{date:2023-10-20p}

I frowned as I headed towards the front door and the insistent knocking. It was almost nine at night and the middle of fucking winter; who the hell was coming around my place with a mild snowstorm coming in?

If I’d still been living off of downtown I would have been extra suspicious - I hadn’t grown up in the worst parts of the city, but a knock this late without anyone calling ahead would have been some sort of trouble nonetheless. As soon as Janey and I had gotten married, I’d moved us out into the suburbs - I’d had the cash to move before that, but at the time I didn’t have a reason to leave my old neighbourhood. With a wife to protect, I got out as fast as I could and settled into life surrounded by fresh-cut grass, school buses and middle-aged white men buying classic muscle cars or motorcycles to feed their mid-life crisis.

I thumbed the doorbell cam screen on the inside of the door and saw a slim figure standing there in a coat, two small white hands clenching and unclenching in the cold before the woman raised her hand to knock again. Even without seeing her face, I still recognized her coat. I immediately unlocked the door.

“Hey, Porcelain,” I started as I opened it. “This is a nice sur-”

I was cut off by Amelia barreling through the door and wrapping her arms around me, heaving a sob as she hugged me as hard as she could.

“Whoa, whoa!” I said, wrapping one arm around her and squeezing her protectively as I looked out the door to see if someone was following her or something. Her little beater of a Volkswagen Beetle was in the driveway, and the streetlights were on with a cold wind whipping down the suburb street. At the moment it was just stirring up the snow that covered everything, but we were supposed to get dumped on later in the night. No signs of anything wrong other than the weather.

I shut the door and locked it one-handed, then wrapped my other arm around the cold twenty-year-old who was sobbing into my chest. “Amelia, honey,” I said, holding her tight. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry, Uncle Tayvon,” she cried, clinging to my shirt. The girl was going to stretch it out doing that, though I wouldn’t have cared even if it wasn’t just one of my old Tees I wore around the house. Amelia wasn’t actually my niece, but I’d been best friends with her father Todd since our first year of college - we’d played hockey together, and been roommates all four years. He tried to make it pro and ended up on a feeder team, I’d let go of hockey and gone to business school. When I finished my second degree and Todd hadn’t made it into the Pros, he dropped out and used some connections through his family to get a decent job. I’d married Janey first, and he’d gotten married to his wife Emma less than a year later; we’d been each other’s Best Man. Janey couldn’t have kids, so I’d poured my fatherly urges into being the best uncle I could for Amelia once she was born.

“What happened, Porcelain?” I asked her, trying to soothe her. I’d started calling her that when she must have been two years old, already a little spitfire but dainty and pale as a porcelain doll.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed again.

“Come on, honey,” I said, kneeling down and pulling off her boots from her feet. She just kept crying, hunched over a little and bracing herself on my shoulder. Once her boots were off I stood and scooped her up in my arms - she was five foot nothing and would be lucky to break a hundred pounds, and I might have just hit forty-four but I was still big, black and a lifelong athlete with the build to show for it. Carrying her through the house, even with her bulky coat, was a breeze as I walked us into the living room and sat down with her in my lap.

It had been a while since the last time I’d held her crying like this - she’d been sixteen and her first real boyfriend had dumped her. I’d honestly been a little flattered that she’d come to me to cry and talk it out instead of Emma or Todd. I held Amelia for a while as she just cried, all the possible reasons why she was here running through my head. The apologies were my only clue really, and I narrowed it down to Amelia either having failed out of college or that she’d gotten knocked up.

“Porcelain,” I murmured once she’d settled a bit, sitting across my lap with her head buried in the corner of my neck so I could only really see her light blonde hair. The tears had stopped, though she still sniffed occasionally. She hadn’t even gotten her coat off yet, though I’d threaded my arms inside it so I could hold her comfortably. “What’s wrong, honey? Are you pregnant?”

“What?!” she said, sitting up and looking at me. Her pretty, delicate features were a little puffy from her crying, but she looked at me confused. “No, Uncle Tay. God, I haven’t been with- No.”

“Then you’re freaking me out a little here, kiddo,” I said. “What’s wrong? What are you apologizing for?”

