Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word

By Kelly Alex

Darryl McCloud had been unlucky in love meeting the worst kind of females. When he did meet one that had her head on straight, things didn't work out. That left him fed up with the chase. Enter Jennifer Parker, the sister of his best friend Jason's girlfriend Rebecca. Jennifer was just returning home from college and still reeling from having her heart broken by her first real love. After a rocky beginning and an unexpected encounter, they became friends. Darryl found himself in love, but Jennifer was adamant about not wanting to get into a relationship, though at times her actions said otherwise. With his feelings growing every day, Darryl picks Jennifer's birthday party in July to make a move fearing he was entering the "just friends" zone. It backfires and he was asked to leave. Darryl goes into a mood swinging depression that threatens his job status and sanity. Jennifer regrets overreacting and wishes she had the chance to do it all over again. While out of town for the Fourth of July, she decides to come clean about her feelings for him when she gets back. Upon returning home, she pays an unannounced visit to his house only to find Darryl with another female. Later, Darryl hears something from Jason that has him pay an unannounced visit only to see her with another man. Both instances were not what they appeared to be. Will these two ever get together and have the conversation that reveals all? Love was in the air. Darryl's friends, widowed father, and born-again Christian younger brother all found unexpected love. Darryl's take on love is, "It's a dirty four-letter word, the other dirty four-letter word."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645697688

Book preview

Tuesday, May 9, 2000

My phone rang.

I had a pretty good idea of who was calling. It was either one of my two best friends Jap or Munt. They both were off on Tuesdays like me. Or it was a wrong number. Therefore, I let it ring twice more. I picked up the receiver right at the start of the fourth ring without taking my eyes off my textbook. Hello, I said dryly.

I know you’re not sleep. Its 1:37 in the afternoon, the monotone voice on the other end said.

I’m up. Jus’ gettin’ ready for this paper I gotta write for my English class, I said after clearing my throat.

We’re about to come around there, Munt said.

That’s cool. I’m not writin’ the paper until tonight anyway. So come on.

We’ll be there as soon as he gets here. I talked to him about an hour ago and he’s still not here yet. He takes longer than some women to get ready.

You know how Jap is.

I’m tired of waiting on him. I’ll probably find him in front of the mirror and have to drag him away from himself.

I had to laugh at that, Go and handle ya business.

Before hanging up, I could hear Munt saying something. I put the phone back up to my ear. What’s up? I asked.

I almost forgot. We have a surprise for you.

For the first time in the conversation, he had my full attention. I sat up in the chair I was slumped in and closed my book. I asked in a whisper like we were in a crowded room instead of on the phone, What?

Be patient, young Darryl, patient. Some things are better heard in person.

Forget you then, I said and hung up on him. We did that to each other all of the time.

I stood up, tossed my book on the bed, and started on my way out of my room. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and stopped to marvel at what I saw. I wasn’t conceited; I had just come a long way.

I was a big kid growing up, height and weight. The weight was not a concern to me because I played football on the O line. I was going to be a football star like my father who was an all-city defensive end in the late sixties and early seventies at Jordan High School in Watts. I wanted to play defense, but they put me on offense. I lost my love for the game when I was introduced to the ugly side of football.

This was in a recreational league at a park. I played five seasons from the age of nine to thirteen. I hadn’t even made it to high school yet where it meant more. I saw kids play that had no business playing due to injury. I’m not talking hurt; I’m talking injured. There is a difference. Most kids are hurt after a game or two but can continue to play. Injured means that you should not be playing. I saw kids get pushed into more serious injuries. They got tossed aside like garbage when they were no longer able to play. They weren’t allowed to come to practices or stand on the sideline during the games to still be part of the team. I saw business deals conducted between the coach and a player’s father. Where a kid’s father would take care of a coach in some way in order to get their kid who was awful playing time. I saw a coach bench a very good player because he was the son of his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t want to be around stuff like that. When I told my father about it, he told me to do what I felt was right. He never pushed us into playing sports. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have played himself if he had it to do all over again. He suffered years from chronic injuries resulting from playing such a physical position.

I went from being round (6'0, 268) when I stopped playing to pear shaped (6'2 1/2, 277) five years later, which was the year after I graduated from high school. I had had enough of all that needless weight. My father helped me to start eating right and exercise to lose some weight. I lost over thirty pounds. Nearly a year later, I was down to 245 pounds. I was solid and fit.

I was light-skinned with a baby face. My mustache didn’t start coming in (or out, which is the actual case) until I was almost nineteen, which was the year prior. A blemish or two (or more) from an ongoing battle with acne. I kept my hair cut in a fade. It looked like it hadn’t been cut two weeks later. I got it cut every month.

