People Person, page 17
“Isn’t there another way?” Lizzie asked. “What if it doesn’t work? What if Dimple tries to seduce him or whatever, but he’s not into it? He’s not responded to her messages, has he?”
“You have to make sure he’s into it,” Nikisha said to Dimple.
“Sounds like a warning,” Lizzie said, looking concerned by Nikisha’s command.
“You know what?” Prynce said.
“What?” Dimple asked.
“I can’t believe Dad left without saying goodbye,” he said finally.
“Seriously?” Lizzie asked him. “That’s literally the most on-brand thing he could do.”
Prynce nodded.
“Yeah, good point.”
CHAPTER NINE
DIMPLE SAT ON HER bed and took a deep breath as she called Kyron’s phone. With every ring, her stomach was getting tighter and tighter. She’d been calling him for days, and every time, the fear and unease was the same. After what felt like an eternity, it went to voice mail. She messaged him.
Dimple:
I miss you x
A second after she put her phone on her bedside table, she got a text.
Kyron:
You home?
She stared at the message before she replied.
Dimple:
Yeah I am. You coming? Xx
Another text came through.
Kyron:
Yh, later. Make sure no one else is there
Dimple’s mum wasn’t home until later.
Dimple:
I’m alone xxx
Dimple showered. She shaved her legs, even though it broke her waxing routine. She did her makeup. She took her underwear off and put on the smallest dress she could find, the one Kyron said she wasn’t allowed to wear out, but could wear for him. Then she sat on the sofa and anticipated a very difficult conversation.
“Hey,” Dimple said as casually as possible as she opened the front door. “You okay?”
Kyron snorted as he moved past her.
“I been better.”
The scabs on his face had healed so they were scars, and he’d made it to the barber’s. His trim was short enough to show the almost-healed gash on the back of his head. Dimple closed the front door behind him and followed him as he walked slowly into the living room.
“Is there anything you wanna say to me?” Dimple asked him. She figured it was better to find out what he knew before she said anything she shouldn’t.
Kyron ignored this as he sat down on the sofa. He was trying to act cool, calm, collected, but he was on high alert. He didn’t trust this girl anymore. With every day that had passed, he’d pieced together more and more of what he could remember from that night. It was only little bits, and he’d heard more than he’d seen. He remembered hearing voices that weren’t Dimple’s, but had no idea who those voices belonged to. Being back here didn’t sit right in his belly. Like his body could tell something bad had happened to him in this spot.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked. “Or some food?”
“Some food?” Kyron asked, confused. “You’re just gonna act like everything is normal?”
“I know we’ve broken up, but I still care about you,” Dimple said, sitting next to Kyron and putting a hand on his thigh.
“Care about me?” Kyron laughed. “Bro, you had me wrapped in a tarpaulin in the back of a van.”
“I can order us something to eat?”
“What kind of game is this?” Kyron laughed.
Dimple looked at Kyron and blinked. He hadn’t taken his phone out. She wondered if it was recording them in his pocket.
“I want things to go back to how they were, Ky,” Dimple said, moving closer to him, making sure that her dress rode up her bare thigh.
Kyron snorted again, but his eyes darted to Dimple’s naked skin. He hated how predictable he was.
“Don’t you?” Dimple asked, leaning into Kyron and kissing his neck lightly.
“This isn’t gonna work on me,” Kyron said.
“No?” Dimple whispered into Kyron’s ear before biting his lobe gently. Her hand wandered over to his zipper. She could feel that he was hard. The plan, if it was a plan, was working.
Kyron pulled Dimple onto his lap. She kissed him, reaching her hand to the back of his head to stroke it.
He let out a yelp of pain and jerked his head back. Dimple’s eyes widened. How could she forget where he’d hit his head? She wanted to ask if it was okay, if he was still in pain, but she couldn’t, so instead she quickly pulled the dress down so her breasts popped out.
Kyron’s eyes focused on them and he held one in each hand before he buried his face in them. He kissed the soft skin between her breasts before he started sucking and biting her nipples.
“That’s it.” Dimple sighed, trying to hide a yawn. This was so easy, she thought. “Shall we go to my room?”
Dimple stood up over Kyron, wriggled out of her dress, and dropped it onto the floor.
“Yeah,” Kyron said, standing up and pulling his T-shirt off.
“Why don’t you take the rest off?” Dimple wanted him to leave his phone downstairs.
“All in good time,” Kyron said.
When they got up to her room, Dimple got on all fours, the way Kyron liked her to.
“Nah.” Kyron shook his head. “Lie on your back.”
Dimple did as she was told as Kyron made his way over to the bed and lay on top of her, jamming his fingers inside of her. Dimple winced. They’d been having sex for such a long time that while he should know what she liked, he always followed the same formula that worked for him without ever checking that it did anything for her.
It would start with kissing, then he’d flip her over and ease his fingers inside while never going anywhere near the clitoris, then when he felt like she was adequately wet, he’d push himself inside of her, and forty-five seconds later, he’d be finished. He’d never check if she came. She used to wonder if it was because he was too embarrassed to ask in case her answer was no, but after a while she realized that he actually assumed that when he came, she did.