Her lip quivered, and I knew she was trying her best not to burst into tears again as she looked at me with those cool, grey eyes of hers - though they were currently pink and a little bloodshot from her crying. She swallowed hard, her frown not dissipating. “Where’s Jane supposed to be right now?” she asked me.

That one sentence sent three strong red flags up for me. First, she didn’t use ‘Aunt’ or ‘Auntie’ in front of my wife’s name. I don’t think I’d ever heard her do that before. Then she used ‘Jane’ when everyone called my wife Janey. But the biggest one of them all, which might have been the most innocuous, was the use of the word ’supposed.’

“She left for a conference earlier today,” I said. My wife was a Nurse Practitioner and damn proud of her job. With no kids of our own in our future, she’d been happy to work hard to help contribute to our life even though I was making enough that she didn’t need to. It had led to us being able to travel more, afford the inground pool in the backyard, and even chip in on Amelia’s college fund though the girl didn’t know it.

Amelia shook her head and a little sob leaked out from her lips again.

“Where’s my wife, Amelia?” I asked her, feeling my heart clenching and my tongue drying out.

“I was coming home for the weekend,” Amelia whispered. “I didn’t tell my parents, I wanted to surprise them. I was just going to work on a paper all weekend anyways, so it didn’t matter if they had plans. When I went inside I heard them laughing upstairs, so I snuck up to try and scare them, but I heard more voices and they were in the bedroom, and the door was open and from- from down the hall I saw-” She gulped again, her eyes brimming with tears, and she gagged at what she was picturing. “My Dad and another man were having sex with Jane,” she whispered. “And my Mom was there too, wearing a strapon and fucking the other guy in the ass.”

Part of me wanted to tell her what she saw couldn’t be real. Wanted to tell her that her parents might have been doing that stuff, but not my wife. She could have seen another black woman in their weird swinger orgy or something.

The problem was, Janey had some pretty distinctive tattoos. She had a sleeve on both her arms and another big one on her hip. If Amelia said she saw her, I believed it.

“I’m so sorry, Uncle Tay,” she whispered.

“One second,” I said, sliding her off of me. I stood and went into the kitchen and threw up in the sink. I felt cold as I spit out the taste of bile and rinsed it down the drain. My whole body felt cold. I grabbed a glass from the counter, filled it with water and rinsed out my mouth. Then I realized that it was the glass my wife used with her breakfast before she left for her ‘conference.’

I threw it across the kitchen and it smashed against the tiled wall. I’d spent an entire weekend retiling that fucking wall because she’d asked me to. The glass shattered and scattered.

I went back into the living room and sat heavily on the couch.

Amelia was looking at me, silent tears spilling down her cheeks, and she shuffled over and hugged me.

I broke. The little white girl broke me, and held me as I cried in front of someone for the first time since I must have been fourteen years old.

“Tay, I’m home,” Amelia called out as she came in the door and kicked off her shoes. I could hear them clatter near the front door as she did it messily, making me roll my eyes and smirk a little.

“Hey, Porcelain,” I called from my home office. “I’m back here.”

She swept in like a hurricane, her grin wide and perky as she came around the side of my desk and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. Amelia was wearing the Wu-Tang Clan hoodie I’d bought her for Christmas, oversized for her since that was the fashion, with the tight Lulu lemon leggings she favoured.

“How was work today?” she asked as she hopped up onto a bare patch of my desk, planting her little butt as she leaned forward, still smiling.

“Made some money, lost some money, made some more,” I said with a smirk. It was my usual answer. “How was class? Did that Prof give you more grief?”

“Good, and no,” she said. “I think he’s passed it all now that the embarrassment is wearing off.”

“Serves him right for trying to grade senior papers using AI tools,” I said.

“Well, the university was pretty pissed at him,” Ameilia smirked. “But, that’s all done now. You remember what day it is, right?”

“Of course I do,” I said, patting her knee. “I got the files this morning.”

“Can I see them?” Amelia asked.

I reached over and pulled the folder from under some of my business papers and handed them to her. Amelia immediately pulled out the papers and started scanning over them, her smile widening a little more. She looked up at me. “It’s done. You are officially divorced.”