I wasn’t antisocial. I just preferred a small circle of really good friends and then fringe friends. The fringe friends are at work or school that I would never hang out with away from those two places. I was a person that really never had a set plan in life. I was just floating through life without rhyme or reason after I gave up football. I figured that I’d know where I was going when I got there.

I finally pulled myself away from the mirror. I walked up the hallway, through the dining room, living room, and out to the front porch. I had on a pair of gray sweatpants, an undershirt, and slides (sandals) with socks. I never went outside without socks on. I never walked around in the house without socks and some sort of shoes on.

It was an overcast May afternoon. It wasn’t hot or cold, just overcast. Overcast days in the month of May aren’t usually par (normal) for the course where we lived which was Los Angeles. I’m not sure what part of town it was considered, but to me it was just Los Angeles.

We (being me, my father, and brother who will be introduced shorty) lived on Forty-Second Street between Gramercy Place and Saint Andrews Place, which was one block west of Western Avenue. The closest major cross streets running east west were Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Vernon Avenue, which we were about equal distances between.

We lived in the middle of our street on the north side of the street in a black and (mostly) white stucco house with a slanted roof. The molding around the windows, the door jamb, screen door, and the address numbers above the door were black.

We had two large windows in the front of the house, the living room and my brother’s room. My little brother’s window was on the west side of the house looking out into the front yard. The living room window on the east side looked out onto the front porch.

The yard was extremely neat and well kept. Two halves of grass separated by a walkway that ran from the porch to the sidewalk and then continued on to the curb of the street. There were no flowers, plants, or bushes in the flower beds that separated the grass from the porch and house. The flower beds only stretched the length of the porch. The porch stretched east to the driveway and west a foot or so from the front door. Beyond that, the grass was right up to the house under my brother’s window.

Except for the four steps and the two ledges that flanked them, the porch was fully encased by a wooden banister painted white and completely covered. The top and bottom were square shaped and thicker than the rest of the banister and flat on top. It sat about six inches off the ground and four feet high with thin vertical wooden beams that sat a foot apart all through it. At two points along the front of the porch and once on the side, the banister had thick square beams that extended down into the porch. At each end of the porch and on either side of the steps, there were beams that extended from the banister up to the ceiling. There was a nice couch on the porch. The reason for that will be explained later.

I looked up the street west toward Gramercy and saw Jap and Munt coming as I had so many times over the years. They lived six blocks north from us. We lived four blocks from King Bl. and they lived two blocks on the other side of King Bl. on Leighton Avenue. Jap between Saint Andrews Place and Gramercy Place, Munt between Gramercy and Wilton Place the next block from Jap to the west.

Jap and Munt whose real names were Jason and Montell were both born in January and had stepfathers with two daughters from a previous relationship. That’s about where their similarities ended.

Jason Price was high yellow, long and thin (5'10", 161). He had boyish good looks and a terrific smile that reduced his eyes to thin slits. Between his girlfriend and sisters, his hair stayed in braids. Jason was not dumb; he just never thought things through, always leaping before looking. After years of jumping around from job to job after graduation, he’d finally found a home at Foot Locker in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw Mall around Thanksgiving of the previous year.

Montell Jamison was dark-skinned and not thin or fat (5'8", 188). His head was shaved and he had a mustache. He looked older than Jap and I. Very smart and articulate and always noticing something that others didn’t. Stability was another strong suit. Montell held the same job at a supermarket for the previous four years.

We had been friends since elementary school. I met them halfway up the walkway. I dispensed with the pleasantries. I wanted to know what the surprise was. Jap was uncharacteristically quiet and had a far-off look on his face.

Now what is the big surprise you couldn’t tell me over the phone? I asked Munt.

Munt looked at me, then at Jap with a huge smile. He walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. Jason Anthony Price…is in love, Munt said.

His initials were where the nickname Jap came from.

Yeah, right… I would have said more until I saw that Jap’s expression hadn’t changed. You, in love?

I had to ask him again to snap him out of the far-off gaze he had. He didn’t say a word, just shyly smiled, which was again uncharacteristic for Jap.

Jap…love, I said more to myself than to them.

Jap had never been anywhere near love and didn’t want to be. Jap kept multiple females and didn’t try to hide it. He had an uncle named Zeke that was a pimp. An honest-to-goodness long-Cadillac-driving, loud suit-wearing, women-of-the-night-having pimp. He put all three of us up on game at an early age about females, a blueprint. He told us to never chase a derogatory word for a woman and ignore them. Jap stayed true to the blueprint no matter what. Munt and I would panic and go off course whenever things didn’t go the way we thought they should. In the end, Jap would come out on top (literally sometimes). Jap would use them to get what he wanted, or if he didn’t, he would dump them all the same. The thing that struck me odd was that his girl, Rebecca, wasn’t the typical Jap girl (thin, light brown, long hair, and giggly). She was cute but would not have made Jap’s top fifty of all time.

