Unconditionally Single Read online

  Unconditionally Single

  Also by Mary B. Morrison

  Maneater (with Noire)

  Who’s Loving You

  Sweeter than Honey

  When Somebody Loves You Back

  Nothing Has Ever Felt Like This

  Somebody’s Gotta Be on Top

  He’s Just a Friend

  Never Again Once More

  Soul Mates Dissipate

  Who’s Making Love

  Justice Just Us Just Me

  Coauthored with Carl Weber

  She Ain’t the One

  Mary B. Morrison writing as HoneyB

  Sexcapades

  Single Husbands

  Presented by Mary B. Morrison

  Diverse Stories: From the Imaginations of Sixth Graders

  (an anthology of fiction written by thirty-three sixth graders)

  Unconditionally Single

  MARY B. MORRISON

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  To Selena James, my wonderful editor

  every second

  of every day

  singles have

  the right of way

  Why I’m Unconditionally Single

  Date:

  Given to:

  Given by:

  Personal message:

  Advisory

  If you have not read the Honey Diaries, please note that Unconditionally Single is the third book in a trilogy. Sweeter than Honey is book 1 and Who’s Loving You is book 2. I strongly advise reading the series in order. Enjoy!

  Contents

  Purpose of Being Unconditionally Single Part I

  PROLOGUE Honey

  CHAPTER 1 Honey

  CHAPTER 2 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 3 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 4 Grant

  CHAPTER 5 Grant

  CHAPTER 6 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 7 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 8 Valentino

  CHAPTER 9 Honey

  CHAPTER 10 Honey

  CHAPTER 11 Valentino

  CHAPTER 12 Honey

  CHAPTER 13 Grant

  CHAPTER 14 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 15 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 16 Valentino

  CHAPTER 17 Grant

  CHAPTER 18 Grant

  CHAPTER 19 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 20 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 21 Honey

  CHAPTER 22 Grant

  CHAPTER 23 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 24 Honey

  CHAPTER 25 Valentino

  CHAPTER 26 Grant

  CHAPTER 27 Honey

  CHAPTER 28 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 29 Valentino

  CHAPTER 30 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 31 Honey

  CHAPTER 32 Honey

  CHAPTER 33 Grant

  CHAPTER 34 Honey

  CHAPTER 35 Honey

  CHAPTER 36 Grant

  CHAPTER 37 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 38 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 39 Valentino

  CHAPTER 40 Honey

  CHAPTER 41 Grant

  CHAPTER 42 Honey

  CHAPTER 43 Valentino

  CHAPTER 44 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 45 Grant

  CHAPTER 46 Honey

  CHAPTER 47 Grant

  CHAPTER 48 Honey

  CHAPTER 49 Grant

  CHAPTER 50 Grant

  CHAPTER 51 Honey

  CHAPTER 52 Honey

  CHAPTER 53 Sapphire

  CHAPTER 54 Red Velvet

  CHAPTER 55 Grant

  CHAPTER 56 Honey

  CHAPTER 57 Honey

  EPILOGUE Honey

  Acknowledgments

  My Pussy—My Prerogative

  Discussion Questions

  Purpose of Being Unconditionally Single

  Part I

  unconditionally single—a person who understands his/her relationship needs, communicates effectively, willingly compromises, and refuses to settle

  Before reading Unconditionally Single, I’d like for you to take a moment to identify your relationship needs. These are the things you must have in order to cultivate a healthy union with the person you’d like to marry or consider your life partner.

  After identifying your needs, list your desires. These are the hobbies or things you enjoy and would love to do with or without your mate.

  Next, let your imagination explore your deepest childhood and sexual fantasies. Take a moment to do this now.

  Some of you already know; others wonder, What is my passion? You absolutely positively must permit yourself personal time to discover your passion. What drives you? Excites you? Exhilarates you? Your primary passion usually stems from a greater humanitarian purpose. For me, I love my son unconditionally and I live to write. I write to live. I write to make a positive difference in somebody’s life. I pray that person is you.

  I find that most individuals cannot readily identify their personal or relationship needs. Nor do they discuss being in a relationship with a prospective mate. They kind of meet a person they’re attracted to, then they stumble into “like,” trip into love, then slip into hate or resentment—never having asked the other person, “What are your relationship needs?” Or “What do you need from me in order for us to have a healthy relationship?”

  Somewhere along the way, perhaps months, maybe years after meeting, they get to know one another for real. They tire of being possessed or possessive. Qualities once admired become annoying. Some find out that money and material acquisitions—the house, the car, the clothes—are more important to their mate than love. The one with the most money feels entitled to control the other person. Sex once a day, once a week, once a month, or in some cases once a year is either too much or not enough. In creeps emotional and physical infidelity. “If my woman or my man refuses to fulfill my needs, I have the right to get my sexual needs met elsewhere.” The person who makes this decision becomes upset if he or she discovers the mate cheating. In creep disrespect, misery, and relationship disaster.