“I am,” I said, and I didn’t feel a twinge of regret. It had started out messy, but once more and more stuff had come to light things had gotten a lot easier. The lawsuit against Todd and Emma for alienation of affection had really brought out some nasty details of the ongoing affairs that had been happening behind my back. Thanks, North Carolina - I never knew I would appreciate living there more than I did when that lawsuit was filed.

“And you’re still coming to the Party tonight, right?” she asked, her smile slipping as she looked at me seriously.

“Of course I am,” I said. “You worked hard on getting all those invites out.”

She smirked a little and rolled her eyes. “Not that hard. But you’re sure?”

“Yes, it’ll be good for me,” I said. “Seeing my real friends. Seeing some of the girls from the team.”

“I think they’re more excited to see you than your buddies are,” Amelia said. “That and to all be old enough to finally have a drink with you.”

“Well, I’m not planning on getting slammed drunk,” I said.

“I know,” Amelia said, sliding down from her perch and patting my cheek lightly before scritching her fingers in my tightly cropped beard. She walked back around the desk, heading for the door. “I’m going to go change,” she said. “You’re still good for the gym, right?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said. “Let me just finish off these emails.”

She paused in the doorway, scrunching up her nose at me as she grinned, then left.

I sighed and looked down at the paperwork, then stuffed it back into the folder. It was done. I was done with Jane, and with Todd and Emma. My life felt emptier because of it, but I still had Amelia, and hopefully tonight I would feel like I still had more people around me too.

“Did you notice that brunette woman staring at you?” Amelia asked me with a little smirk as she came over to the free-weight area. She was dressed in her usual workout style, a basketball jersey over an athletic bra, and more of those yoga pants she loved hugging her skinny little legs.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Over there, by the water fountain,” Amelia said with a smirk, pointing with her eyes.

I glanced over and the woman she was talking about was cute. Tall, wearing a tracksuit, with long brunette hair. She looked like she was of South American descent.

“She asked me if you were my sugar daddy,” Amelia snickered.

“Please tell me you told her no,” I groaned. The last thing I needed was people questioning the relationship between Amelia and I. It was already questionable enough - the daughter of my ex-best friend living in my house for her final year of college, and the best friend also being a major part of the reason that I was now divorced.

“Of course I did,” Amelia laughed. “I said you were my boyfriend.”

That made me cough and drop my weight as she laughed more.

“I’m kidding, Tay,” she said, rubbing my bare shoulder. She got behind me on the bench I was sitting at the end of and started rubbing both my shoulders in a light massage. “I told her no, you’re my uncle. Then she asked if you were looking for a sugar baby and I told her you were already taking care of one cute freeloader, you didn’t need another one.”

That made me chuckle and I shook my head. “You aren’t freeloading, Porcelain.”

“Well, I don’t pay rent, I eat all your food, I messed up your algorithm on your Netflix account, and I’m not even putting out,” she said, and I could hear the smile on her lips. “I think I’m freeloading, Tay.”

I reached around behind me and hooked a hand around her hip, pulling her around in a slight manhandling so that she was sitting on my lap. She was looking at me with big eyes from getting manoeuvred so easily. “OK, if you put it like that, you would be a freeloader,” I said. “Except I love you, and you’re family. And you’ve been a massive help this past year in keeping me sane.”

She broke into another grin and leaned forward to kiss the tip of my nose. “Family can still freeload,” she pointed out as she stood back up.

“We’ll call it freeloading once you graduate,” I said. “How about that?”

“Deal,” she said as she went over to the rack of weights and found a much smaller one to do her own curls. She’d always been a skinny little thing, even at the height of Todd and I coaching her competitive softball team for several years. She’d finally started hitting the gym with me to make sure that I was hitting the gym and not wallowing in the separation and divorce proceedings.

She sat down and got into position to start her curls, then looked up at me watching her. She smiled. “I love you, Tayvon,” she said.

“Love you too, Porcelain,” I replied automatically. She may have been the person who pulled back the curtain and ended my marriage, but she’d also been my rock for the entire year afterwards. I’d always loved her as a kid, as my little white-bread niece. Now I loved her for the caring, ferocious, persistent woman she’d become.

