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“Picnic in the Summertime” - Deee-Lite
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Six Weeks Later/July
Love adjusted the bright orange bikini she wore, untying the straps to be sure not to mar her smooth tan. “If the summer sun was my lover,” she began, stretching her long limbs on the beach blanket stretched out across one of her dark wicker chaises.
She couldn’t recite her ode to summer because her lover was real now and his name was Maleek. His touch was more heated and amazing than the rays of the sun. She shivered in memory at him making fierce love to her atop her piano after serenading her with its keys. His musical talent was both a surprise and yet another layer to the man that deepened her feelings for him.
He was a true Renaissance man. An athlete. A musician. An artist in the bedroom. A thinker. A giver. Maleek Trenton continued to amaze her in a million different ways every day.
He insisted that she still planned his end-of-summer event, but most times the decisions that needed to be made were set aside when he stroked her thigh or commented on the scent of her intimacy.
The time together had been a true whirlwind courtship. Maleek was pulling out all the stops, and Love knew if she had the time available that his surprises would have no bounds. Her weekends were booked with events, but the weeknights and some days were filled with adventures. Lounging on the beach. Picnics in the parks. Playing in the pools. Fulfilling their own little summer bucket list. Enjoying the heat of the sun and created even more fire between the sheets.
More and more he was urging her to join him at some of the events he attended around town, but Love declined. She was more than satisfied to have Yuri drop him off to her home as soon as he was able to slip from the events. Even his promises that she didn’t have to walk the red carpet with him didn’t ease her concerns.
Everything was so amazing between them, but what future did they have beyond the summer when he would leave New York to begin the basketball season and she would be left with nothing but memories. She didn’t like to think about the end of summer.
Her cell phone vibrated on the ground and she instantly reached down for it. She was disappointed not to see Maleek’s number. He attended church with his family—another invite she politely refused.
“Hey, Tashi.”
“You home? I was going to come over and hang with you, stranger.”
“Actually, Maleek is headed straight over after church,” Love said, making a face because she knew once Maleek took residence in her world, she had put some restrictions on Tashi and her other friends.
“I ain’t mad at you. I’m just glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
Love smiled, lifting one leg high into the air to inspect her neatly manicured toes. “I am. It’s really nice. You know. But he wants to take it a little more public and I’m nervous. You know that.”
“Listen, I am all over the celeb press, and I haven’t heard a bleep about you two, so whatever you two are doing is working,” she advised.
Love squinted her eyes. “I know, but I understand him wanting me at his side...and hell, if he didn’t, I would think he was up to no good, you know?”
“Hey, last week I tried to drop off the shoes I borrowed from you, but your spare keys aren’t in the pot anymore.”
“No offense, but there’s a lot of things going on in here that you don’t need to walk in on. O-kay?” Love teased.
“Point made,” Tashi drawled.
They laughed.
“Okay, I got to find something for me to get into since you’re all boo’ed up.”
“Let’s meet for lunch sometime this week,” Love offered, standing when she heard footsteps behind her. “My treat.”
“I don’t turn down nothing that’s free. Call me.”
Love barely heard her as Maleek strolled up to her looking so good in his gray and white pinstriped suit with a double-knotted yellow paisley tie. Whether casual in shorts or decked out in a suit, her man looked hella fine.
My man, she thought with an inner smile.
“Damn, I shouldn’t be thinking what I’m thinking since I just left church,” he said, wrapping his arm around her to lightly grasp her buttocks and pull her close for a kiss.
“Hey you,” she breathed into his mouth.
The spare keys she used to hide on the porch were comfortably in his hand like a man coming home.
As he broke the kiss, Love could tell something was troubling him. She hated the bit of alarm she felt. Had their summer together come to an early end? She turned and bent down to retrieve her oversized shades, quickly sliding them on her face like a shield.
“This last two months have been everything I hoped for,” he began, loosening his tie as he squinted his feline-shaped eyes against the glaring sun.
Love tightened the strings of her bikini around her neck, saying nothing.
“Sitting up talking. Playing chess. Banging out music together. Able to talk about anything. Everything.”
Love licked her lips as she turned to peer up at him as he strode to the edge of the rooftop and looked down on the city.
“But...”
Love’s gut clenched.
“If we are going to survive beyond this summer, then we can’t keep playing like the rest of the world doesn’t exist,” he said, turning his head to look over at her.
Love took a sip of her peach tea to stall for time.
“What am I to you, Love?” he asked. “Because, straight up? You are everything to me.
Love gasped a little and her hand tightened on her glass.
