Read Online Can't Get Enough of Your Love by J.J. Murray - Free Book Online Page B

first.”
    He
didn’t
say, “Can I join you?” though I probably would have let him if Mama wasn’t at home. “Me, too. I’ll meet you downtown at Corned Beef, say around ten?”
    At Corned Beef and Company, which is a little restaurant and bar in Center in the Square, we drank sodas after I told him that I didn’t drink. He didn’t question it, didn’t wonder about it, and didn’t make me feel like a child because of it.
    â€œHow old are you?” I asked.
    â€œTwenty-two.”
    I stared into my Coke. “I’m twenty-four.”
    He
didn’t
ask, “You got a problem with it?” or say “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” Instead, he asked, “Want to go for a walk?”
    â€œSure.”
    We walked through Elmwood Park, and once we were in the relative darkness under the bridge connecting one part of the main library to the other, he kissed my cheek. He
didn’t
say anything, and I
didn’t
say anything. We just kept … walking together, not holding hands, smiling mostly.
    It was cute.
    We walked up to where my car and his Blazer wereparked, and without him even asking, I got into his Blazer, we went back to his place, and …
    It was very nice.
    Okay, it was more than nice. I am, well, active when it comes to lovemaking, often wearing a man out. With Karl, though, I had met my match. It was as if we were in competition to see who could put a worse sexual hurting on the other. It was exhausting, it was erotic, it required several water breaks—even a little ice that didn’t stay ice for long on my back.
    I miss those first few meetings because they contained the
longest
conversations we ever had. He wasn’t into being an entrepreneur yet. That came later. He had a marketing degree, and he was trying to figure out how to put it to use on his own terms. He despised corporate America, doubting it’d ever hire him because of his skin color and all those tattoos. He had dreams of having his own store and being his own man, and I had dreams of
us
owning
our
own store and being financially independent.
    Then he started taking trips to New York to “do his thing,” buying fake Coach bags and bootleg DVDs to sell down here. This led to several broken dates and many nights of me sitting by the phone. It was the same old pattern I had just been through with four other men. I received fewer phone calls
from
him and made more pages
to
him. It was so aggravating not to be able to contact him directly. I offered to buy him a cell phone, but he only told me, “I’m old school, Peanut.”
    That was his only explanation.
    Then he started paying more attention to his body than mine. Less talk, more action, little conversation before, during, or after lovemaking. It was all “hit it and quit it.” I mean, we used to do foreplay all the time,you know, flirting on the phone whenever he’d call me back, grabbing and touching in his Blazer, so that by the time we got back to his place, I was swimming in my own juices. Gradually, we flirted less, with fewer touches and grabs, did just enough foreplay to get him started …
    It got old.
    And I wasn’t going to do “old” anymore.

Chapter 8
    I f the old Karl could have come around more often, I wouldn’t have had to add Juan Carlos, who has always been more interested in my pleasure than his pleasure.
    And as with Karl, Juan Carlos and I met by accident. Actually, it was the Rabbit’s fault. My car broke down on Williamson Road a block from Berglund Auto World last fall. It just quit in the left lane. I put my flashers on and waited for help while cars whizzed by me on both sides. No one stopped to help me. No one.
    Enter Juan Carlos.
    He came out of nowhere and said, “I will help you.”
    â€œThank you,” I said, looking at his nice ass and little thin moustache.
    â€œIf you steer, I will push,” he said.
    You know