It was a Thursday night so while the bar was busy, it wasn’t packed. That meant it was perfect for our two tables to not quite feel like we were having a party, but still feel ‘together.’ The girls, headed by Amelia, were at one set of tables pushed together. I’d been kind of surprised that eight of her softball teammates had made the trip for this, some of them from across state lines. I’d been the assistant coach for each of them for three years, and some of them for four, alongside Todd. As each of them had shown up at the bar I’d gotten hugs and commiserations, some of them going so far as to say things like, ‘You were always my favourite adult, but I hated her,’ in regards to Jane. I’d never gotten that sense in the past, so I put it up to them picking sides. Amelia had made sure that everyone in our lives knew who was at fault in my divorce and why.

My table, squeezed in next to the girls, was a little lighter on bodies. Marcus, my investment partner, had been on my side from the beginning and not even entirely because he was worried about my portfolio getting split in the divorce. Then there were Eric, Franky and Rex, three Dads from the old Softball team who I’d always gotten along with - none of their wives had come out, which didn’t surprise me for some reason. And lastly were Sonya and Paulette - I’d known Sonya since college, and we’d even had one hot and steamy date back then but decided we weren’t right for each other. Turned out she was gay, and she’d hooked up with Paulette the week before I’d met Jane.

“To a man knowing his worth,” Franky said, raising his glass in a toast.

“And taking action to make it right,” Paulette agreed with a nod. As a therapist, one might have thought she’d be soft around the edges, but she’d always been the kind of woman who cut to the quick of things and took no bullshit.

There were agreements all around the table, and we drank.

“Alright, so, Vera will kill me if I don’t ask,” Eric said, referring to his wife back home. “What exactly is going on with you and Amelia?”

I sighed and noticed that several of the others around the table leaned in. Well, the guys did. Sonya and Paulette had been my adult sounding board for things so they’d been aware of everything from the start. “Well, she disowned Todd and Emma after what she saw. What was I going to do, tell the girl she couldn’t stay in my guest room?”

“But it’s all ... appropriate, right?” Rex grunted. He was a big guy and he’d once tried to ‘have words’ with me after a playoff game that had gotten away from the girls. It hadn’t actually developed to pushing and shoving, but it had been damn close. The only reason it hadn’t was because I knew he was fiercely protective of his daughter Amy, who he felt had been aggrieved by me benching her even though she’d rolled her ankle.

“Of course!” I said. “Jesus, I practically helped raise her.”

“You helped raise all the girls, back when they were in high school,” Franky said. “Hell, I remember Emily spouting off some saying to me about remembering the little things, and I just looked at her and she shrugged and said you’d told her it was important. Somehow she ingrained that in her skull but she can’t remember either of her brothers’ birthdays to save her life.”

That made me smile a little, glancing over at the other table. Amy and Emily were both in attendance with their fathers, laughing and chatting with the other girls. They’d grown into strong, self-assured women and that was all I could have hoped for as their coach.

“Remember when Lauren Chatterby led the revolution against all their boyfriends?” Eric chuckled. “All because you told her she needed to cut the crap and respect herself more than her boyfriend did. Within a week all the girls who were dating some schmuck had dropped them.”

That memory made me grin to myself. Lauren had been showing up late to practice for a few weeks and the usual fire in her spirit hadn’t been the same, so in the middle of a game where she’d only shown up just on time I had pulled her out of the dugout and out to an empty corner of the parking lot. I’d handed her a bat and a watermelon and told her to do what she had to do, and after the watermelon was smashed to bits we’d sat for all of five minutes talking before we had to get back to the game. I’d never expected that moment to carry over to the rest of the team.

Lauren had ended up eloping - with a woman, which had surprised the hell out of me - last year in Vegas. But then again, I had been coaching women’s softball. I shouldn’t have been that surprised. She’d sent me a photo of her at the altar with her now-wife, and another one of her and her wife with baseball bats and a smashed watermelon, and let me know she wasn’t making rash decisions and she’d found someone who valued her as much as she did.

“So what’s the future hold then, Tayvon?” Marcus asked. “Hitting the dating scene?”

