Excerpt from my new novel, NOT WITHOUT PASSION

CHAPTER 5


I am zipping around the kitchen being the perfect Suzy Homemaker for my girls who are due to arrive shortly. That Saturday morning sun noisy, it’s been peeking through the blinds since I stumbled in here after a 6:35 AM workout, approving my peaches-and-mango spinach salad, strawberry iced tea with floating chunks of California-grown berries, grilled salmon, baked sweet potatoes and small bowls of banana chips and mixed nuts.

This chick can spin a get-together on a dime’s notice!

By 1 PM, the doorbell chimes and I sprint through the house from the deck, where I’ve been rearranging furniture and setting the wrought-iron table.

“Hey, Mamacita,” Sydeeka greets me. “What’s up with you, Girlfriend?”

Her gaze tiptoes over me, a grin hiking one corner of her full, glossed lips.

“Whatchu all jazzed up for…lunch? Or perhaps a better question is ‘Who got you so snazzy this afternoon?’”


I can’t help myself. So I curtsey, smiling, and pirouette for the sister, my white A-line halter dress lethal, showing off shiny skin, Vaseline soft, a little cleavage, toned arms and thighs and hugging my Zumba-sculpted butt.

“Well, top of the day to you, too, Deeka,” I say, embracing her and leaving the door cracked for Jewell.

She reaches around me, grabbing my ponytail and draping it over my shoulder, where it ends just above my belly button under the white cotton dress.

“Moon, if you weren’t my girl, I’d be your woman.”

“Would you hush,” I say. “You know we’d be fighting over the shoes you stockpile and how much you spend on perfume.”

Sydeeka laughs. “Nothing a little counseling couldn’t right.”

I slip my arms through hers. “Woman, please. Besides, you looking fabulous yourself.”

Sydeeka smells like cash money, as usual, her fav scent, Prada. She giggles when I sniff her neck, frisky, the sensation hunching her shoulders.

“Don’t play, slut! Party on deck?”

“If it were elsewhere, my love, you’d not be in attendance, and I’d be sweating from heat meted out from the friction of one-on-one fun.”

Sydeeka plops her purse on a sofa and follows me through an open sliding glass door, dancing her way across the deck in the sunshine. She’s bouncing those 36” hips under the cutest blue-jean skirt falling mid-thigh. On her feet are tangerine wedgies perfectly matching a ribbed T-shirt and a few hundred bangles on one arm in the same tangerine family.

Chick lives for speak-up shoes, the sort that brings women across street, club or restaurant to say hello, gorgeous, my name is whatever you want it to be and if we can be the next Bonnie and Honey, here’s all my money.

“Don’t I know it? In my experience, I dream it before I see it. In yours, used to be the full moon glows and a crazy hoe gotta go. Today, you might have a different plan in motion, thus the reason a sister got the call and came on over. I know your ass. Spill the beans; spill the beans, Sister Girl.”

Leaning against the deck, back to the banister, elbows on the wide ledge, she’s posed as if she’s clocking the scene of dancing and drinking, cruising and chatting, and flirting and fighting women at Bella’s. I’ll give it to her. Deeka’s swag can be fierce when she’s fully present.

“How did you know the theme of this luncheon? You and Jewell been in conference without me?”

Sydeeka fans the air. “I don’t need Jewell’s two cents to remember that Navajo blood chanting in your veins and hanging down your back, Sade perfect. You probably held your own powwow last night.” She walks to the table and peeks under a Tupperware-covered plate. “What I want to know is what’s taking Jewell’s raggedy ass so long? But you never cease to amaze me, Moon. Your meals are always so colorful and way too healthy for my fast-food taste buds but I’m getting better.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Then she curtsies and sits facing the backyard. “Back to Miss Thang. You suppose Woodson got her bent over a lawn chair or something?”

I grin, loving their timing.

Jewell mirrors my smile, hands on her nonexistent hips, as she tips gingerly onto the deck. She’s dressed in a form-fitting orange ankle-length sundress adorned with pink, white and red flowers.

Pausing center stage, she turns to face a tickled Sydeeka.

“Hello, Jewell! Great you made it,” Sydeeka says, smiling genially.

“Hey, Hussy. And no, Woodson is not in the habit of ‘taking me’ over chairs and much less…lawn furniture, thank you. Might you be speaking of a fantasy in which you envision yourself and some woman panting?”

“Most likely,” Sydeeka admits.

Jewell rolls hazel eyes in an olive face of mixed heritage. “I thought so.”

Taller than Sydeeka and I, Jewell strikes a diva pose, two steps from Mariah Carey, and wiggles her forefingers.

“Let’s get this group hug in so I can sit down, ladies. These sandals nip my baby toes and my tummy’s on the warpath. C’mon, now. Make haste.”

Our group hugs therapeutic, I live for them and for the sisterly bonding and love we share despite our flippant mouths. The Divine knows we wouldn’t fly as high without the others’ wind.



TALK TO ME! SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!! I LOVE THE ENERGY OF EXCHANGE...AND I ADORE THE BLESSED FRESHNESS OF STARTING A NEW NOVEL!

TheGoldenGoddess
February 26, 2012