Jahleel (12 page)

Leaning back in his seat, Lion closed his eyes once more. “Kay’s not forgiven. She ain’t marryin’ my brother.”

“Babe, pleas—”

“No reason to forgive JK,” he cut her off. “He always said he’s an asshole with reason. I’m startin’ to get what he means.”

I slept for 24hours straight when I returned home, as sleep was almost non-optional over the past three weeks. And I had a mere one week to rest before my schedule kicked up again.

Showered, dressed, made-up and killing time before heading out to the studio, I lounged on top of the kitchen island, one leg propped up, the other swinging back forth as I popped roasted almonds into my mouth, Amanda lounged right there with me, shooting down every attempt at convincing her Zane’s her perfect match.

Zane had been checking in with me non-stop, wanting to know Amanda’s thoughts on dating him. But I wasn’t having much luck with her. This much I’d expected.

“Going by looks alone, he doesn’t seem like the type of man I can control,” she explained, helping herself to a fistful of my almonds. “He’s so tall and…intimidating. I don’t want to feel intimidated. I want to control. I have to be able to tell him to suck my toes and watch him do it without question or hesitation.”

“Looks are deceiving,” I muttered, tossing a single nut up in the air and catching it with my mouth. “Like I told you before, when I told him you were dominant, he said, ‘
That’s
the reason I want her’, emphasizing the ‘that’s’ very much so.”

“And it’s the oddity of
that
why I’m all the more dubious. I mean, who watches someone for a whole year to decide if they want to date them or not?”

I laughed at her bewildered expression. “He was choosing you.”

“Choosi—” I shushed her, listening.

There was a commotion of loud, zinging, roaring motorbikes outside the house.

“The hell’s that?” I mumbled, hopping off the kitchen counter and hightailing it through the house to the front door.

Opening the door, I squinted against the glare of the sun to make out the people outside my gate.

As the gates jerked slowly open, I counted three bikers. When the gates were fully open, one of the bikers pulled away in a slow and cautious rev down the paved path to the house. The rider wobbled a bit, then stopped. At this, one of the other bikers took off his helmet and yelled out an instruction.

That biker was Chad, his hair a massive chaos atop his head. My heart made a single, hard, and thunderous beat, shifted over to the right of my chest, and sighed… Because, if that was Chad, then the other biker had to be Jahleel.

The remembrance of Jahleel’s scent of bike exhaust and earthy cologne attacked me. My heart sighed again, shifting back to the left. My poor, piteous heart.

But that sigh soon turned into a grunt of disapproval as I placed my hands on my hips. Because, if one biker was Jahleel, and the other was Chad, then the wobbly rider had to be—

“Ferbie has lost his goddamn mind,” Amanda murmured from beside me.

I’m going to kill all three of them!

Adhering to whatever instruction Chad just gave, Ferbie straightened up and rode without fault this time, coming to a halt in front of the house.

At the gate, Jahleel, with his helmet on, spun his bike around and roared off in a thin cloud of blue smoke. While Chad stood astride his bike, staring at the ground as though lost in thought. He ran a hand through his hair, tugged on his helmet and sped off as well.

Ben drove into the residence a second later, and the gates closed behind him.

Turning to Ferbie, who was now off his green Kawasaki Ninja and grinning at it as though it were a goddamn trophy, I yelled at him, “You bought a bloody bike?!”

“Aye. Just.”

“Are you
insane
? It takes training and skills to ride these things,” I shouted, marching down the steps. “Also, they’re
dangerous
. Do you know the speed at which you’ll fly off at this thing in the case of an accident?
Twice
the speed you’re riding prior to impact! No one survives a bike accident. The arms, the legs and sometimes even the head gets ripped off the body in a fucking flash! Do you kno—”

“Ma. Ma!” Ferbie grinned at me, “You’re starting to sound like Timber.”

