“Hey, no dress,” Cassie said as I came down the stairs in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. “Guess you’re not planning on going out today, huh?”
She was half-naked as usual, spread out on the sofa like she was about to do a photo shoot. If I was a betting man, I would have laid money on the fact that she had been waiting for me to notice her. Ever since the day I had Tina at the house, Cassie’s behavior toward me had been borderline flirtatious—whenever Allen wasn’t around, of course.
I glanced toward the kitchen, noticing that there was no smell of bacon frying like most mornings. “Al left already?”
“Yeah, he’s gone. He had an early meeting.” She delicately patted the cushion next to her. “Come, sit down. I’ve got a present for you.”
I stayed where I was. “Listen, Cassie, you gotta stop giving me presents. I don’t think Al appreciates you spending his hard-earned money on me.”
“Oh, please, I’m not worried about Allen, and neither should you.” She waved her hand dismissively. “So are you gonna come over and get this or what?” she asked. I was nervous for a second when she reached into her robe. I swear to God I thought she was going to expose herself to me, but instead, she pulled out a blunt. “It’s about to be on and poppin’, Mr. Jay.”
She placed it between her lips, picked up a lighter from the coffee table, and lit the blunt. “You said last week you wanted to get high, didn’t you? I figured with everything going on with your daughter, this was as good a time as any.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic… plus the smell of the weed was driving me insane. I had missed that so much when I was locked up. She held the blunt in my direction, and I wasted no time going over to the couch and taking it from her.
It had been so long since I’d smoked weed that I went into a coughing fit immediately. Cassie thought that shit was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. She was laughing so hard I thought she was going to pass out. I ignored her and stopped coughing just long enough to take another drag.
“Hey, it’s puff puff pass. And if I’m not mistaken, that was three puffs,” Cassie said jokingly, rolling her eyes as she snatched the blunt from my hand. “You know I’m just messing with you, right?” she said with a giggle, then took a deep pull. “Mmmm,” she moaned as she exhaled and then leaned back against the sofa.
I sat there, feeling a buzz wash over me, mesmerized by the way she handled the blunt. I’d never seen someone make smoking a blunt look so much like sucking a dick. After a few seconds watching her, I settled into the couch cushions and leaned my head back.
“Fuck, that’s some good shit. I’m high already,” I said.
“Yeah, I got this shit from my girl Destiny. Them Dominicans always have the best shit.”
“You think you can get me some before I leave next week?”
Cassie sat up abruptly. “Before you leave? You made that sound awfully permanent. You going somewhere?”
I turned to look at her. “Yeah, I think I’ve worn out my welcome. It’s time for me to move on.”
“Did I do something?” she asked. I could hear genuine sadness in her voice. I was surprised that she was taking my departure so personally.
“No, you’ve been really nice, but your husband’s been acting a little funny.”
She looked relieved that it wasn’t her. Leaning back again, she told me, “Oh, don’t pay him no mind. Allen is just being… well… Allen. He just gets a little jealous sometimes. I got him under control. Don’t you worry about him.”
“Jealous? I think he’s a little more than jealous. He was about to bash my head in with a hammer.”
She shrugged and took another hit. “Yeah, well, that was a little over the top, but you should have told us you were bringing that… that… woman to the house. You need to take some responsibility for that. It’s not all his fault.”
It didn’t surprise me that Cassie was throwing shade at Tina. She’d made it clear from the moment she saw her that she didn’t want her around. I figured it was a territorial thing, or maybe she was worried about the risk of Tina recognizing me, but now I was starting to wonder if there was more to it. If my mind wasn’t clouded by the weed, I might have questioned her about it, but I was feeling too damn good to stress myself at that moment.
So I said, “I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one. You can’t blame me for being a man and needing some female attention. But if you and Allen don’t want me bringing a chick back here, then I have to respect that, which is why I need to move on. If I can’t trust Al and he can’t trust me, then this is never gonna work.”
“You can trust him,” she said. “It’s Wil you gotta worry about.”
“Wil?”
“Yeah, Allen told me Kyle is going to need some time to come up with the money for your daughter’s pictures because he spent so much on his new boat. Supposedly Wil said fuck it, they should just turn you in for the reward.”