Dimple wondered if this new position meant that something new and potentially exciting was coming. She also wondered if the bump on the head was the reason for this change.
Kyron withdrew his fingers from her, then sat back and stared at her.
“Actually,” Kyron said, disrupting Dimple’s train of thought, “I want you to play with yourself.”
“Oh, okay.” Dimple didn’t really understand this new assignment. “Like how?”
“Do what feels good,” Kyron told her. “But I want you to close your eyes while you do it.”
Dimple felt self-conscious, but she knew that she needed to do what he said. She moved her hand down and closed her eyes like he’d asked.
Dimple started to rub her index and middle finger across her clitoris slowly. She felt too uncomfortable to get any pleasure from this act, and could feel more with her fingers than she could from her clit.
“Keep going,” Kyron commanded.
Dimple continued, her discomfort growing. She slowed down when she heard Kyron fiddling with something.
“And don’t open your eyes,” he said.
Obviously, Dimple opened her eyes. As she did, she saw Kyron hide his phone behind his back.
“What are you doing?” Dimple asked him, sitting up.
“Nothing,” Kyron said quickly, and a little too firmly. “I’m taking my jeans off. I needed to empty my pockets.”
“Ah, okay,” Dimple said. She wasn’t convinced but she needed to speed this up. “I just want you inside me.”
Kyron stood up, putting his phone into his pocket as he did. He unzipped his jeans and pulled them, and his boxers, down enough so that only his erection was out.
“You not taking them off?” Dimple asked him.
Kyron shook his head.
“Turn around.”
Dimple got on all fours.
“Nah, nah, lie on your front.” Kyron positioned Dimple how he wanted her, and mounted her so his knees rested on the backs of her thighs. He eased himself into her from behind, and forty-five seconds later, he pulled out, turned her around, and deposited a splash of warm white liquid on her stomach.
When Dimple came back from the bathroom, Kyron wasn’t in the bedroom.
“Ky?” she called, listening for him. She heard a noise from downstairs so pulled on a big T-shirt and ran down.
Kyron was in the living room, putting his sweater on.
“You’re going already?” Dimple asked him. Did her plan work? And so easily?
Kyron didn’t say anything.
“We good, though?” Dimple asked him.
“Good?” Kyron looked at her and smirked. “What I said still stands.”
Dimple decided that, on balance, it made sense to play dumb.
“What did you say?”
“Two fifty,” Kyron said.
Dimple looked at him, blinking. She wanted to laugh at herself. Why did she think sex would stop blackmail?
“And, ’cause you’re smarter than you look,” Kyron said, “I’ve got this as insurance.”
Kyron pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed her a picture of herself, legs apart, fingers on her clitoris. Face and everything. She wondered if the picture would be any nicer to look at if she’d been pulling a better face.
“Kyron,” she said. “I told you we could never do that. I trusted you, how—”
“Trusted me?” Kyron laughed, leaving the room and heading toward the front door. “Don’t talk to me about trust.”
“What are you going to do with that?” Panic coated Dimple’s voice.
“I told you, it’s insurance,” Kyron said. “You know what I want. I’ve kept what happened to myself till now, even after I found out you been fucking my boy. But you’ve got a month to give it to me. Or I tell everyone what you did, and this picture goes out.”
Dimple wanted to be sick. She also didn’t know which was worse. People knowing she was on her way to being a seasoned criminal, or everyone seeing her looking unattractive while she played with herself.
“One month,” Kyron said, opening the front door.
“Okay.” Dimple nodded as she watched Kyron laugh down the front path.
* * *
“I was trying to do what I needed to do!” Dimple told her half-siblings as they sat around her living room the next evening.
“And did it work?” Lizzie asked, knowing the answer.
“It didn’t, no,” Dimple replied.
“ ‘It didn’t, no,’ ” Lizzie mimicked Dimple. “And it’s somehow even worse. Why did you let him take a picture of you?”
“Hey, hey!” Dimple shouted. “He obviously did it in secret! And I feel bad enough without you victim-blaming me!”
“Just so we’re all clear, I didn’t tell you to do that,” Lizzie said.
“No, I know, but Nikisha did!” Dimple said.
“You should have put the pussy on him the minute he walked through the door,” Nikisha said, shaking her head.
“Are you… allowed to say that to me?” Dimple asked, shocked. She wasn’t a prude, but she didn’t think she’d be doing pussy talk with her big sister.
Nikisha laughed.
“I’m your big sister, I can say what I want. Besides, we’re all big people, I’ve got a pussy, you’ve got a pussy, we have sex—”
“Okay, okay,” Danny said, cutting Nikisha off. “Please, come on. I don’t wanna hear all that stuff.”
“Get used to it,” Nikisha told him.
“Okay, all that aside, what you’re saying is, we need to find that money else you’re gonna be exposed in one of two ways?” Prynce said. “Or maybe both. I don’t trust that guy.”
“We aren’t going to find the money.” Dimple started to cry. “I might as well just accept it. At least this way it’s only me who’s affected.”
“Can I ask one thing?” Prynce raised his hand.
“It better be something useful,” Nikisha said to her little brother.
“Is it that bad if the picture comes out?”
