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  Outstanding Praise for the Novels of J. J. Murray!

  I’M YOUR GIRL

  “Murray writes a gentle romance about cultural differences and deep commonalities in a unique tale about white / black relationships.” —Booklist

  “Humor and heartbreak are side by side ... Murray movingly shows emotions ... a wonderful book!”—Romantic Times

  ORIGINAL LOVE

  “Touching, soul-searching ... not only entertaining, but enlightening as well.”—RAWSistaz

  SOMETHING REAL

  “Something Real is about a woman finding herself and finding her voice in a community too quick to judge. Renee and Jay was a promising debut. Something Real, which is a more mature and richer work, is even better.”—The Roanoke Times

  “Delightful! Sexy! Touching! Something Real is like a burst of sunshine. This release is definitely something special and something real! This is a story that readers must experience for themselves.”

  —Romance in Color

  RENEE AND JAY

  “A charming, funny romance and a promising debut... . This Romeo and Juliet story is sweet and romantic with lively characters.” —The Roanoke Times

  “An update of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with a twist.”

  —Essence

  “Renee and Jay is the interracial Romeo and Juliet for the new millennium.. . . Renee and Jay is a great read, and I really could not stop reading it until I got to the last page.”

  —Shonell Bacon, editor of The Nubian Chronicles

  “J. J. Murray has a terrific sense of humor! The ability of the author to write a fast-paced story with funny scenes, outspoken social commentary, and quite a few twists will cause Renee and Jay to be one of this year’s most popular reads.”

  —Cydney Rax, Book-Remarks

  Books by J. J. Murray

  RENEE AND JAY

  SOMETHING REAL

  ORIGINAL LOVE

  I’M YOUR GIRL

  CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE

  TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

  THE REAL THING

  SHE’S THE ONE

  I’LL BE YOUR EVERYTHING

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  I’ll Be Your Everything

  J. J. Murray

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Outstanding Praise for the Novels of J. J. Murray!

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Copyright Page

  For Amy

  Chapter 1

  An elderly white woman with a fancy camera around her neck waits alone at Tillary and Jay in downtown Brooklyn. I wish I had a digital zoom camera like that. At first, I think she’s a lost bird feeder from one of the nearby parks because she wears a brown wool jacket, matching frumpy hat, and brown corduroys. But she’s out here at 7:30 a.m. in this gross, misty, dirty, frigid weather that screams, “Brooklyn is too cold for people to function in November.”

  Tourists are getting as hardy as the trees in Whitman Park.

  She steps in front of me and asks, “Will this bus take me to Times Square?”

  I want to tell her that any bus will take you anywhere eventually, but she seems so needy. I squint through my misted glasses at the oversized blue sign. B51. I rode that bus once and hated it. A bus is no way to see the world unless you have a window seat and the person next to you isn’t big-boned. I didn’t have a window seat that day, decided to save my money and the hassle of feeling like a sardine, and haven’t ridden a bus since.

  “It might take you to Times Square eventually,” I say to the tourist, wiping mist from my lenses and returning my glasses to my face. “But don’t take my word for it. I don’t ride the bus enough to know.”

  “You ride the subway instead?” she asks.

  Also once. Not a good time. Though I’m five feet tall, slim, and can squeeze into just about any tight space, that trip on the subway gave me major claustrophobia. The fumes, men in suits oozing thick, cloying cologne, little bruises on my booty from slamming into the poles as more people crowded my little body, the intermittent darkness—not my idea of a good time. I kind of miss the booty bumps caused by some random briefcases held by some of the men supposedly reading the Times. I never knew briefcases could get so fresh.

  “No, ma’am,” I tell the tourist. “I walk.”

  She cocks her head to the side. Maybe she’s hard of hearing. Either that or she has to move her head occasionally to focus a wandering eye. “You walk?”

  “It’s only a few miles.”

  To MultiCorp, America’s number-one multicultural ad agency fifteen years running, and that’s why I’m walking. I can afford to walk. I’ve been an administrative assistant at MultiCorp for five years. I know. Five years is a long time to be kissing anyone’s booty. I’ve had a couple of bumps in pay, and I even earned a bonus last year, an IKEA gift card that I redeemed for a storage combination with three bright pink buckets that hold whatever comes out of my pockets: keys, receipts, Post-its, and change. But mostly, I survive the daily grind. Walking keeps me in my $1,500-a-month apartment that has a “window office” (a cherry desk and my laptop), a narrow kitchen with a skinny oak table and two skinnier oak chairs, and a view of the Statue of Liberty if I put my face flush to the window and squint just right after the sun goes down.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” she says, stepping back.