“Get the fuck outta here. Wil said that? I don’t believe that.” Wil and I hadn’t exactly been tight ever since I went to jail, but things weren’t so bad between us that he would turn me in. Or at least I thought they weren’t.
She rolled her eyes. “Mm-hmm. You don’t have to believe me. I’m just repeating what Allen told me.” She took another pull on the blunt. “But don’t tell him I told you.”
She seemed pretty adamant that her story was true, and as I gave it some thought, I realized she didn’t have a reason to lie. It made me nervous to think that one of the people I thought I could trust with my life was actually talking about turning me in. Then a really scary thought hit me: What if he wasn’t the only one thinking this way?
“So what does Allen think about me? Does he feel the same way?” I asked.
She put the blunt out in the ashtray and scooted closer to me, placing her hands on top of mine. “Truth is, he thinks you were stupid for not doing whatever you had to do to get parole. And that you’re putting us all at risk for your own selfish reasons.”
Her words felt like a punch in the gut. I had no idea my friends thought so little of me. I had assumed they would have my back, but it looked like I had totally misjudged the situation.
Cassie must have seen how much she had hurt me by revealing the truth, because she tried to clean it up a little by adding, “But he’s your friend and he’s going to stick by you.”
My mind started racing as I imagined all the possible scenarios. Should I pack up and get out of there immediately? Should I stay put and confront Allen and Wil, and try to work things out with them? As I became lost in my thoughts, Cassie’s hands started wandering. They slid up my arms and then across my chest.
“Jay, I don’t want you to leave. But I know you don’t want to go back to jail either. You don’t belong there. I don’t care what Allen or Wil or anybody says.”
“I gotta figure out some way to clear my name, but I can’t do it from here. Especially not if my boys don’t have my back. Maybe I should leave the country.”
She started massaging my shoulders as she talked. “I know, but if you have to go, you’re going to need someone to have your back. You know, like that woman who helped Whitey Bulger. He stayed on the run for like thirty years.” Her lips gently pressed against my neck. “I could help you like that.”
I knew we were treading into dangerous territory, but between the weed and her soft kisses, I felt so good that I didn’t want it to stop. Besides, at the moment, I was a little pissed at Allen now that I knew he had been talking to Wil about me behind my back. If he thought I was being selfish, then I might as well go ahead and be that way.
I felt Cassie’s hand caressing my dick, and I did nothing to stop it. I laid my head back and enjoyed the sensation as she pulled down my sweat pants and then lowered her head to my waist. For a quick second I was overcome by how good her warm, wet tongue felt, but then something in the back of my drug-addled brain broke through the haze, and I realized what the fuck was about to go down, where it was about to go down, and with whom.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up. This can’t happen.” I grabbed her wrists and pushed her away from me.
“Why not?” she asked. From the look on her face I could tell she wasn’t used to being turned down. “If it’s protection, I have—”
“It’s not protection,” I said, flinging her arms as I released her wrists. “It’s you. You’re my best friend’s wife.”
“Your best friend’s wife who can help you. In more ways than one.” She went for my private parts again. Call me weak, but I let her get back to work, pushing any feelings of guilt out of my head. Her skills were that good.
“You’d do that? You’d leave your husband and all this to run away with me?” I asked, allowing myself to imagine what it would be like to have her by my side as I went on the run again.
“Yes,” she said, taking a break to answer me. “I’d do that and leave all this.”
“What about money? It’s going to be hard enough taking care of myself, but taking care of two? What would we do about money? I can’t exactly work.”
“You don’t have to. I can work.”
I made a face. “Yeah, right. Doing what?” As far as I knew, the only thing she was good at was spending Allen’s money and watching trash TV. She damn sure didn’t have a degree, and maybe not even a high school diploma.
“I do have skills,” she said confidently. “You mean Allen never told you about what I was doing when he met me?”
She sat up, and I instantly regretted getting into this conversation. I wanted her to shut up and put her head in my lap again.
“Yeah, he told me you were working at the library,” I said.
She laughed. “The place I worked at wasn’t exactly a real library, silly. It was a strip club in an old library building.”