You two in love? I asked.

I am. I haven’t told her yet. Jap said, finally speaking.

They met in December of the previous year while Jap was at work. Rebecca came to the mall with her friends from school (cosmetology) who were looking for some tennis shoes. As he helped her friends, she watched him closely. She felt that he was just what he appeared to be, a pretty boy. Jap would not have spoken to her at all if he hadn’t noticed her checking him out more than once. He engaged her in small talk, trying to get her to buy some shoes too.

Rebecca was so taken by him that she took her little brother back to that Foot Locker after the New Year to get him some shoes. Jap hooked her brother up with his employee discount and two free headbands. She hooked him up with her number. They had been together ever since.

That had nowhere left to go so Munt changed the subject but remained in the topic of females. No change with Vicky? Munt asked me.

Naw, I somberly replied.

Victoria Hunt was a senior at Crenshaw. We were there together for one year, 1997–1998, when I was a senior and she was in the tenth grade (she went to Westchester High for the ninth grade), but we didn’t know each other. Vicky was light-skinned with long brown hair that looked dusty when the sun hit it just right. She had gray eyes that looked as if she could see into your soul. The kind of eyes that are hard to lie to.

Vicky was five-foot-three and 120 pounds. She had an athletic build. That meant she was thin yet far from skinny with a little shape. Vicky played softball, basketball, and volleyball. She could also throw a football thirty yards on a line, which was something because her hands were too small to get a good grip on the ball. Her main sport, though, was track. She ran the forty-yard dash, the one hundred meters, and four-by-four-hundred relay the anchor leg, and the long jump.

She saw me at Crenshaw’s Homecoming Football game the fall before (1999). It took my little brother four months to finally remember to tell me that she asked about me. He introduced us after a basketball game. I was smaller than I was when she first saw me by then. We exchanged numbers. Within a week, it was clear that things were not going to work out. She was way too busy between her school activities, nonschool activities, and college preparation stuff. She barely had time to turn around, let alone have a relationship. We remained friends and talked from time to time, but that’s as far as it went.

How about you and Barbara? I asked Munt.

His expression made me sorry that I asked. Munt was usually composed unless Barbara was in the mix. He had gotten to the point where he wouldn’t refer to anyone named Barbara as Barbara. He hated the name that much. Sort of like the guy in that Vaudeville act Niagara Falls whenever he heard the name Martha.

Barbara Beasley strung Munt along for three years starting in our junior year of high school. She had his nose wide open. He put up with the way she treated him in public because of the way she treated him in private. Eventually, the private didn’t keep up with the public, and he had had enough. Especially, when he found out that she was getting around. She always claimed to be a virgin. She was as pure as the driven snow…with shoe prints all through it. She had started sniffing around again lately.

Been there, done that. Don’t want to do it again, Munt said.

So we both single again? Would you like to go to dinner sometime, handsome? I asked Munt.

Munt came back without a smile or smirk. Yeah, if you payin’. I’m a cheap date.

Jap chimed in, I’ma hook Munt up wit’ Becca’s home girl Nicole.

My little brother came walking up the street after turning off Gramercy around four o’clock. Damon and his friends walked to and from school every day. Damon was a sophomore at Crenshaw, two months removed from his sixteenth birthday. He was the spitting image of me, only six and a half inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter. His mustache was thicker than mine. Our resemblance got him nicknamed Mini D by Jap (who was the only one that called him that), which got shortened to just Mini. Damon’s face lacked its usual smile and had for some time. He was usually loud and rowdy, always laughing and bagging. Rarely did he let anything bother him. He just hadn’t been himself lately. When he was ready to talk about it, he would.

He acknowledged us with a nod and a forced smile that looked more like he had gas as he passed by us. We watched him to the door until a voice called him from across the street. He turned slowly to see Erica.

Erica Cooke was short and skinny. She was right around five feet tall and less than a hundred pounds, soak and wet. She still had a little shape happening. Erica was caramel brown and pretty with shoulder-length hair. Nice, sweet, personable, and talkative would describe Erica best. She was caring above all. The perfect person to tell a problem to. She also possessed a mean streak if provoked.

Damon came down off the porch and walked out to meet her. They came together at the curb right in front of our house. Erica who was always claiming to be cold had on an oversized sweatshirt and baggy sweats. (Skinny jeans would have been baggy on Erica.)