  “Anytime.” I turn to leave then remember my Virginia-born manners. “Um, enjoy your visit to Brooklyn.”

  The woman leaps in front of me. “I’m in Brooklyn? I thought this was Manhattan.” She points in a westerly direction. “Isn’t that Central Park over there?”

  Manhattan was my favorite Woody Allen movie. I can afford to rent that. I work in lower Manhattan, and I even like eating Manhattan clam chowder, but I could never afford to live in Manhattan or anywhere near the big ad agencies on Madison Avenue like Young & Rubicam, Doyle Dane Bernbach, and Harrison Hersey and Boulder.

  “No, ma’am. That’s Whitman Park. This is, um ...”

  How do I make her feel better without confusing her and ruining her vacation? Wait. She’s touring Brooklyn, which she has mistaken for Manhattan, in November. What kind of a vacation is that? At any rate, she seems lost enough as it is. Nothing I say is going to make her feel any better.

  “This is Brooklyn Heights,” I say. Sort of, but not really. It’s complicated. You have to live here. “Tell the bus driver you want to go to Times Square, and he’ll hook you up.” Again, eventually. I don’t tell her that she’ll probably have to switch buses during the craziest time of the morning in Manhattan.

  “I was s
o sure that was Central Park.” She still points over toward Whitman Park. “It looked just like it does in the movies. I got some wonderful pictures that look just like they came from that Law & Order show. Is Manhattan far from here?”

  There’s a loaded question. I want to tell her that it takes forever to get to Manhattan and stick around. “It’s only a few miles,” I say. It’s only a few miles as the crow flies, but there are few straight lines around here.

  I check out her shoes. Comfortable black Brooks walkers. I love her corduroys. Her whole outfit is a statement. What that statement is, exactly, I don’t know.

  “We could walk together,” I tell her. “It will only take half an hour or so, and it may even be faster than taking the bus.”

  She squints.

  Ah.

  The lack of trust inherent in out-of-town people whenever someone from Brooklyn stops to give them assistance. I was the same way when I first arrived and spoke good, southern English to people who sometimes spoke English. I now speak Brooklyn-ese with a slight southern twang. I squinted a lot back then, too.

  Hmm.

  The Good Samaritan in the Bible just went on and did his thing. I should just grab her arm and get her some exercise. But I had home training, and I don’t twist anybody’s arm—not even my own.

  “I work on William Street in lower Manhattan.” Seventeen floors up. “A few blocks from where they’re building the Freedom Tower.”

  No bells. She blinks.

  “Um, near where the World Trade Center used to be.”

  A bell. She nods.

  “William Street is about ...” Again, how do I make her feel better for mistaking Brooklyn for Manhattan? Can it be done? This situation is why people write online blogs. “It’s about a cab ride from Times Square.”

  “That close?” she says.

  Wow. And I thought I was naïve and spatially challenged. “Yes. That close.”

  “Well, I think I’ll wait for this bus anyway. Thank you for your help.” She steps back.

  I continue walking.

  At least she said thank you. So many people don’t. Especially ignorant people, but ignorance is bliss, and she sure seemed quite happy to wait in her version of Manhattan on a rainy Friday morning in Brooklyn.

  What people don’t know about the world or where they’re going keeps them happy.

  Bliss is being lost in America.

  I doubt anyone will ever quote me on that one.

  Chapter 2

  All this brings me to my job again. Why do I think so much about my job? Oh yeah. I have to pay $1,500 a month for a four-hundred-square-foot “space” in downtown Brooklyn in a skinny silver rectangle made of glass, metal, and concrete that rises fifty stories into the gloom. On a clear day, you can even see the ocean from the Beach, an outdoor space on the fifty-first floor. The Brooklyner—they brainstormed about half a second when they named the place—is kind of like a shiny graduation pen stuck into a big brown and black asphalt pencil holder. I still have my silver graduation pen from high school. It worked for about two years before the ink ran out seven years ago. Crazy, but I have a graduation pen on my desk at MultiCorp that reminds me that I’m twenty-seven. It does look good on my desk, though. It reminds me to stand tall and shine brightly every day.

  Even if I’m out of ink.

  All the leaves have given up and jumped to their collective deaths over at Whitman Park. I wish it wasn’t raining. Those piles of leaves would be fun to kick around with old Walt Whitman himself. But I’m walking late because I helped Miss “Isn’t This Manhattan?” take the bus she was going to take anyway before I tried to help her.

  Some people just need full confirmation of their foolishness.

  That quote is going up on my fridge.

  What was I thinking about before? Oh yeah. Ignorance being bliss. What people don’t know about the products they buy won’t hurt them—until the recalls and the lawsuits, I suppose. That happens way too much these days. The only things recalled when I was a kid were cars and cribs, and now car companies are becoming extinct and cribs are houses and penthouses of the rich and infamous. I’m sure there’s something ironic about that. “Cribs” cost more than cars these days—at least on MTV.

