A Kept Woman {Sample}

Chapter 3: Spoken

        Kimi and Harvey had shared coffee and conversation now almost every day for a year. Kimi would be lying if she said she wasn't smitten with the man and that accent. 

        Every word he said was made only that much more interesting by his accent. It didn't hurt that he was possibly the sexiest piece of chocolate she'd ever seen. She liked her men dark, and the hue of her son's skin could attest to that. 

        To her, there was nothing more beautiful than a black man; especially with deep, rich, dark skin looking as if it had been kissed by the sun itself. 

        Kimi's sisters wanted to have children with mixed or white men because they wanted their babies not to have kinky hair, but Kimi wasn't with that. She loved her son and his nappy hair and wouldn't love him any more or less if his father had been white, Asian, or Latin. 

        Her sisters made fun of the dark brothers, but they infatuated Kimi. Her brothers made fun of the dark sisters, but Kimi wanted to look like them. 

        She wasn't going around spreading hate and death to the white man, but she was just fine with dating a man of color. She had nothing against interracial relationships and wouldn't mind being in one if she felt a partner of another race could understand her. Could take the time to see into her mind and not stereotype her. 

        She hated the stereotyping of black men as deadbeat fathers. Yes, her son's father was a deadbeat, sorry excuse of sperm, but he wasn't representing every black man. From what she could see, Harvey adored his children and was a father in every sense of the word. She found that sexy. 

        When he talked about his children, there was a sort of pride in his face and he lit up like there was nothing better in this world, and she loved to see a man so involved in his children's life. 

        He had convinced her to pursue higher education, so she was taking classes at the community college. She went to the high school to use their media center when she had a paper to type, though. She preferred that over the college's overcrowded media center. 

        Harvey liked that Kimi wasn't a trifling mother, though young and single. She did what she had to do for her baby, working to keep him fed and the bills paid. 

        He noticed how often she brought her homework to the shop when she'd been in high school, and still sometimes in college, and he sometimes helped her with her math. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders and listened attentively when he spoke. 

        He knew she had missed her graduation by two credits and decided to make them up in the school year as opposed to the summer. Over the summer, she worked her days and spent her evenings with her son. She wasn't giving up on her diploma. However, she needed that time with her baby. 

        Harvey looked at Kimi every single day, thinking to himself that she was just gorgeous; her voice, her smile andher laugh. When Harvey was having an off day, she spoke life into him as if he was her man. She told him about how great of a man he was and how much better he would be. His own wife would tell him how much she didn't care. 

        As of right now, he was telling her about a vacation his family had taken. She noticed he didn't talk about his wife much and wondered if the omissions were purposeful or if his wife just wasn’t around. 

        When he stopped talking, he looked at her thoughtfully. "Well, when do you have time just to yourself?"

        "When I take my showers; and when I come here," she told him with a crooked half smile.