“Aye, nigga! Watch where you going!” some idiot who was trying to impress a hood rat yelled behind me.
He didn’t want it. Lawyer or not, I had grown up in one of the A’s toughest boys’ homes, and it had bred an entity he didn’t want to rumble with. I ignored him, though. Didn’t have time to embarrass him in front of his woman. I let him keep his pride so his girl could have a story to tell her girls about how crazy her nigga was. I stopped in the middle of a walkway and spun around, having no idea where to look for my best friend. I snatched my phone and pushed one.
She was the only person I had on speed dial.
She sent me to voice mail.
I tried back and back and back and back and back. Each time I got her voice mail. I cursed inwardly and continued my search of level one, hoping she hadn’t left yet. A horn blared, headlights flashed at me, and I barely dodged this black Charger. It would have hit me, but the person behind the wheel hit the brakes. Someone yelled at me to watch out. The driver’s shocked expression told me she hadn’t been trying to hit me. I slammed my hand down on the hood of the car in a fit of aggression, rushed around to the driver’s side, and snatched the door open. I leaned in and put the car in park. The woman behind the wheel screamed, kicked, and punched at me when I pulled her out of her car.
“Stop!” I yelled at her as she swung wildly.
Her uninhibited naturally sandy brown and blond hair swung around her face. She kept swinging at me. Yelled at me to leave her alone, but I wouldn’t. Between her swings, I grabbed both sides of her face and made her kiss me again. We had another kind of audience. It was made up of the kind who walked on by and onlookers who didn’t mind seeing what they thought was a couple fight and then fuck, hopefully.
I didn’t care about any of them. Only wanted to keep the kiss going. Wanted Summer to feel what she was doing to me. I knew she could feel the swell of my manhood on her stomach, but I needed her to feel what went unspoken in that kiss too. She fought me. Refused to open her mouth until my tongue touched her lips, urged her to open up and accept what I was offering. Her tears of confusion made a salty balm over our lips.
She still didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either. Our tongues touched and tangoed aggressively. Horns blared behind her car, but we didn’t care. My hands slid underneath her sweater to caress her waist. I loved the fact that her waist had enough meat for me to pull on, hold on to as I held her.
We had to move. I knew we had to move, but I didn’t want to break the kiss, for fear of her running again. So I took the initiative. I moved her out of the way. Got in the driver’s seat of her whip, adjusted the seat, and told her to get in. She hesitated, but then she saw the line behind us and rushed around to get into her car. I pulled off, drove around until we found a spot that gave us some kind of privacy. I parked her car, and for a while we sat there in loud silence.
“Thought you said Michael wasn’t gay,” she finally said.
She wouldn’t look at me. Arms folded across her ample chest, she looked out the passenger-side window.
“He isn’t,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me, David.”
“I’m not lying. He doesn’t identify as gay.”
She whipped her head around to look at me. “So what is he?”
“You have to ask him that.”
“Did you fuck him?”
I pulled the leather tie from my locks and ran a hand through them. My glasses seemed to strain my eyes. I pulled them off. Used my thumb and index finger to rub my eyes before putting my glasses back on.
She was still looking at me. I could see her shaking her head. “You lied to me,” she said.
I could feel annoyance creeping up my spine. I shrugged and asked, “Why do you even care, Summer? We aren’t together.”
“So. We don’t lie to one another. Thought we were better than that.”
I chuckled. There wasn’t shit funny, but my agitation made me chuckle. “You always do this, Summer. You want the perks of being in a relationship, minus the relationship, the man, and the sex.”
“So did you fuck him?” she asked again, as if she hadn’t heard anything I’d said.
“No.”
It happened so quickly that I didn’t see it coming. The burning sensation in my face alerted me to the fact that I’d been slapped. My glasses fell down between the seats. Before I knew it, we had turned into something we weren’t. I yanked her across the seat as much as the Charger would allow me. Her back fell onto my legs, and I hemmed her in as I glared down at her.
“Why the fuck are we even doing this?” I yelled in her face. “We’re not even together. So what’s the purpose of you acting like we are?”
Her face was ruddy. Her freckles always showed more when she was angry. Her eyes watered, but she wasn’t crying. “Why would you have me sitting there with him like that?” she asked.
“There is nothing going on with me and Michael. Nothing at all.”
“But there used to be, right?”
“I’m not . . . Summer, please stop, okay? Just stop. We’re fighting, and for what? Because you—”
She cut me off. “Just tell me, David. I want to know.”
“This is stupid,” I said as I let her go.
