Read A Taste of Honey for Free Online Page A

breath away. I was surprised that he lasted five minutes this time.
    When we finished he went into a spiel about how it was still unbelievable to him how I could make him erupt so quickly. Fifteen, twenty minutes, he claimed he always took with other women.
    I slipped my jeans on without putting back on my panties andbra. I held them in my hands as I was just going in the house to shower again. Manny kissed me at the door as if he knew it’d be the last time he’d lay eyes on me. “If you are ever in Atlanta, look me up,” he said.
    I nodded. “I will.” He opened the door and when I turned to walk out, Tank was standing in the hallway, waiting like a guard dog.
    “This is how you repay me, Honey? You bitch,” he growled.
    “What are you doing here?” I said.
    “Your girl Rorrie told me you was in here fucking this nigga.”
    My head began to spin. “Rorrie? What?”
    “Yeah, she been trying to creep with me for weeks, ever since the concert I took y’all too. I shoulda’ gone ahead and tapped it since I see how you rolling.” Tank had moved up on me. His eyes were ferocious and he looked unstable. I thought he was going to hit me so I backed up.
    He must have sensed that I was going to run so he reached and grabbed me by the throat. I gasped and tried to pry his hand loose to keep him from choking me. Again, Manny had to come to my rescue. He slid around my body and pushed Tank into the wall. “Main man, you need to chill.”
    Tank immediately began to throw punches. His were wild but the ones Manny threw in return were precise. He knocked Tank to the ground with the second punch and told me to get back inside.
    I glanced over as Manny reached down to punch Tank some more, but then it happened. Amid the barrage of blows, Tank reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Almost simultaneously I heard Manny’s cries then a thud. I slammed the door before Tank could get to me.
    He began to kick the door. “Honey, I love you. Please, open up. I love you,” he yelled out as I began to cry. He’d gone mad.
    “I’m calling the police,” I yelled. “Get out of here.”
    The next twenty minutes I barely remember. I heard sirens then a knock at the door. Paramedics, police, a stretcher, a sheet over Manny’s body. All followed by confession. He’d died because of me.
     
    I t seemed as if my mother hated me once she found out what had happened. She didn’t look me in the eye from that day forward. She was furious when the police advised us to move, since they hadn’t yet apprehended Tank, but my mother wasn’t having it. “I have a job right up the road. I don’t have the time or money to move because her hot ass can’t keep her legs closed,” she told the detective.
    Instead she shipped me out to her sister’s home in Columbia, Maryland. Denise was four years older than my mother and even more religious. Still I had no choice.
    Ironically, going from the hood to the nice neighborhood turned out to be hell for me. I went to a new school with a bunch of white kids that I had nothing in common with and I stood out like a sore thumb. I tried to forget the life I’d left behind in the city, the best friend who’d betrayed me, and the murderer who’d flipped my life inside out.
    After being a loner for the first month of school, eventually I tried to fit in with the uppity kids, but my interests had changed so much in the last year that I couldn’t connect with most of the girls I met. I missed the money and the clothes. I often thought about Manny and the things he’d shared with me. Within two weeks I began sneaking out to hang out with guys I’d met atColumbia Mall. None of them captured my interest. They simply didn’t have enough money. That was until I met this one kid with rich parents who had his own credit card. I gave the kid a sample and in no time flat he’d maxed the card out taking me to all of my favorite stores.
    One evening after I came in two hours after my silly ten P.M .