  When a woman or teenage girl gets pregnant, she automatically expects the man to do all the right things for her and their child. Most women hope the man will marry her because she’s carrying his baby. Instead, the man feels trapped. He stands on the fifty-yard line for nine months like he’s watching a football game—drinking beer, chilling with his boys, bragging about his other woman, what he did to and with her last night. All the while he’s waiting for the fourth quarter to end, waiting for her third trimester to conclude, and praying there is a flag on the play, that his request for a review of the play—a DNA test—will reveal he is not the father, mainly so he doesn’t have to pay child support. But he’d flip a coin on the child’s paternity, not caring if he gets heads or tails as long as she’ll let him fuck her again.

  Clueless about how much day care, diapers, and the daily cost of providing for a child is, she gives birth, barely closing her legs before her six-week checkup and he’s back. Clueless that one night of pleasure could bring her a lifetime of emotional and financial hardships, she ends up pregnant again. So goes the story.

  The natural progression of blind love and lust eventually leads to resentment for both partners. Thus begins the battle of the sexes to see who can emotionally and physically destroy the other person first. These relationship tragedies can be avoided or minimized through effective communication and safe sex; more importantly, both individuals must enter the relationship knowing their needs.

  Unconditionally single does not mean you don’t desire marriage. I’m encouraging you to know yourself, know what you need and desire before getting married or becoming involved with someone. The majority of people do not know what wedding vows they are committing to on the day they marry. Please, if
you’re getting married, I strongly advise you to write your own vows. Do not stand at the altar reciting commitments you’ve never read.

  Unless you are 100 percent sure you want to be a parent, do not get pregnant. Share what’s important to you with your potential mate. I urge all men and women to read The Honey Diaries series and Single Husbands before getting married.

  On my way from the 2008 Antigua & Barbuda Literary Festival, I boarded the plane in Antigua to Miami, settled in my window seat. A newly married couple sat next to me, the wife to my immediate right, her husband next to her. The seemingly happy, giddy, constantly kissing couple couldn’t keep their hands off each other. He lived in Canada. They were headed to Los Angeles to pack her belongings, then drive to their new residence in Canada. Halfway through the flight the husband pulls out two sandwiches, looks at his wife, and asks, “Do you like rye? I wasn’t sure. Or would you prefer the other sandwich?”

  My eyebrows raised as I continued reading—Eric Jerome Dickey’s Sleeping with Strangers—thinking, They barely know one another. Obviously he liked rye, he’d purchased the sandwiches, and he didn’t ask what she wanted. How well should a couple know one another before marrying? Too many marriages end in divorce because people not only sleep with strangers, they marry strangers. Oh well. That couple are probably of the majority who wander in and out of love, life, and relationships wondering why they keep choosing the wrong mates.

  I hear some of you asking, “What are Mary B. Morrison’s needs, since she has all the answers?”

  Honestly, I don’t have all the answers but I am a thinking woman and I do know my passions, talents, what excites me, and I understand my needs. Like you, as I continue to grow emotionally, my needs change. My basic needs are always clear. I’ll share what’s important to me in the Purpose of Being Unconditionally Single Part II at the end of this novel.

  How can we avoid marrying virtual strangers? We can start by talking to them more often. Ladies, one of the things I do often because I seldom cook is dine at nice restaurants. If I’m eating alone, I never request a table. I sit at the bar…strategically next to a great-looking man whenever possible. I’ll also talk to whoever’s seated next to me. I’ve met lots of wonderful women and couples of all races that way. And I frequently engage the bartender in conversation. Genuine compliments are perfect icebreakers. My topics are improvised, but if you’re shy, develop a few questions you’re comfortable asking. Here are a few tips:

  I smile and introduce myself.

  I ask the bartender and the man next to me, “Can you recommend a succulent appetizer?” I ask in such a way to determine if his attention is on the menu or me. I stay focused on the menu.

  I offer to share my appetizer. I love oysters and calamari.

  I find out if he’s local or visiting. If he’s local, I ask, “Where was the last place you vacationed?” If he’s visiting, “So where do you live?” If I haven’t been to his city/state/country, I ask him questions about his town.

  Eventually I engage him in relationship talk. “I’m trying to understand men more. What’s most important to you and why?”

  If he’s interested on a personal level, he’ll express his likes. A clear sign that a man is not interested is when he mentions his girlfriend, wife, kids, or family first. That’s the perfect time to pick his brain about relationships because he’s already in one. Once I tell a man I write erotica, married or not he tells me his deepest secrets and fantasies. Then he wants to know more about me. The most common questions I get are: Do you write from experience? Have you been with a woman? Have you had a ménage à trois? Seriously, this happens to me all the time.