“Who am I to you, Love?” Maleek asked again, walking over to take the glass from her hand and lift her face up.
“Everything that you feel, I feel. You know that,” she admitted.
Maleek nodded and licked his lips before he released her face and turned away from her. “Do you think we can’t survive out there?”
Love pulled her knees to her chest. “Out where, Maleek?” she asked.
“Outside of Harlem. In my world,” he said, raising his voice as he pressed a hand to his chest.
Love shook her head. “Why can’t things stay the way they are?”
“Because being hidden in your apartment and only doing things together in Harlem or wherever there is no press is not gonna last,” Maleek said, coming over to sit beside her. “So when the summer ends, it’s over and we just pretend like none of this happened? Like we didn’t happen, Love?”
That could never be. She could never forget him. Never.
“I am sorry that you went through all that bullshit with your ex, but that’s not me.”
Love looked over at him.
“I’m doing time for his crime.”
Love shifted her eyes away.
“And that’s not the type of man I am, Love. I would never do that to you.”
She hated that tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away, glad for the protection of her shades.
Maleek turned to look out at the tops of the other brownstones lining the street. “If we are going to see if we can last past the summer, then we have to see if we can survive outside of this your home.”
“I just don’t want to go through what I went through the last time,” she insisted.
Maleek rose to his feet again. “That wasn’t the press or the blogs, that was your ex. It’s messed up that they ran with it, but he left it wide open for that. He cheated. He disrespected you. Whether he was famous or not, what he did was some real foul shit...but all they did was report it. They didn’t lie about it.”
True.
“You can’t live your life worrying about what people think or say.” Maleek removed his blazer and rolled up the cuffs of his tailored shirt as he moved back to the brick wall surrounding the edge.
“I know you’re right and you’re making sense,” she admitted, feeling amused as sweat glistened off his forehead like he just stepped out of the shower. His shirt clung to the dampness of his torso.
It was every bit of a hundred degrees.
In a bathing suit, that was lovely. A suit? Not so much.
“I’m not asking you to do interviews about our relationship or release a press statement —just claim me. Be proud to say I’m your man.” Maleek pointed to himself, every last tooth in his head gleaming between his deep dimples as he smiled.
I love him.
Love’s thought surprised her, but she knew it was the truth. She loved Maleek Trenton. Not the deep and profound love built over time, but that kind of sustaining love that she knew could grow and build roots that would keep them together forever. In time.
Somewhere in the last two months, maybe even before then, Maleek Trenton had captured a piece of her heart with his body, with his mind, with his soul.
Although she bit her full bottom lip to keep from yelling her feelings from the rooftop, Love climbed to her feet and sashayed sexily over to her man to wrap herself around his sweat-soaked body. “Okay,” she agreed, reaching up to swipe off some of the sweat from his handsome face.
Maleek nodded and bent his knees to level his face with hers. “I won’t ask for too much,” he told her.
She smiled. “And I’ll give all I can.”
Maleek kissed her. First sweetly. Then deeply. Then ravenously.
Soon there was nothing but the sound of clothes being peeled from their bodies before their mingled moans filled the summer air with the sounds of their rooftop passion.
∞
Love didn’t know that Maleek was ready to test her agreement so soon when he invited her to some huge blockbuster movie premiere not more than a week later. She was quiet in the back of the SUV as Maleek, his publicist Brad, and Yuri talked and cracked jokes like they were clueless to the battle she was in the midst of.
Maleek reached over and grabbed her hand tightly.
It was a little help for her nerves, especially as the car pulled into the procession of vehicles stopping just long enough for their passengers to exit directly onto the red carpet. With every roll of the tires, the bright lights and the roar of the crowds got closer and louder.
When the SUV came to a stop and the rear door opened, Maleek left the vehicle looking so handsome and casual in his linen slacks and V-neck tee. As soon as he stepped down, he turned and reached his hand in for her with a reassuring smile.
Love accepted his hand and stepped down out of the vehicle amidst rapidly flashing cameras, grateful for the fitted dark denims she wore with heels. Any woman with a skirt better beware, she thought, eyeing a few cameramen taking shots from kneeling positions.
Brad led them to the red carpet, but when Love tried to hold back and ask him how she could meet Maleek on the other end, Maleek held her hand tighter and pulled her forward with him.
The questions being flung at them began to blur together. Some about his disappointing postseason. Others about rumored flings with other celebs. Most questioning him about her.
Love tried her best to grin and bear it, but as the questions continued to be fired at them like a semi-automatic rifle and the hundred cameras flashed away, she couldn’t help but wonder just what lay ahead.
