Prologue One
Ford
Twenty years ago…
I crossed the road, leaving behind my own white frame house and making the short journey to my best friend’s almost identical home, rolling my eyes when I noticed his sister sitting on her bike by their front porch.
“What you want?” she sassed.
“None of your bawk-bawk chicken-chicken bawk-bawk chicken leg business, ole ugly girl!” I shot back at her.
“You the one who’s ugly, with your big head self!” she snapped.
“Big head means big brain.”
“Why you don’t use it, then?”
“Why you don’t use them skinny legs and ride that bike somewhere and find you some business?” I suggested, climbing the three steps.
“Your dog is ugly, too,” she pointed out.
I stopped, turning to see the stray that hung around my house standing at the bottom of the steps, tail wagging. “It ain’t my dog and you know it.”
She didn’t speak again until I’d knocked on the front door, at which time she yelled, “Blake! big head Terrence Ford is at the door for you!”
I twisted around to snarl at her. She, in turn, gave me a smirk.
The door swung open to reveal Mrs. Tyler, their mom. “Krystle, stop all that yelling! Hey, Terrence. Blake’ll be out to play with you as soon as he finishes vacuuming his room.”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
After she closed the door, I hopped down the steps, taking a seat on the bottom one while trying to act like Krystle had disappeared. She quickly killed that strategy.
“What y’all finna do? Play some dumb game on your dumb PlayStation?” she questioned me.
“Like I said, none of your chicken leg business,” I replied.
“For your information, I got model legs, stupid!”
“Model what? Model ugly chicken?” She wasn’t ugly, not by a mile. If she wasn’t her obnoxious self, I might’ve thought Krystle was pretty. But she was her obnoxious self, and I couldn’t stand her.
“One day, when I’m a famous model and you’re somewhere still wearing hockey jerseys in the summertime, you’ll wish you were nice to me.”
“No, I won’t, and any jersey I wear when I’m grown is gonna have my name on it!”
“No, it won’t. You don’t even know how to play!”
“Ford!”
We both turned to see Blake stepping out of the house. I grinned, standing as my best friend approached us. Before he’d placed his foot on the top step, their mom yelled, “Blake, you know what time to be home!” through an open living room window.
“Yes, ma’am!” Blake called back.
“And take your sister with you!” Mrs. Tyler added.
“What?!” my friend and his sister shouted in unison, Blake continuing with, “Ma, please! Don’t make me take her!”
“I don’t wanna go with them!” Krystle protested.
“As long as the two of you are together, I know you’ll stay out of trouble. Now go on before I make you come back in the house. Once you’re in, you gon’ stay in!” their mom said.
Blake and I stared at each other before turning our attention to Krystle.
“Man, come on, y’all,” Blake mumbled.
“Where y’all going?” Krystle asked, walking her bike behind us as we trudged down the short driveway to the empty rural road.
“To play ball,” I informed her.
She groaned before dropping her bike in the yard. “Hold up. I gotta get something!”
“Hurry up!” Blake yelled.
She zipped in and out of the house before joining us as we headed down the road to our destination, the stray dog following us.
Krystle
Watts, Texas, was a town with a population of less than ten thousand predominately Black citizens. Just a thirty-minute drive from Austin, it was also my hometown where me and my twin brother, Blake, were raised across the street from one Terrence Mathias Ford. During summer break, a lot of the kids our age would meet up at the high school and play basketball on the outside court. I never went since it wasn’t my thing and my friends were away for the summer, but on this particular day, I’d been assigned the role of babysitter for my stupid brother and his stupid friend. We all knew it was because of a fight they got into with some boys a few days earlier that my mom got wind of due to a huge bruise on Blake’s cheek. Ford managed not to get injured. Then again, Blake was always the one dragging Ford into mess, so it was good he didn’t get hurt. I mean, Ford was stupid, but he wasn’t as stupid as my brother even though he had a huge target on his back for bullies with his red afro. Plus, he was always saying crazy stuff. He definitely had a unique look, but he wasn’t ugly. His head was huge, though. Like, gigantic.
I sat on a bench outside the fence that surrounded the court, the same fence I’d watched my brother and his friend climb moments earlier, joining a few other guys from our school. They were all idiots if you asked me. Every one of them.
I really didn’t want to be there.
At. All.
Not even a little.
Anyway, Terrence Ford’s ugly dog sat at my feet, as if guarding me. It was cute. I ended up spending the whole time we were there drawing in my sketch pad. I was good at it, too. I was pretty sure if the modeling thing didn’t work out, I could be an artist.
“Chicken leg! What you drawing?”
I rolled my eyes as I lifted them to see a sweaty Ford at the fence, his fingers gripping the links as he stared at me with his mouth hanging open. The dog was on his feet, tail wagging so hard that it hurt when it hit my leg.
“You wouldn’t be sweating like that if you weren’t wearing a hockey jersey, Big Head,” was how I chose to respond.
“It’s my lucky jersey.”
“Good luck not sweating to death.”
“Ole ugly girl,” he mumbled as he turned and rejoined the game.
I rolled my eyes again, letting them drop to my sketch pad and the image I’d just drawn—a portrait of Terrence Ford, hockey Jersey and all.
Prologue Two
Ford
Then…
“Maybe what?” I asked, moving to sit up in the bed and resting my back against the wall.
She sat up, too, staring at me with uncertainty in her eyes, her exposed nakedness inducing a brand-new erection. I reached down and stroked myself, watching as her eyes fell below my waist. “You want it? Come get it,” I told her.
Licking her lips, she moved toward me, climbing in my lap and straddling me. We were face to face, chest to chest as she lifted to guide me inside her.
“Damn!” I grunted. “You feel so good!”
She gripped my shoulders, sliding up and down on me, a strained expression on her face. She’d never ridden me before.
“You a’ight?” I asked, reaching around to grip her ass cheeks.
She nodded.
“Good, now what were you saying? We could do what?”
Throwing her head back, she wailed, “Ohhhhhh, fuck!”
I smiled. She looked so beautiful like this.