I frowned at that, and Ferbie laughed and went on, “JK’s been teaching me for the past three weeks. He said I was ready and made me ride home on my own. I only slipped up at the front there because I was excited that I finally did it.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

While we were away, Ferbie opted to remain in SF and do dance training with Jahleel. I wasn’t fond of the idea, but I was desperate for him to be normal in some way, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and left him on his own for the first time since we moved here.

Well, I assigned Ben to him, of course, but still,
I
wasn’t there.

Now it became apparent he hadn’t been doing dance training alone, but bike training also.

I’m going to murder JK.

“Lend me your cell,” I stretched a hand out to him. “I wanna have a little chat with your new mate.”

Ferbie took a step back from me. “No.”

Taken aback, I arched up a brow at him. “No?”

“No,” He shook his head to emphasize. “He’s the only friend I have.”

“I’m not going to curse him out,” I cajoled him. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Yes, you
are
going to curse him out. And then I’ll lose a mate. And I’ll hate you for it.” He took another step back from me. “You always get overprotective and growly as if I’m so dumb I can’t live on my own.”

“Ferbie—”

“He took hours out of his evenings, every day, for three weeks to give
me
these lessons. Hours,” he stressed, his voice raising. “I’m nothing to him and he gives me his time as if I
am
someone.” Taking steps forward this time, he faced me and took my hand in his. “He’s a nice fellow, Ma. He wants the same for me as you do.”

Ferbie could try convincing me as much as he wanted, I still planned to put Jahleel’s head on a bloody pike.

However, I smiled as though I understood, resting a gentle palm on Ferbie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I had no idea he was such a good person. I understand now. He probably won’t answer if I ring from my cell, so may I borrow yours to call him and thank him for taking care of you while I was gone?”

Even though this was what I fought to shield him from, people taking advantage of his gullibility, I was guilty of it, too. But
my
intentions were pure.

As usual, he bought it. Withdrawing his cellphone, he handed it to me and gave me a hug and a big grin before disappearing into the house.

Turning to face Amanda, I instructed her, “Try distracting him so he doesn’t hear me screaming expletives at his new buddy, will you?”

Amanda, all this time had watched us with an amused expression. She wagged her head and mouthed, “Witch,” before heading back into the house.

As I walked a distance off from the house, I scrolled through Ferbie’s call log. The only numbers there were mine, Jahleel’s and Amanda’s.

I dialled Jahleel’s number but it rang out and went to voicemail twice. Perhaps he was still riding.

Killing time, I wandered around my water fountain—a naked baby angel with his tiny penis and tinier testicles.

A couple of minutes later, I tried Jahleel again. He picked up on the third ring, but the background was helluva noisy with honking car horns, heavy winds and even a siren. “What’s the emergency, Ferbz?”

If I wasn’t so pissed at him, I would count the deep concern in his voice as something genuine.

“I’m gonna cut your fucking promiscuous dick off, that’s the emergency!”

There was a long pause, then, “Oh shit.”

“‘Oh shit’ is right, you—”

“Hello? Sa-sassy?…Can’t hear you…very well! Might wanna…call back?”

This fucker was trying to play me. Did he really think I was that dumb?

“I
know
you can hear me, you lying sod!”

As he started laughing down the line, I fought to hold back a smile.

No. No smiling. I was supposed to be mad at him.

“Listen, Sassy, I’m sittin’ at a stoplight and I don’t wanna get a ticket.” he said. “So I’m turnin’ around and heading back to your place so you can yell at me to my face, okay? Be out at your gate.”

The line went dead.

No!
I couldn’t be mad to his face! Could I be a shouty hothead over the phone? Sure. But to his face? I would just melt into a human puddle.

Jesus, why did I call him?

Now with the knowledge he was on his way here, my palms all of sudden got clammy, and my heart was thudding loud in my ears. I contemplated leaving before he arrived, or ringing to tell him to turn back. But wasn’t this what I always wanted? His attention? I needed to stop acting like a fucking teenager. Seriously. He was just another human being. Like me. No big deal.
No big deal.

