Seven Month Drought: New Year Bae-Solutions

  Seven Month Drought

  New Year Bae-Solutions

  Sherelle Green

  Copyright © 2020 Sherelle Green

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, incidents and characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to business establishments and events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or copied without written permission of the author Sherelle Green.

  Editor: There For You Editing

  Cover Design: Sherelle Green

  Manufactured and Printed in the United States of America

  Seven Month Drought

  I lost the bet.

  I thought my divorce would be the toughest thing I’d experience in years, but going without sex for seven months is hard. Literally. And now, my best friend is helping me find the perfect woman to end my drought. Problem is, none of the women are doing it for me. None of the women are her.

  NEW YEAR BAE-SOLUTIONS:

  New Year. New You. New Bae?

  Meet eight grown and sexy Book Baes to help you celebrate the New Year!

  Eight Naughty Nights by Nicole Falls

  Seven Month Drought by Sherelle Green

  Six More Minutes by A.C. Arthur

  Five Midnight Moments by Sheryl Lister

  Four Page Letter by Angela Seals

  Three Wrong Dates by Kelsey Green

  Two Hot Kisses by Yahrah St. John

  One More Drink by Elle Wright

  To the New Year Bae-Solutions authors… Nicole Falls, A.C. Arthur, Sheryl Lister, Angela Seals, Kelsey Green, & Yahrah St. John, thank you for the holiday fun and sisterhood!

  To Elle Wright, my partner in crime when it comes to having way too many book ideas. You match my kind of over-the-top crazy and I’m so grateful to you for that! Haha!

  Dear Reader

  I had so much fun writing this short story! Not only did some scenes make me laugh out loud, but through Cheyanne and Issac, I was able to visit Meeka & Tone from Single AF.

  If you follow me in my group (Sherelle Green’s Coffee Corner), you already know I love me some Meeka! This was the perfect story to end my year and I hope it brings a smile to your face as you read Cheyanne and Issac’s journey.

  Much Love!

  ~Sherelle~

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Would Love To Hear From You!

  Recommended Reading

  Single AF

  Excerpt: Single AF

  About the Author

  Also by Sherelle Green

  1

  “Never trust a big ass and a smile.”

  ~Anthony “Tone” Michaels~

  ISSAC

  “It’s the bottom of the ninth. All bases are loaded. Three runs. Two outs. One more strike and we lose the game. It’s all on you, Issac. You can’t fuck this up. You can’t let ’em win.”

  I glanced down at my dick to see if the pep talk was doing its job, but sadly, it wasn’t doing shit. It had been over two-hundred days, five-thousand hours, three-hundred thousand, six-hundred minutes, and too many damn seconds to count since I had lost a bet to abstain from sex. I’d regretted that bet every day since. Especially since I was a beast at poker.

  Yet, apparently, I wasn’t better than Cheyanne Andrews. No matter how she tried to spin it, she’d fucked me over six ways to Sunday. Or in my case, seven months to New Year’s.

  Basically, best friend or not, Cheyanne Andrews wasn’t shit. The only silver lining to agreeing to be celibate until my birthday was that January 1st was in seven days and I was turning thirty-eight. I’d never been so happy to be a New Year’s baby in my life.

  “You good in there?”

  “Why?” I yelled back to Cheyanne. “Not only did I basically sign up for blue balls for the past seven months, but now I can’t be in the bathroom without you thinking I’m rubbing one out or something?”

  She snickered. “Bruh, you’ve been in there for thirty minutes. Unless you’re taking a long ass shit, what else am I supposed to think you’re doing?”

  Damn! I looked at myself in the mirror and shook my head. I’ve been giving myself a pep talk for a half hour? That was a new record. Couldn’t even call it a pep talk at that point. It was more like an intimate conversation.

  “I’ll be right out,” I yelled.

  Tonight, I was hosting a poker game at my house and Cheyanne had come over early to help. As much as I appreciated it since we were a good team when it came to planning things, I could have used a good hour before she showed up.

  “It’s about time,” she called from my kitchen as soon as I stepped out into the hallway. “I thought I was gonna have to tell the others to come over ASAP and help me pry you out of there.”

  “Excuse me for taking my time in my own damn house. It’s not like you didn’t use your key to get in.”

  “I didn’t want to use the key at all,” she shouted. “Your neighbors already think I live here. Didn’t need to give them something else to talk about.”

  She wasn’t lyin’. I lived in Chicago’s South Loop and Cheyanne lived in a western suburb. Since she worked five minutes down the street from me, I’d given her a key when I moved back to Chicago so she wouldn’t have to always sit in traffic.

  It made sense at the time because we were always together. However, lately having her pop up so much wasn’t ideal for me. If I told her that, then I’d have to explain why I couldn’t have her around as much. If I explained why, then I’d have to be prepared to face the consequences.

