Nervous: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zane is the New York Times bestselling author of Afterburn, The Heat Seekers, Dear G-Spot, Gettin’ Buck Wild, The Hot Box, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Nervous, Skyscraper, Love is Never Painless, Shame on It All, and The Sisters of APF; the ebook short stories “I’ll be Home for Christmas” and “Everything Fades Away”; and editor for the Flava anthology series, including Z-Rated and Busy Bodies. Her bestselling novel Addicted is a major motion picture and she is the publisher of Strebor Books, an imprint of Atria Books/Simon & Schuster.

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Nervous

prologue

Zoe had seen the young woman a few times before. She always sat in the back of the meeting room, seemingly lurking, and she never said a word to anyone. She just sat there with this deadpan expression on her face and listened to everyone else discuss their addictions.

Brian, a white male in his late fifties, was finishing up his testimonial. “I recognize this as an illness now. I used to think I just got a little carried away with sex at moments. Then it became an obsession. There were times when I couldn’t even bring myself to fall asleep without feeling the inside of a woman first. When my wife of many years refused to satisfy my needs, I would resort to paying for sex. I would find myself cruising the avenue to pick up whores. Women that had no issues about giving blow jobs for less than the cost of a tank of low-end gasoline. I realized some of them had to carry diseases. How could they not? Still, I was so obsessed with sex that I risked it anyway.”

Brian’s face became distorted as the first tear fell from his left cheek. One of the moderators, Grace, stood up and walked over to the podium to pat him on the back. While Brian was regaining his composure, Zoe seized the opportunity to survey the young woman’s face again. Still nothing. No sign of emotion whatsoever. If it were not for the light fabric of her rayon shirt moving slightly, Zoe would have doubted that she was even breathing.

Brian pulled himself together and continued. “Now I have nothing. Alice left me. My kids are grown, living their own lives, and they hate me too much to even look at me. I spend every single holiday alone. The pain is unbearable. If only I could turn back the hands of time and start over. If only I could make things better.”

The sexual addiction meeting had turned highly emotional yet again. Several of the people broke down in tears. Not so much for Brian, but for the pain and anguish they themselves had endured in their lives of turmoil. Zoe rarely cried at the meetings anymore. Her counseling sessions with Dr. Marcella Spencer, a month at a center in Florida run by a friend of the doctor’s, and a loving and supportive husband had helped her survive her ordeal. Ironically, Zoe had probably been through more drama than anyone else in the room. Her sexual addition had led to three simultaneous affairs with two of her lovers ending up dead at the hands of a third.

Zoe emerged from her seat and approached Brian. She embraced him and whispered in his ear, “It’s going to be all right, Brian. We’re all in this together.”

Zoe glanced at the back of the room. The young woman had exited as quietly as she had entered. Damn, she always does that! Zoe thought.

Nervous

1

jonquinette

I entered my third floor apartment fighting back tears. It was hot. Extremely hot. I’d forgotten to turn on the air before I’d left that morning.

I tossed my keys onto the coffee table and kicked off my low-heel black pumps. “You knew they were calling for a heat wave today,” I said aloud, recalling the morning weather report that I’d neglected. “Why didn’t you turn on some air?”

The sole of one of my stockings snagged on a nail in the parquet flooring as I stumbled into my hallway. I adjusted the thermostat to seventy and sighed, praying it wouldn’t take long to drop down from the current temperature of eighty-six degrees.

I continued down the hall into my bedroom and collapsed on my king-sized bed. I’d purchased it despite the fact that one person didn’t need such a monstrosity to sleep alone. And sleep alone I did. Always.

The red light on my answering machine was blinking. Who could possibly have called? On a Saturday, no less. Normally it would be Momma, but she was out of the country for two weeks. She’d whisked off to Paris to fulfill a lifelong dream. More like fantasy. Momma had a way of fantasizing like no other. One day I hoped she would find whatever it was she was truly searching for. I doubted she would’ve called more than once at those rates and she’d called three days earlier to inform me that she and her latest romantic conquest had arrived safely.

I rewound the tape and hit play.

“Jon, what’s up girl? It’s me!” a bubbly, female voice squealed out at me to the point where I felt compelled to adjust the volume.

Me who? I wondered.

“In case you don’t know who this is, it’s me, Darnetta.”

I sat up on the bed. I should’ve known it was Darnetta. I heard that overanxious voice daily at work. Why was Darnetta calling me at home on a Saturday? We were coworkers but rarely spoke more than two words to each other.

“Jon, I was wondering if you want to hang out tonight. I know we don’t usually flow like that, but I have two tickets to this live concert at Club Snatch and everyone else I know has plans already.” There was a slight pause. “That’s not to say that you’re my last choice. I was going to ask you about going out sometime soon anyway and I saw this as the perfect opportunity. You always seem so shy at work. Anyway, give me a call if you can make it. My number is—”

I didn’t even bother to listen to the phone number and hit the erase button. Me in a club? No way. That meant a lot of people. That meant a lot of men. No way!

• • •

I baked some chicken breasts that I had marinated in Hawaiian flavoring all day. I cut up a few russet potatoes and boiled them along with a pouch of broccoli. While I was waiting for my meal to get done, I pulled some paperwork out of my briefcase and looked over the weekly shipping records for the office supply warehouse where I was head accountant.

The numbers didn’t make sense. They were way under target for the week, something that normally only happened around holidays. After all, who orders office supplies for Christmas presents? Most people take vacation the week between Christmas and New Year’s anyway. But we were in the middle of August, when there were no holidays.

I’d broken out my calculator and was crunching numbers when my phone rang. I debated about answering for the first three rings. What if Momma was calling back? Maybe something had gone wrong in Paris. I picked it up on the fifth ring, one ring before my answering machine normally kicked in.

“Hello.”

“Jon, is that you?”

I didn’t utter a word.

“Jon, you there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” I replied hesitantly.

“It’s me, Darnetta!”

“I kind of figured that.”

“I left you a message earlier. Did you get it?”

“Uh . . .yes, I did. Sorry I didn’t call you back but I couldn’t quite make out the number.”

“Cool. It’s no problem. Sometimes I talk too loud. I’m working on all that though. So, what’s up? You trying to hang out tonight or what? Lil’ Z is performing. The show is going to be all that and them some. You feel me?”

“Lil’ Z?”

“Yeah, Lil’ Z, the rapper. You’ve never heard of...