh boy, you still smell good, hmm.”

They slept together on and off all through college, and old feelings elapsed as the two revisited moments in their memories. They shared a silence in a noisy lounge while their eyes connected, reminiscing on the sex they once had: under the bleachers behind the track, in their dorm rooms, everywhere.

The first time it had happened, they hardly knew each other. Flirting as freshmen do, they teased each other as they worked out each day, signifying to each other, “I'm too much for you, you don't want this.” One day, Erika followed Tylowe behind the bleachers
as he went to relieve himself. She watched from a distance, but he knew she was watching. He made little effort to hide as he was bold then, and full of ego. He tempted her by leaving his sweats down long after he had finished taking a leak. He swung his dick back and forth and his ass followed.

Erika approached him. She could see the tight jockstrap's bands curving around his firm sprinter's behind. Thirty years ago, she tapped him on his shoulder almost the same way as she had done moments ago.

That tap on his shoulder back then had led to kissing, and then to the both of them getting on the ground naked. It was the first time Tylowe had seen a woman with a huge bush of pubic hair. It was so thick that he couldn't see her vagina. It freaked him out at first until he felt his dick slide in and out. The added friction from her thick pubic hair almost made him cum too quickly. He had to control how crazy he went so that he didn't cum too fast.

The behind-the-bleacher adventure was a nice recollection. Tylowe's other memories were of the times he was in Erika's dorm room having sex. Slightly over six feet tall, Erika had long, firm legs. With her long legs spread wide over her bed, her toes could touch the floor on each side of the bed.

Tylowe visualized eating her pussy from behind. It was easy access because she could tilt her ass just so and expose her thick, full pussy lips through the thick pubic hair with her asshole in full view. His tongue would part her pussy and her lips would close around his tongue or dick. The jock and jockette would get in to athletic, nasty sex, often with Erika using her extreme flexibility. Tylowe remembered her taste, and the nastiness and feel. His dick thickened and his balls stirred while remembering. He spread his legs a little wider while he sat at the bar next to Erika. She noticed.

The memory intensified: going back in time, riding and pounding Erika's round, hard ass into the bed as her roommate would sit on her own bed naked, with legs spread, fingering herself as she watched the live porn show. Her roommate was a girl on the volley- ball team whose sexuality was clouded, and wasn't having sex with guys regularly, if ever, but for sure she was horny.

Erika's roommate loved to watch and masturbated every time Tylowe's dick was in Erika's mouth or pussy. She loved to watch Erika on her knees while Tylowe stood above her letting his dick slide back and forth between Erika's lips.

The two lovers often acted as if the roommate wasn't there as Tylowe did the Standing 69. Tylowe made sure the roommate could watch his tongue extend and pump into Erika's pussy.

It had Tylowe cumming hard, watching the roommate slide her fingers inside her pussy and taking her other finger to rub her clit while panting, groaning, and body stirring.

A few times the roommate had sat on the headboard above Erika and Tylowe, so he could lick her pussy at the same time he was grinding away in Erika's thick bush from behind. He would pull his dick out just as he was cumming and shoot his thick creamy load on Erika's ass, and the roommate would cum and squirt simultaneously.

Tylowe had humped Erika's ass often because of the freaky options. He remembered those, as well as a few other athletic sexual conquests back in the day. He reflected on those moments and felt a thickness stirring in his pants. He needed a drink.

He ordered Erika a drink as she took a seat next to him. She spotted his wedding band.

“Married, huh? It's been a long time for you. The woman—I think her name was Sharon? I remember you were engaged when
you wrote me a letter telling me I couldn't visit you in Seattle anymore.” Erika laughed. “I always wondered was that a form letter that you sent out and you just changed the name of the recipient. Wow, when I think of it, that was maybe twenty-five years ago. You two have kids?”

Tylowe was wowed how people with no reason to retain certain information often would, even if it was old news.

People would catalog info such as a name or an event, and then recall it when a chance came around.

He looked at her ring finger; she wasn't wearing one. “Ah, she—Sharon and I didn't get married. It's one of those long, strange stories. You remember a dude—Elliot—that I hung out with?”

“Yes, I do remember him, a real piece of work he was. I remember the guys you hung out with. Ayman, the basketball player—anyone who's in sports knows him, after he won a national title. I remember Sterlin, and his girlfriend, the soon-to-be superstar singer who was screwing everybody, and he was pussy-whipped behind her ass. Oh, then there's Psalms. So fine, and so dangerous-looking that both men and woman would stay out of his way. And oh yes, Elliot. He was always trying to get me to give him some even though he knew you and I were doing the do. I heard he's in prison. I remember your friends well.”

“Nice play-by-play. And yes, Elliot was, and is, trouble. He came between me and my dream girl back then, and things went south.” Tylowe didn't think of that past often, but it still stung at times and his voice showed it. He was almost mumbling.

“But, you do have another dream girl now?” Erika pursed her lip just a bit with a little gleam sparkling in her eyes.

“I have a wife. I did have a daughter by Sharon. My daughter is a grown woman now. My wife has a daughter I raised as my own, so that makes two kids.”

“And this wife is your dream girl?” Erika's smile was dangerous to a man's eye. Tylowe looked away in the direction of the mirror behind the liquor shelves.

“Erika, it's been a long time. What's going on in your life, and what's going on that I would run in to you? ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.' ”

“Casablanca!
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I have not forgotten when we dated, we watched late-night TV together after we were too damn sore to move after making love most of the night.”

It was not Tylowe's intent to remind her of what were tender moments to her. She loved viewing old black-and-white movies with him after they'd had sex and made each other sore from the physicality.

“Erika, we didn't date or make love. We fucked!'

“Well, I guess you can put it that way.” She laughed and put her hand gently on his forearm, and he turned to face the club action to help remove her hand.

“So, Erika, tell me what's going on in your life?”

“Well, I'm retired from the police department here in Vegas, and currently I'm a security analyst for Homeland Security. I'm divorced and have been for almost ten years. Tell every woman you know they should never marry a cop. I married one and know so painfully well. He was an ass who would put his pecker in a rattlesnake hole if he thought it might feel good. He was getting and taking pussy from almost every woman he pulled over. If not, he was screwing every woman who came to Vegas wanting to make it big here and soon found themselves lost and turned out.”

Tylowe moved his tongue around his mouth wishing to be some- place else. He didn't want to hear a man or woman who was hurting or bitter about old affairs. He did not want to hear a woman scorned.

He had no interest in Erika, other than memories of freaky times. If he'd had some interest in her before, she'd turned him off with her verbal blast of his friends and recounting her ex-husband, for sure.

The one thing Tylowe understood about his present situation with Meeah was she couldn't be the total blame, and he was sure his wife thought the same of him.

“You know what I have found, Erika? Two people can both have high-ass shit piles of drama, but even if one's pile is smaller, any amount of shit is a contributing factor to the flushing down of a relationship.”

Tylowe knew if he didn't cut her off quickly, she would soon be telling him how she did everything for her man, as in she cooked, cleaned, and gave him crazy sex whenever he wanted. The famous line was soon to come: “He wanted for nothing.” He knew that the next man in Erika's life—and maybe there was one now—would be paying for the sins of another man.