  Unfortunately for me, the why in my reasoning was getting harder to ignore every time we were together.

  “There you are,” she said, smiling at me like I was her most favorite person in the world. Her burgundy braids were pulled into a high ponytail, and she was wearing those tight jeans I liked and a hoodie from our HBCU alma mater. Cheyanne wasn’t much for makeup, but she always wore a different shade of lipstick. Today’s color matched her hair, and damned if it wasn’t giving me all kinds of ideas.

  We met in a writing program in grad school and our attraction was instant. I heard about her even before we met since so many dudes were trying to holla at her. Cheyanne had been known for turning guys down, but I figured since we got along so well in that program, I would shoot my shot. When I asked her out at a party we were both attending and she agreed, I almost danced on the spot in front of the guys she turned down that same night.

  To this day, our date back then went down in the books as one of my best ever. We made plans to meetup again, but the next day, we found out the program we were a part of chose us to interview for an assistant editorial position at a local news station. Before the interview, we had to complete a series of writing tasks to show that we could handle the position.

  We fell into a friendly competition, agreeing that we both were great for the position. We knocked out the writing tasks together, and every time we completed an assignment, I would bring up dating again, but Cheyanne would suggest we focus on work.

  Our friendship grew stronger each month, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I had been securely put in the friend zone with no idea how I’d gotten there. True, we agreed to help each other out, but I was under the impression that once one of us got that position, we would go back to dating.

  Cheyanne ended up winning that position, and when I asked her out for real for real, sh
e slapped me with that hard, “Nah.” It had been all love, though, and that position had been perfect for her. For me, it meant my teaching degree wouldn’t go to waste.

  After grad school, she worked at that news station while I began teaching History and English. We stayed friends, and eventually, Cheyanne started dating some popular news reporter that she got engaged to before they broke it off, and I got married.

  However, when her relationship ended, she moved to Chicago when she got a job with Social Experiment Network. I lived in Chicago when I was younger, so when a teaching job opened up a little over a year ago, it had seemed like the perfect opportunity after my divorce.

  “Are you just gonna stare at me all day or help prepare for your party?” she asked, putting the final touches on her epic snack charcuterie board.

  I cleared my throat. “My bad. You look nice tonight.”

  “Thanks! Figured I’d bust out the old hoodie tonight. You look good, too. Great minds think alike.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She motioned to my pants. “You’re wearing the sweatpants that match my hoodie.”

  I glanced down, having forgotten I was also wearing our alma matter. “Didn’t even pay attention to what I put on. Thanks for coming though.”

  “You know I got you.” She smirked, and even that sent my thoughts right back to the gutter.

  New Year’s can’t come soon enough.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Was just thinking about the upcoming party.”

  Cheyanne raised an eyebrow. “You mean the New Year’s Eve and surprise birthday party that I’m planning for you that you weren’t supposed to know about, but you were snooping?”

  “You left the invitation up on your laptop,” I reminded. “What was I supposed to do? Pretend I didn’t see it?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what people do if they find out about a surprise, especially for their birthday.”

  “Well excuse me for being nosy when I see my own address on an evite.”

  She lifted her shoulders. “You have the biggest space, and you joked about hosting New Year’s Eve anyway.”

  “But then you talked me out of it,” I reminded. “You said our friends would all rather be at a bar or something.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because I wanted you to think we were going out. Like I said, you weren’t supposed to find out about your party. This is why I don’t do nice shit for your ass.”

  “Maybe next time you need to do a better job at hiding the important stuff. You already know I’ve been a little tense lately.”

  Her laugh echoed throughout the kitchen. “Oh, I see. You’re so horny, you can’t even think straight anymore.”

  “As long as you get it.” I grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and took a large swig.

  “I bet you counting down the days, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Well, Mr. Maybe, who is the lucky lady to end your seven-month drought?”

  “I have no clue.” And that was the truth.

  “What about your rotation?” she asked. “Weren’t you messin’ with Ashley, who you met at the gym, and Erica, who owns that ice cream shop?”

  “I don’t have a rotation. I went on a few dates with Ashley for one month. Then I went on some dates with Erica for a month. I haven’t talked to either of them since I told them I was taking a break from dating anyway.”

  Cheyanne placed her hand on her hip. “Who do you think you playin’? Don’t act like you don’t know why I bet you to be celibate. You say you dated them so casually, but after your divorce, you jumped into dating too many different women.”

  I sat on the stool close to where she was standing. “Uh, uh, uh. Let’s be clear, I never dated the women at the same time.”

  “You right,” she deadpanned. “You just dated them each for only a month.”

  “I never put a time stamp on dating them.”

  “Yes you did,” she called me out. “Issac, you dated that one woman the same month your divorce was final.”