Growing a pair, I directed my steps towards the gate.

“Miss Day?” I heard Thomas call out to me from the doorway.

“It’s okay, Thomas,” I called back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Realizing I was missing the LV belt-purse I’d planned on wearing with this outfit, which also had my gate remote in it, I stopped and asked Thomas to go fetch it for me.

I was dressed in a savagely cut-up black, sleeveless tee that showed off a lot of skin and my tats, pencil jeans, and a new pair of black Jordans.

When Thomas returned with my belt-purse a few short minutes later, I latched it around my waist, opened the gate with the remote, and went outside to lean on the right column, waiting for Jahleel.

Well, haven’t I been doing this for a while? Waiting for Jahleel? Yep. Five years.

This meaningless wait, however, was different; this time, I was actually
sure
he was coming to me.

The loud zinging from a distance reminded me of the quietness and seclusion of my neighbourhood. My neighbours sure as hell wouldn’t be tolerable of this obnoxious noise on a daily basis, now that Ferbie had a bike and all.

As the noise drew closer and closer, my heart beat faster. When Jahleel turned the corner at the end of my street, my heart collapsed altogether.

Get yourself together, Kia
.

Inexplicably, a surprising calm instantly came over me as Jahleel reached my gate and shut off his bike. Kicking down the stand, he threw his leg over the bike, pulled off his helmet and hooked it on the handle.

His thick, brown hair bounced back into perfect loose waves as though nothing at all could ever perturb its perfection—not a helmet, not gravity, not winds or rain, nothing. But Jahleel raked his fingers through it nonetheless, seemingly unaware of how to-die-for his hair was.

Still leaning against the gate column, I must’ve looked like an enraged baddie to him with my arms crossed, when in reality I was a drooling mess depending on the column for support.

Causal as usual, he wore dark denims, a grey tee with the number 69 in bold red on the front, and black Timberlands. His gold irises seemed almost paranormal under the glare of the afternoon sun.

Reaching into his back pocket, he took out a small box of Sun Maid raisins and tossed some in his mouth, chewing like a kid with his candy. Leaning back on his bike, he crossed his legs at the ankles, crossed his arms and pinned me with his stare.

Can I just walk up to him and kiss him? Would he let me? Would he reject me?

“Let me speak first,” he said, calm as you please.

As a go ahead, I waved my hand. It’s not as if I was capable of speech at the moment anyway—I was still in drool mode.

“You need to give him a little more credit,” he started “Yeah, he’s slow in some areas, so much to a point where it seems hopeless sometimes. But for the most part, he’s a quick learner. And honestly, I’ve never enjoyed training anyone as much as I enjoy training him.”

“He’s not a fucking dog.”

“I never said he was,” he replied, holding his cool. “Lessons. I’ll use the word ‘
lessons’
since ‘
training’
offends you so much. Cool?”

When I didn’t answer and kept my arms crossed with a hateful scowl on my face, he warned, “Keep actin’ bitchy, Sassy, and I’ll just fuck you. I like fuckin’ bitchy bitches just to watch them cry and beg like the
girls
they really are.”

My mouth dropped, and so did my hands, balling into mighty fists. How arrogant! “Well, aren’t you a nasty bloody wanker, you detestable bugger!”

“What?”
he said, scrunching up his face, looking lost.
“
Sorry, I don’t speak British,” he added with a careless shrug and continued on with the issue at hand. “If you think I’m a bad influence on your bro’, fine, I’ll fall back. My advice, however, is that you allow him to get out like he’s doing now to keep his brain active, instead of followin’ you around like a lost puppy. Hanging around you gives him no hope. The doctors haven’t diagnosed him with shit, so there’s
nothing
wrong with him. What he needs is patience, not being shut off from livin’ a goddamn life.”