All four siblings turned to glare at Prynce.
“I’m just saying! Maybe Dimple can spin it, turn it into a positive? You said your whole thing was about empowering women, why not do it like this?”
“I am not empowering women like this!” Dimple shrieked.
“It was just a suggestion,” Prynce said. “Do you even have that many followers anyway? Who’s even gonna see it and know who you are?”
“At my last count, just over fifty thousand on Instagram,” Dimple told him. She never, ever thought saying that would have filled her with dread.
“Wow, that’s great!” Danny smiled at Dimple.
“Under any other circumstances, yes.” Dimple sat forward and let her head loll into her lap.
“You can’t tell there was blood all over this floor,” Prynce remarked. “We did a really good job.”
“My life is over,” Dimple groaned, ignoring Prynce.
“Don’t think like that!” Danny rubbed Dimple’s back. “I’ve got, like, a few grand in savings!”
“Unless it’s two fifty, there’s no point bringing it up,” Lizzie scoffed.
“Well, what are you offering?” Prynce asked her.
“I don’t think I need to offer anything,” Lizzie said. “Besides, Patrice would notice any money going missing.”
“So you just want our sister’s… personal parts on the Internet?” Prynce asked Lizzie.
“There are revenge porn laws,” Lizzie said.
“It doesn’t sound like he cares about any of that,” Danny said.
“Don’t cry, Dimple. Something will work itself out,” Nikisha said. “It always does.”
* * *
When Dimple woke up the next afternoon, after a night of tossing and turning, she had five missed calls from Nikisha. Fear paralyzed her for a few seconds. She felt sick at the thought of checking social media. Oh, how the mighty had fallen, and so soon. All of those sponsorship deals taken away before she could get the chance to review one little mascara. All she could do was lie on her back and imagine herself exposed for all the world to see, or in prison. As soon as she caught herself thinking about how much her skin-care routine would suffer if she was locked up, she snapped out of it.
She called back, but Nikisha didn’t answer, so Dimple sobbed as she scrolled the news, waiting to see pictures of herself and her half-siblings on the screen, ATTEMPTED MURDERERS emblazoned across their faces in red.
She jumped from news outlet to news outlet, the tears coming thick and fast as she searched for the warrants for her arrest, when Nikisha finally called back and put her out of her misery.
“He’s said something, hasn’t he?” Dimple wailed. “Everyone knows!”
“It’s Grandma,” Nikisha said flatly, no trace of familiarity with the woman she referred to in her voice.
“Whose Grandma?” Dimple asked. “What?”
“Our grandma,” Nikisha told her. “Dad’s mum. Delores.”
“Oh.” Dimple sat up, stopped crying immediately, and wiped the tears from her face. “What about her? I don’t know her.”
“She’s really ill,” Nikisha said. “We’re all going there later on. Just in case.”
“In case she dies?” Dimple asked. “That’s not very optimistic.”
“Optimism isn’t my thing,” Nikisha said. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
“Do I need to bring anything?” Dimple asked.
“Like what?” Nikisha laughed.
“Well, what kind of thing should I wear?”
“I dunno! It’s not an occasion, Dimple. In an hour.”
Dimple pulled herself from her bed and got dressed. She felt relieved, of course, but beyond that, she couldn’t really place this new emotion that was coming through. She didn’t have any memories, none at all, of her dad’s mum. But that didn’t mean she didn’t care, for lack of a better word. Death was fucking horrible; but how much was she allowed to care when she didn’t know someone? Even if it was because of that person that she was here? She looked out of the window. Gray, unclear, like her thoughts. She pulled on a long black dress and a pair of tights, and put on some very minimal makeup in case she had to cry on demand. Sometime later, Nikisha pulled up outside. Prynce and Lizzie were already in the car.
Prynce was on the phone, smiling into it, lust-drunk.
“Hello, little sister,” Nikisha said. “How are you?”
“Not good,” she said, climbing into the back next to Lizzie.
“When are you good?” Lizzie asked, pulling her scarf tighter around her neck. “Turn the heating up, please.”
“How are you all?” Dimple asked everyone, ignoring Lizzie’s question.
“I’m good, you know!” Prynce answered. “Just been doing this and that, but I feel like there’s good energy in the air, you know?”
“Oh! You’re off the phone!” Dimple said. “Who was it this time?”
“My friend Jordan.”
“Boy or girl?” Dimple asked.
“Woman,” Prynce said.
“You might want to calm that good energy down when we turn up at our dying grandmother’s house,” Nikisha told him.
“Or you could spread it around,” Dimple said. “I could take some of that good energy.”
“You see the problem with you, Dimple?” Prynce asked, turning to look at her.
Dimple leaned her head against the car window.
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You’re just always a bit sad,” Prynce said.
“It’s because I’m a Cancer,” Dimple replied.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Prynce said, facing the front.
“Doing what?”
“Astro Twitter.”
Dimple laughed a bit. Prynce turned back to Dimple.
“The other day I told one of my friends what you told me.”
“What did I tell you?”
“My big three or whatever? I said that I was a Sagittarius, Scorpio moon, Leo rising.”
“What did she say?”