  Men love to talk openly about relationships, but not with their mates because they have to censor their thoughts. Men love to feel they are educating us. I believe that in reality women are smarter; however conversations work best when ladies are friendly but allow men to take the lead. Women have to follow through with intelligent, intriguing responses. You can ask, “Are you saying that you prefer a woman who cooks or are you saying you have to have a woman who cooks? What if she loves cooking but the food sucks?” Make him laugh.

  I’m not reserving or preserving myself or praying for God to send me Mr. Right. Waiting for one good man to call all mine is a waste of my time. I enjoy each man to the extent that I’m interested in him.

  To get a glimpse into my outlook on life, read my favorite book in the Bible, Ecclesiastes. After reading the book of Ecclesiastes, you will better understand my definition of Unconditionally Single and the significance of your consciously determining what is meaningful to you and why.

  PROLOGUE

  Honey

  Sometimes a woman had to kill herself to survive. My mother hated me. My father disowned me. Stepfather molested me. Johns used me. My ex-husbands abused me. I had scars on my heart. Blood on my thirty-year-old hands. Despite my hardships, I held my head high. I’d learned that bad things happened to good people. My life was bad. My heart was good.

  I hadn’t overcome countless trials and tribulations to exhale my last breath without dignity. The one man who truly loved me for me, I’d pushed away. If I died, right here, right now, I’d regret not telling Grant, “Baby, I love you. Forgive me.” Determined to get my man back, stand at the altar, repeat after the minister, “I, Honey Thomas, take you, Grant Hill, to be my lawfully wedded husband…” and give birth to our children, I had to escape.

  As I stared down the barrel of his .22-caliber pistol, my ex-man Benito pointed at the one place I was sure he would like to blast all of his bullets—my mouth. Eradicate his troubles, his jealousy, his insecurities, his love, his hate, his pain by shutting my—scintillating, candid, sharp, sarcastic, independent—ass up for good.

  I stared into Benito’s eyes. Women living in fear died at the hands of heartless men who were never worthy of their love. Good pussy made men do strange things. Isolate women. Stalk women. Kill women. Benito didn’t want me; his ego didn’t want another man to have me.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked Benito, pointing my gun at him. “Shoot me or let me go.”

  Too many women who were emotionally buried alive suffered in silence. Compromising their children, bartering their bodies, sacrificing their souls, surrendering their sanity in exchange for having a man, in many cases a man who didn’t love, appreciate, respect, or deserve them.

  Benito pleaded, “Lace, please don’t make me do this. Put the gun down.”

  No way in hell was I going to die, not like this. Held hostage in a parking lot, a deserted guard shack in the distance. Abandoned brick buildings with broken windows created an eerie backdrop. The wind howled like a pack of hungry wolves preparing to feast on me. If my kidnappers killed me, then tossed my body inside one of those buildings, who’d think to search there for my remains?

  I panic. They panic. Didn’t want to die from freaking them out.

  Valentino said to me, “I never imagined you’d cross me. Bitch, I am the one who got you off your back and you fucking steal my money.” Then he spoke into his cell phone. “Onyx, if you want to see Lace alive, the ransom is non-negotiable—fifty million dollars.”

  The muscle in my calf cramped—horrible timing for the onset of a charley horse. I flexed my toes, inched toward the edge of the SUV. There was enough space between the two men for me to get out of the trunk. Benito stood to my left, Valentino to my right.

  The chain-link metal fence surrounding the lot stood ten feet high. If I got a good running start, I could climb the fence, but the rusted barbed wire at the top made me change my mind. A bent STOP sign partially blocked the lot’s exit, its pole rested horizontal to the ground. I could hurdle it praying my heels didn’t get caught on the hem of my pants. Didn’t want to be the chick in the scary movie who’d escape, run, trip, fall, and be killed.

  Flexing my toes far back as I could, I kept quiet while Valentino barked out his demands to Onyx. Onyx had become my number-one escort after my favorite escort, Sunny, was
killed. The one year I worked as Valentino’s madam was my worst year in the business. Sunny Day was a gorgeous twenty-year-old girl who should’ve never started prostituting. Her parents loved her. Her twin sister adored her. The day I’d planned to send Sunny home to her family, Valentino refused to let her go. He’d shot Sunny in the head. A part of my spirit died that day. The six hundred thousand dollars Valentino paid me for those twelve months wasn’t worth Sunny dying.

  I tried calming myself with there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. The words sounded great but with a gun a few feet from my face, I felt only one emotion: fear. Terror. They didn’t know that was my truth. My reality was fear. Perspiration slicked my palms, making it difficult to hold my gun. Toes curled back, I alternated wiping my hands on my pants.

  Valentino frowned, told Benito, “Nigga, don’t watch me. Keep your eyes on that bitch.” He bit his bottom lip, then said, “Onyx, you used to work for me. I know how you think. Don’t fucking insult my intelligence. Make it happen today or else I’m coming after you.”