Hey you, she said, sounding hoarse and hugging him. Erica had missed the last two days of school with flu-like symptoms. That ended her streak of five years without an absence dating back to the fourth grade. It wasn’t something that she coveted.

How you doin’? Damon asked.

I’m doin’ better, but I need your help with that homework from the weekend. It’s workin’ my last nerve, she said, frowning up.

She was going back to school the next day. They had an algebra class together. He went with her over to her house with his arm over her shoulder, holding her close like she couldn’t make it back home under her own power.

Damon and Erica were closer than just friends. They truly went back to Similac with Damon being eight months older. Erica was teased and picked on in elementary school because she was sickly and scrawny. Damon became very protective over her. So much so that he got into a lot of fights defending her. They became referred to as brother and sister. It got so bad that the principal had to step in and threaten very serious consequences (as if being beaten up wasn’t consequences enough) for anybody bothering Erica. Their brother-and-sister relationship started to fade as they got older. Both were waiting for the other to get serious. It hadn’t happened yet to that point.

By that time, our conversation turned to the NBA playoffs, mainly the Lakers-Phoenix Suns series, which the Lakers led one game to none. We migrated from the walkway over to the driveway behind my car. My father didn’t like anybody standing on his grass when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. You’ll see why we obeyed his wishes once you meet him.

Rebecca pulled up in front of the house in her mother’s car. For an eleven-year-old car, it was clean. Rebecca Parker was a little older than us at twenty-three years old. Like Jap (third) and Munt (twenty-third), she too was born in January (fourth) just three years earlier. Rebecca was seven inches shorter than Jap and round. Her former hour-glass figure gone after a miscarriage and deep depression in which she ate a lot the previous summer. Though her nice breasts and butt remained. The majority of the weight was centered from her upper thighs to her stomach. Her complexion was dark brown. She had big eyes, which left her looking constantly amazed or surprised, which she was neither most of the time.

Rebecca was funny. She was also hood. An aggressive woman that would jump up in a person’s face quick at the first sign of disrespect or conflict and not shy about speaking her mind. In the same vain, she could be as sweet as pie if she liked you.

Rebecca obviously liked to be with Jap. He was her boyfriend. She never tried to make him choose between her and us. Jap met her before she could get to the curb and planted a long wet one on her.

Hey. This is a nice, clean neighborhood. Y’all cut that stuff out, I said in my best old man voice.

They went at it for about twenty seconds. I haven’t been kissed like that in a long time, Munt said.

Don’t I know it, I said.

Jap stood behind Rebecca with his arms around her waist when they joined us. Tell Montell about yo’ gurl Nicole, Jap said.

She smiled. You wanna know about Nicole? Her name is Nicolia Mims. She is nineteen, mixed with black and Hawaiian. Hair down her back. Wait, I think I have a picture in my purse, Rebecca said.

She pulled a picture from her wallet that was in her purse. There was a dual response from Munt and myself, which could actually be categorized as a curse word, though many don’t realize it. So I won’t repeat it (starts with a D).

Munt took the picture and ran away giggling. I had never heard him giggle like that before. The body was on hit. She was in Hawaii in a grass skirt that showed off her hips.

She looks a little young in this picture, Munt said after returning to the herd.

That was a couple of years ago. She looks about the same, if not better. Want me to give her your number? Rebecca asked.

You can give her my number, height, weight, social security number, and anything else she wants, Munt said with a huge smile.

We all got a good laugh off of that. Your number should be fine, Rebecca said through a laugh.

After that, Rebecca led Jap over to her mother’s car. Munt and I talked about that picture of Nicole.

My father pulled into the driveway at five thirty. I quickly moved my car farther down the driveway so that his SUV wouldn’t stick out into the sidewalk. Julius Lavelle McCloud walked across the grass to the house. A big brut of a man with his huge biceps stretching the sleeves of his shirt. He stood all of six-foot-six and 280 pounds (he claimed to have been as tall as six-foot-eight in high school, but he lost two inches over the years). He still looked like he was in football playing shape at forty-five years old—his head and face hairless. My father was intimidating not only because of his size, but more because of his skin color. He was very dark. I’m talking sweats coffee, black gums, marked-absent-for-night-school dark. He was tall, dark, and handsome meets big, black, and ugly. (See why we obeyed his wishes?) Actually, he was smooth and mellow, slow to anger, always listened before answering, and then chose his words carefully. Never too busy for Damon and myself. Friendly to everybody. Not a fan of Julius Lavelle, which was his full first name. He urged everybody to call him JL. Damon and I called him Pop.

Pop had been a mechanic for over twenty years, working for or with the same person all that time. Not wanting the