“Give him some time, Marcus,” Sonya scoffed.

“He’s had plenty of time, it’s just paperwork-official now,” Marcus waved her off. “And guys like us aren’t getting any younger.”

“I’m not looking to date yet,” I shook my head. “And don’t you worry, Marcus. I’ve got work on my mind. I came away cleaner than most in the divorce, but I still have some assets I want to build back up. Plus I’m helping Amelia with her final year of college since she didn’t want any of her parents’ money. Work first, then maybe I will find someone down the road a bit.”

“You let me know when you’re ready,” Sonya smiled. “I’ve got more than a few single friends who wouldn’t mind climbing Mount Tayvon.”

“Please tell me you’re not talking about Patricia,” Paulette groaned to her wife, making Sonya bark out a laugh.

“God, no,” she said. “That woman-”

“Coach!”

I was distracted from hearing what was wrong with the Patricia woman by the cheerful shout of the girls at the other table waving me over. A waitress was setting down a tray covered in shots - enough for at least a couple each. Excusing myself from my table of adults, I got some good-natured ribbing that I better represent the older generation well and hold my liquor.

The girls made space for me and I ended up sitting between Emily and Charlize, whose parents had moved a couple of years ago but she’d stuck around Raleigh for college. Amelia was sitting across from me and she leaned over and put a shot in front of me, then lifted one for herself along with all the other girls.

“To Tayvon,” Amelia declared. “The best coach we ever had. The best man we’ve ever known. And the hunkiest piece of meat, fresh on the dating market!”

The girls all cheered and I had to laugh before taking my shot with them. It was syrupy sweet and full of something high-proof. Emily got another shot in my hands. “To Coach Tay, may his old man’s liver forgive us!”

More laughs, more drinks. I was in for one hell of a night.

“I might be drunk, but I’m not tipsy,” I grumbled as Amelia tried to help me into the house. The plan had been that I was supposed to be getting drunk, and she didn’t want to miss out on my first night out at a bar with her, so we’d Uber’d there and back despite the exorbitant cost.

“Tipsy comes before drunk, Tay,” Amelia giggled, still trying to ‘help’ me down the hallway after I’d locked the door and we’d kicked off our boots.

“Maybe for a little thing like you,” I laughed. “Drunk comes before tipsy when you can hold your liquor.”

We ended up in the living room and I collapsed onto the middle of the sofa, completely happy with the way the night had gone. Amelia went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water, taking a long sip from it and then holding it out to me. I took a gulp and handed it back, and she set it to the side before climbing up onto the couch with me, curling up comfortably and pulling my arm around her shoulders so she could snuggle in.

“I’m really glad tonight went well,” she said with a smile.

“I am too, Porcelain,” I grinned. “It was good to see some of the fellas, and Sonya and Paulette. And the girls! I forgot how loud you all were when you got together like that.”

“Half of them have been over here since I moved in,” Amelia giggled.

“Not all at once,” I said. “God, that was nice.”

“Didn’t see anyone that you fancied at the bar?”

“No, no no,” I shook my head. “I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

“You’ve got to be lonely though, right?” Amelia said. “For companionship?”

“I’ve got you, Amelia,” hugging her a little tighter for a moment.

“OK, that’s fair,” she said. “Then for your needs. You manly needs.”

I snorted a little and shook my head. “I haven’t really felt that sort of a need since- you know.”

She sighed and sat up a little, getting her knees under her as she leaned her front against my side, her chin resting on my shoulder. “That’s what I mean. You aren’t some old, unhealthy, shrivelled-up crotchety man, Tayvon. You’re strong, and virile, and- and ... hot! You can’t let those assholes kill your drive for life.”

’Those assholes’ had become the collective name for my ex-wife and her parents.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “I got betrayed by the woman I loved. That makes it hard to think about, well, love. And intimacy.”

“Well, you love me still, right?” Amelia challenged me.

“Of course I do,” I said.

“And we’re intimate. You know practically everything about me and my life, and I’ve seen you at your lowest. That’s pretty intimate,” she said.

“It is,” I agreed. “But not the same kind that we’re talking about. You did definitely helped save my heart from falling to pieces though.”