  What a conflicted job I have. I help advertise products that people don’t really need or want—at first. “We create the need and the want” is MultiCorp’s grandiose and overexaggerated slogan. If we were doing ad campaigns for milk, flour, eggs, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion, Blended Beauty Curly Frizz Pudding for my BB3 spiral curls, hiking boots, and used paperback books, I could see the point of advertising, but ... no. Most of the products MultiCorp represents aren’t necessary for anyone. No one really needs the products we promote, and in a way, all advertising does is confirm the American public’s foolishness.

  Maybe I’ll put that quote up at work. I doubt anyone will notice.

  All this foolishness does give me a job, though, and for that I’m thankful to almighty God, especially in this economy. Working at MultiCorp is like stepping onto the stage of a wonderfully absurd comedy most days. No. It’s an absurd comedy every day because the ad account executives take everything so seriously. “We have to sell this overpriced, shoddily built, ozone-killing, ice cap-melting, and lawsuit-begging whatever-it-is if it’s the last thing we do!”

  I trip a lot at work. It seems we do “the last thing” daily while promoting the “next big thing” that, again, no one really needs.

  I’m finally hiking up to the somewhat level part of the Brooklyn Bridge, about two miles to go. Whenever it snows, I try not to follow in the footsteps of others. A few years ago, sixteen inches of snow fell, and I was the first person on the bridge. I wonder if anyone followed in my footsteps. I wouldn’t recommend it because I have small feet. During that snowstorm, the wind blew so much that I experienced complete whiteout for the first time in my life. It was as if I were floating in a sea of cotton.

  It was kind of peaceful, actually.

  Man, I am running a few minutes behind. I better start power walking.

  Today the air smells like a cross between cat litter and cheap wine with a hint of seagull poo and a trace of old pennies. How many times has this bridge been bought and sold? I think this just about every time I walk across, and I still don’t have an answer. Foot traffic is light at 8 a.m. today. It must be the rain. Thank God for Gore-Tex and my blue North Face waterproof jacket. I once used umbrellas on rainy and snowy days until I lost or forgot about five of those umbrellas at work when cloudy, wet mornings turned into clear, starry evenings. I wonder where lost umbrellas go. Not inside somewhere, obviously. I hope they’re not out wandering aimlessly in the street. Maybe the black ones show up at movie funerals and the red ones show up on insurance ads.

  But back to ignorance. If ignorance is bliss, does that make the opposite true, that knowledge is pain? It has to be. It has—

  “Hey! Stay to the left!” I yell at the bicyclist who veers into and out of my “lane” and speeds past. The nerve! Man, that’s got to be the same guy who has buzzed me a few times before. Jerk!

  Nice booty, though.

  Where was I? Oh. It has been a royal pain for me to take classes online to get my MBA through Long Island University and to hold a full-time job—and live in downtown Brooklyn. And to walk twice across the Brooklyn Bridge every day. And to take time out to help clueless tourists who think Whitman Park is Central Park because it looks just like it does in the movies. And in just three years—man, that’s a long time—I’ll have that MBA, and I’ll use it to do exactly what I’ve been doing, probably. If MultiCorp wasn’t paying for half of the tuition, I wouldn’t be trying to get my MBA at all because there are so many people who have MBAs out there who are still looking for jobs. And even if I get the chance to interview for something better, I can hear the interviewer say, “And where did you get your MBA, Miss Nance?” Um, LIU. “Next!” No, I would beg, I was on the Brooklyn campus of LIU! That’s t
he nicer campus!

  Knowledge is pain.

  I’m halfway across the bridge now, and I’m catching up to a bottleneck of people. Five years ago, there was only a smattering of people walking. Now, there are literal human traffic jams, because of the economy, I suspect. It’s getting windy, not that I have much hair to muss or that I care if it gets mussed. I’ve gone completely natural since coming to Brooklyn, and my hair is finally growing out.

  There’s a whiff of the ocean in the air today. Might be the Long Island Sound. Or a fish market. Not much boat traffic today either. Where’s the sun? Not that it matters to me. I’m shady enough as it is. I could just use a little golden sunlight today, you know? That would make me happy.

  Now, what do I believe about happiness and bliss? I believe that bliss is an uncluttered heart and an open mind. So far I’ve maintained both. I’m kind of lonely about the heart part, though there is a guy down in Virginia named Bryan who has been after me since we were kids, but Bryan’s there, I’m here, he’s somewhat happy there, I’m somewhat happy here, case closed.