Well, I’ll be damned. She was a stripper. That made a hell of a lot more sense than her being a librarian. “Yeah, I could see you as a stripper,” I said.
“I wasn’t just a stripper,” she bragged. “I was the best exotic dancer that place had ever seen. My old boss calls me almost every day asking me to come back to work.” She stood up and showed me some of her moves. I could definitely see why her boss wanted her back. She could shake that ass and have a brother hypnotized in no time.
She sat back down on the couch and continued her fantasy about us running away together. “And the beauty of it is I can dance anywhere, Jay. Not only that, but I can take care of us both. I make at least five hundred a day. What do you say? All you have to do is sit back and collect the money.”
“Like a pimp?”
“Call it whatever you want. Just take me with you.”
“Why the hell would you wanna go on the run? Hell, I don’t even wanna be on the run.”
“Because I like you, and it would take me away from the boredom of this house and Allen’s corny ass. We could be like Bonnie and Clyde traveling the world.”
I’m not gonna lie; it was tempting. Part of me loved the idea of having this incredibly hot stripper by my side. It sure would make my time less lonely while I figured out how to clear my name and stay out of jail. But the more I thought about it, the more images of Allen kept flashing in my head. Finally, the thoughts of my friend overpowered the seductive nature of her fantasy.
Fuck! You can’t let this happen, Jay, I told myself, although a large part of me still wanted to ask her to stand up and give me another lap dance. I had to repeat my warning to myself… in less diplomatic terms. Quit thinking with your dick, man. This is your man Al’s woman, and you’re a grown-ass man now. Don’t repeat what happened with Rose. That last little scolding did the trick.
“No!” I shook my head adamantly. “If this was twenty years ago, I’d be on your ass like white on rice, but I will not betray my friend.”
She stared at me for a moment like she was having trouble processing the word no. I was sure she didn’t hear it often.
“You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah, serious as a heart attack,” I replied with my head held high. My resolve was growing stronger. I felt like I was out of the danger zone now.
“First you pull that little stunt with that bitch the other day, and now this.”
“Wait a minute. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t try to play stupid, Jay. You bring another woman into this house and fuck her in my house knowing how I feel about you.”
I had to wonder what the hell was in the weed we had smoked, because this chick was straight trippin’ now. “First off, I have no idea what the hell you mean by I know how you feel about me. You shouldn’t be feeling shit about me. All your feelings should be for your husband, my best friend.”
She sucked her teeth. “Negro, please. You know damn well a woman like myself can only be with a weak man like Allen for so long. I was already getting bored with his ass before you showed up.”
This was blowing my mind. Al and I might not have been on the best of terms at the moment, but this shit was over the top. I had never heard a woman dog her man so completely before.
“Well, damn, Cassie. If you felt that way about Al, then why’d you marry him?” I asked.
“Because I had nowhere else to go. It was either Allen or the streets. And you of all people should know how mean the streets are, considering you’ve had to spend a few nights on them. That’s why you can’t go back out there.” This crazy bitch was still trying to talk me into letting her go on the run with me.
“I can’t go back out there? Are you kidding? I have no other choice. Especially after”—I gestured to my still-naked crotch where her mouth had just been—“this.” I stood up and pulled up my sweats, making sure she understood that there would be no more action between us.
She stood up next to me, and once again her hands were all over my chest and arms. “You don’t have to go out there alone.” She had this passion in her eyes, like we were characters in some corny-ass romance flick. I mean, this chick was on the stage.
I stepped back to put some distance between us because this was too damn much. I had to get out of there quickly.
“You got me fucked up right about now. Look, I have to get out of here. I need some fresh air. I need to think.” I walked toward the stairs. “Tell Al I’ll talk to him later.”
“What do you mean, talk to him?” She raced after me, attempting to block the way. “Are you going to tell him about what just happened?”
“You mean that you admitted you’re only with him because you didn’t want to have to be on the streets, yet you’re willing to leave him to be on the streets with his best friend?” I asked, hoping it made her feel real stupid. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.” On that note, I pushed her out of the way and headed upstairs to pack my shit.