“Then I’m going to make sure you don’t lose another part of you,” she said.

And then she reached down and unzipped my pants.

“Whoa,” I said. “Hold on-”

She kissed me. Amelia kissed me. Not one of her friendly little pecks on my face to show me she loved me. She kissed me, right on the lips, firm and demanding. And while I was processing that, while my drunk brain was trying to figure out what to do about it, her little white hands went into my pants and pulled out my cock.

“Shush, Tay,” she said, pulling away from the kiss. Her grey eyes were fierce, her delicate features hard and brooking no arguments. “Just lay back and let me do this. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

Again, I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t get the chance to make words process from feelings. Amelia ducked down, my cock held pointing up in one of her small hands, and she sucked on the dark head of my cock.

“Fffuuuucck,” I groaned. Great, reason was coming slow but pleasure was coming through just fine. Amelia’s thin lips stretched and slurped around the knob of my cock, her little tongue dancing along the smooth glans, and she started bobbing. Taking more. “Oh, God.”

She pulled her lips from me, looking up at my face with a big grin as she jerked my cock, shifting to get both hands on it. I didn’t have a ‘big black cock’ like in porn - most of us didn’t, really. It was about average length, somewhere between five and six inches depending on how hard and turned on I was, but I did have one thing going for me. It was a fat, thick cock. Add to the fact that Amelia had dainty little hands, even for a white girl, and it took both her hands to fully encircle it - there was overlap, I wasn’t ungodly thick, but seeing those pale, porcelain-white fingers stretching around my black cock was ... God, it was an aesthetic.

“I always wondered what it looked like,” Amelia smirked a little at me, the hardness of her demand falling away to be replaced by her usual playfulness. “This guy is gonna take some work.” She lowered her lips back to the head of my cock, kissing it messily while maintaining eye contact with me, her grey irises locked onto my expression. Again, her pale pink lips and white skin contrasting with the dark brown of my cock was more of a turn-on than I ever thought it could have been. I’d married a black woman, and other than Jane I’d only ever dated another black girl and a Hispanic girl. I’d never been with a white woman before, and I wasn’t much of a porn watcher.

“Amelia,” I groaned, my brain finally catching up with my balls in terms of processing power. “I-”

“Shhhh,” she shushed me again, running her lips down my shaft as she did it.

It shut me up.

She took the head back in her mouth and sucked, taking as much of it into her mouth as she could, stretching her lips and jaw, before coming up with a gasp as her spit strung and connected us a moment longer. Then she started jacking me off with both hands as she caught her breath, before dipping back down and repeating the process.

It felt amazing. It looked amazing. I swept her blonde hair out of her face to make sure I could see every smile and grin, every time she hollowed her cheeks when sucking, or bulged them out by pressing the head of my cock against them. Every look in her eye. Every loving glance.

“Amelia, I’m close,” I groaned. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes, but I was going on a year of celibacy, and I was drunk, and this was all new and taboo and shouldn’t be happening.

“Huummm,” Amelia moaned, keeping my cock in her mouth, the vibration just adding to the pleasure shooting through me. She made it clear that she wasn’t coming off.

“Oh, fuck,” I grunted. “Oh, Porcelain, fuck! I’m- fuck!”

I released, pouring spunk into her mouth as she immediately started swallowing. I knew that she wasn’t a virgin - we’d had that talk long before she’d moved in, that time I’d counselled her through her breakup. But I didn’t know much else about her sex life since it wouldn’t have ever been appropriate to ask, or really be told. What I did find out during that orgasm was that, while I was pretty sure she wasn’t some slut who had practised with dozens or hundreds of blowjobs, she definitely knew what she wanted. She swallowed every drop of my cum, and based on how many long waves of orgasmic bliss rolled through me it had to have been a lot, and when she was done she suckled softly on the end of my cock, pulling the last of it out of me and slowly cleaning my cock head.

“Fuuuck,” I sighed, closing my eyes for a moment. “Amelia. That was-”

“Amazing,” Amelia said softly and kissed my cock. “Tasty.” She kissed it again. “Wonderful.” Again. Then she lifted up from my cock and kissed my cheek. “I love you, Tay.”