  I waved it off. “That was just about sex.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. The next month, you were onto another woman. Three weeks after that, a different lady. Four weeks after that, the single mom who had a son older than you.”

  Raising my hands in the air, I reminded her that, “Her son owned that movie theater that we both loved going to. You tellin’ me you didn’t like seeing all those movies for free? And didn’t her son ask you out on a date multiple times? You always turned him down.”

  “Eww, eww, ewwwww.” Cheyanne bounced around the kitchen like a bee was under her shirt. “Do you hear yourself? There was no way I was going on a date with a man who was literally pushed out of the vagina of the woman my best friend was fucking. Hell. No.”

  “Well, when you put it like that …” Yeah, that shit would have been weird. “My point is, you already know how hard my divorce was on me. I just wanted to feel free.”

  “And do all the shit you didn’t do in your twenties and most of your thirties,” she added. “I get it. Trust me, I hated how Porsha did you so wrong. You deserved better than that.”

  “Even though she cheated on me with half her damn office, I never stepped out on her.”

  Cheyanne nodded. “I know you didn’t. But, Issac, dating seven different women in seven months was a bit much, don’t you think?”

  “Damn. Was it really seven? I had only officially been divorced seven months when I lost this bet.”

  “I know!” she exclaimed. “What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you all this time? The amount of sex that you had in that short amount of time worried me.”

  I dragged my hand down my face. “I hadn’t even looked at it like that. Why are you just now telling me you challenged me not to have sex for seven months to represent the seven women I messed around with after my divorce?”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t put it together yourself.” Her eyes softened. “But now that your time is almost up, I guess you should know that I’m proud of you. I know you hate to lose, and you always hold up your end of a bet, but I think this was good for you.”

  “It was,” I agreed. “It sucked, but hell, it’s not like I didn’t go longer in my marriage without having sex. Those last two years, Porsha and I didn’t have sex once. I mean, she was clearly fucking everybody. But I was in a bad place.”

  Cheyanne gently rubbed my arm. “And now you aren’t. She’s married to that other dude, and you got to press the restart button.”

  “Yep. Restart.” When she touched me like she was doing now, it was hard to concentrate sometimes. She’s so fucking beautiful. How I even managed to be around her all the time and not just stare at her in admiration was beyond me.

  Her thumb began twirling in circles on my arm, causing my dick to jump. In my defense, it didn’t take much for him lately, but this was Cheyanne’s touch. She always did it for him.

  Apparently, I wasn’t doing a good job at not staring, because she took a step back and dropped her hand. “Oh, and don’t forget about tomorrow.”

  I frowned. “What’s tomorrow?”

  “The fundraiser at Brewed Awakening Bakery and Café to raise money to help some families in need for the new year. Remember, Grey is planning it?”

  “Oh. Right. I didn’t forget.” I hopped down from the counter. “How is your relationship with good ol’ Grey anyway? Is Chicago’s own Santa Claus still spreading Christmas cheer even though Christmas ended yesterday?”

  “Don’t do that,” Cheyanne warned. “You would get along with Grey if you gave him a chance.”

  When I moved back, Cheyanne had been dating some guy she worked with, but that ended when he left the company. Then, the Social Experiment Network had her interviewing volunteers around Chicagoland for a piece they were doing, and lo and behold, she meets Grey and the two hit it off.

  When Cheyanne wasn’t with me and our other friends, she w
as with Grey volunteering. A couple months ago, they officially started dating.

  I hated it.

  “I’m off work for the holidays, so of course I’ll be there,” I said through gritted teeth. Honestly, I loved volunteering and helping people. It was something I encouraged my students to do and I’d always enjoyed doing myself even when I was married. My ex-wife was the biggest Grinch I knew though. Not once did she help me serve food to the homeless on Christmas Day, and I still can’t get over how she threw a fit when I donated some items in the house we’d never used before.

  Yet, every time good guy Grey occupied my best friend’s time, I found myself going to the gym to blow off steam. I even turned my second bedroom in my condo into a home gym.

  Hell, my abs even loved Grey because I had gotten pretty cut in the time they had been spending together. I was about to remind her that she never answered my question about how their relationship was going when my door opened, reminding me that I really needed to make sure that thing stayed locked. Cheyanne was always forgetting to lock my door, claiming that my condo was so safe, it didn’t matter.

  “Which one of you bitches is ready to eat my pixie dust?”

  Cheyanne and I looked at each other, before both saying, “Hey, Meeka.”

  “Hey, friends!”

  Meeka and her boyfriend, Tone, worked with Cheyanne at the network. I’d actually met Tone back in elementary school before my family moved away to Georgia. When I moved back to Chicago, I was surprised to learn that he was dating Cheyanne’s friend, Meeka. Luckily for me, already having friends here made the transition easy.