standing unsure in a white-fitted tank top and his pajama bottoms that were rolled up to her knees. Her hair was up in a pony-tail and a toothbrush was in her hand. Her face was free of makeup. She was braless and the cotton of the tank top clung to the hardness of her nipples and the soft curves of her breasts. She bit her bottom lip and smiled nervously as she looked over at him.
He thought she looked absolutely gorgeous.
“Hi, Julius,” she began, rubbing her free hand over her—no correct that—over his pants leg.
Julius frowned deeply.
“I guess I should explain,” Caress began.
The phone in his hand rang suddenly and loudly. He held up a hand to her and then looked down at the phone to check his caller ID. Just as he thought, it was Kendrick. “Kendrick and Tamara in on this?” he asked, his voice stern.
Caress nodded, her face resembling a child about to be punished.
Hitting the TALK button, Julius raised the phone to his face. “I’ll call you back,” he said shortly, before disconnecting the call again.
“Julius—”
“Why are you in my house, Caress?” he asked, studying her and noticing that her plum-sized breasts were definitely larger than the last time he suckled them.
Shaking his head to free his mind of sudden erotic images of her naked astride him, he focused on her slow coming words.
“First, let me apologize for moving in without your—”
“Moving in?” Julius balked, his eyes darting around the room to take in the unkempt bed, the gossip magazines on his usually clutter-free nightstands, the red brassiere flung carelessly over his leather chaise lounge.
Noticing everything his eyes took in, Caress moved quickly to gather the magazines and bra into her hands. “Sorry. Look, Julius—”
Suddenly, her face paled and she dropped everything in her hands to dash into the bathroom. Curious, Julius walked over to pick up the items she dropped and then followed her.
Caress was kneeling over the toilet, retching horribly. Her back arched as she heaved up her stomach’s contents. Frowning, Julius moved to grab a folded washcloth from the shelf to dampen with cold water. “Here you go,” he told her, squatting down next to her.
She flushed the toilet before she shut the lid and moved to sit atop it. Accepting the cloth, she wiped her face, frowning at the awful taste in her mouth. “Thanks,” she told him, careful to cover her mouth so that the smell of vomit on her breath didn’t offend him.
“Are you sick?” Julius asked, rising to stand over her. Looking around, he immediately noticed the total disarray of his bathroom. He swallowed down a deep wave of irritation.
“No,” she answered softly.
Too softly.
Julius’s body immediately tensed. Their eyes met and locked. He swallowed despite a huge lump in his throat. “Are you pregnant, Caress?”
Her eyes dropped.
So did Julius’s stomach.
Caress thought of the pained expression on Julius’s face when she disclosed her condition. She couldn’t really be angry with him about looking exactly like how she felt when she saw the little plus sign appear in the window of the pregnancy test. This wasn’t the greatest news for her either. Especially having been evicted from her apartment three weeks ago.
“How are you feelin’?” Tamara asked, walking into Julius’s bedroom where he left Caress while he went downstairs to talk to Kendrick.
Caress smiled half-heartedly, tossing her shirt into the open suitcase on the bed. “As fine as I can be pregnant, homeless, jobless, and husbandless.”
Tamara winced visibly. “Besides all of that, how are you doing? How’s the baby, Caress?” she asked, moving over to pick the suitcase up off the bed. “Why are you packing?”
Caress’s expression was odd as she watched her best friend set the suitcase on a luggage caddy by the door and then sit on the chaise lounge adjacent the bed. “I’m packing because he’s going to put me out. Why’d you just do that?” she asked, pointing to her luggage.
Tamara made a face. “Girl, Julius is so anal about his things. He’d pass a stone big as both our heads if he saw your suitcase on his suede comforter.”
Caress smiled. “I kinda noticed that he is very…organized.”
Tamara sucked air between her teeth. “My daddy’s a career military man and he’s not as orderly. Trust me, Julius is a neat freak bordering on obsessive compulsive.”
Caress felt sadness weigh her shoulders down. “I don’t know anything about my baby’s daddy,” she wailed, dramatically dragging out her words as she flopped back on the bed.
“You know his name, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you know his address?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you got the most vital info girl, so hush.”
The two women fell silent.
“I told you this was a bad idea, Tam-Tam.”
Julius paced back and forth across his living room. Every time his friend tried to speak he silenced him with an agitated wave of his hand. He had a lot on his plate to swallow, and it was sticking in his throat like bile. Finding out he may have a baby on the way and an unexpected roommate was quite a bit to handle all in one morning.
Caress is pregnant with my child.
Is it my child?
He paused in his therapeutic pacing. Okay, it was very possible that it was. He couldn’t deny that they had sex. Great sex. Focus, man, focus . Nor could he deny that although he carried two condoms in his wallet, he didn’t use either of them that night. Everything had been so hot. So fast. He never had unprotected sex. But the one time he did—zip bam BOOM—he was going to be a daddy.
What was I thinking?
Julius continued his pacing. He was slipping. This type of thing didn’t happen to him. He was too together for a baby mama. And with a woman he knew nothing about except that she was awesome in bed, homeless and jobless, and had taken residence in his home.
Julius felt like screaming as the control he cherished slipped through his grasp like sand.
“I know what we did was a little presumptuous—” Kendrick began from his seat on the sofa.
Julius swung around to gawk at him. “A little?” he scoffed. “Negro, please.”
“Look man, I was just as shocked as you are when Tamara told me that you, Mr. Magnum, had gotten Caress pregnant—”
“Gotten?” he asked sarcastically, piercing his friend with angry eyes.
Kendrick held up both of his large hands. “I didn’t mean it that way, Julius. All I’m saying is that you were in Africa and we couldn’t reach you. Caress hadn’t found a job yet and was getting evicted. Hell, Tamara was on my neck like a flea. What was a brother to do?”
“Certainly not give her keys to my home and tell her to move on in.” Julius’s voice was filled with exasperation and some resentment.
Kendrick went on the defensive. “What? You’d prefer that in your absence I let the woman who is pregnant with your child move into a shelter…or worse?”
“Why couldn’t she stay with you?” Julius countered.
“Man, please, our one bedroom is tight enough quarters for me and Tamara.”
The two men were at a stalemate.
“Look,