She sat up. I opened the door and stepped out of the car. It took me a minute to find my glasses, but I did. Summer got out of the car and walked around to where I was. We didn’t say anything. She looked up at me while running a hand through her hair. People milled about. Loud music blasted as cars entered and exited the parking deck. The nightlife in Atlantic Station was in full effect.
Summer said, “Why is it stupid? Because you don’t want to tell me? You’ve never been this closed off about anything or anyone before. So that lets me know that something more has gone on than what you told me.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, it’s stupid because I don’t want to tell you, and yes, a long time ago, something happened with me and Michael that goes beyond me fucking his wife. Satisfied now?”
“Why couldn’t you tell me that the first time I asked?”
“Because maybe I didn’t want to, Summer. Maybe I didn’t want to rehash those old demons . . . open Pandora’s box.”
She didn’t say anything right away. She stood there, shaking her head and mumbling to herself before she spoke up. “This is why we can’t ever be together. Why we can never, ever be together.”
“Why? Because I have a past?” I asked.
“Because I’m always going to wonder about shit like this.”
“Those are your insecurities.”
To be honest, she’d shown me a side of her that had me rethinking crossing any line and having something other than a friendship with her. I didn’t like where she had taken us. I didn’t do the whole “throwing hands at one another” thing. That wasn’t my kind of hype. I didn’t feel like talking anymore. Wasn’t in the mood to answer any more questions, so I told her to get in her car and go home. Normally, I would wait for her to get in her car, and then I would buckle her in and kiss her on the forehead. I wasn’t in the mood for any of that. I walked off before she even got in the car.
“David,” she called behind me.
I had half a mind to keep walking, but that thing . . . that thing I had for her deep down inside made me turn around to look at her.
“Yeah?”
“Do you love him?”
“Not anymore.”
“Are you going home alone?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Summer.”
She looked down at the ground like life had been sucked out of her. “Oh,” was all she said before she slowly slid into the front seat of her car.
I turned and walked back to the restaurant. Michael was still sitting there. He was talking to a woman who was none the wiser about who he really was. She was pretty enough, but I could tell by her body language that she was no match for Michael’s advances. She looked like she was practically c
oming where she sat as Michael stroked a finger against her cheek. He saw me approaching the booth and cut his conversation short.
“Where’s Summer?” he asked.
“Gone.”
“You good?”
“I’m great,” I lied. “Let me take care of the check, and we can get out of here.”
“Already done,” he said, pointing to the thirty-dollar tip and the receipt on the table. “Summer chilling with you tonight?”
I knew he was asking so he could find out what had gone down between us.
“No.”
“You two have a fight?”
“Nope.”
“You may as well go ahead and be with her. You two already act like you are together. Why not make that shit official?”
“Some shit ain’t meant to be,” I said as I looked directly at him.
“You fight like a married couple, talk like best friends, and flirt like first loves, so obviously it is meant to be.”
I didn’t respond to that. I grunted and remained silent.
Not too much else was said between us as we gathered our coats and headed for the exit. Once we figured out where the other had parked, we made our way to the same area in which Summer and I had just had our fight. We stood next to his rented platinum BMW and talked.
“What’s the real reason you’re here, Michael?” I finally asked him.
“Needed to get some shit off my chest,” he answered honestly.
“Ten years later?”
“Took you that long to give me a sincere apology for the stunt you pulled.”
“I did apologize before.”
“Your idea of an apology went something like, ‘I’m sorry I fucked your wife, but you made me do it.’”
I couldn’t deny the fact that he was right. “I was a different person back then.”
“And you’re changed now?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I can’t tell.”
“You don’t know the new me.”
“I know the old you, and that’s good enough.”
“You know the man I used to be, not the man I’ve become.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “If you say so. You fucked Sadi to get back at me.”
“I fucked Sadi to show you that you were loyal to her, but she wasn’t as loyal to you.”
“Why did that matter to you, though?”
“You know why. I fucking loved you, man. And you threw that shit away like it was nothing.”
“I told you from the beginning not to fall in love with me. I was never going to be with you the way you wanted me to.”
I slid my hands into the pockets of my slacks and thought about the days when Michael and I used to sneak away and grab hotel rooms so that we could fuck to our hearts’ content. Now that I looked back, I realized that was all it was. I was making love. He was fucking.
“Yeah, you made that pretty clear when you ran off and got married without telling me,” I said.
“You knew I was with Sadi. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.”
As we talked, I took in his appearance again. You couldn’t help but be attracted to the man he was. Michael was a man’s man. He knew how to touch you during the act of coitus and make you feel like the world belonged at your feet. He wasn’t all that affectionate. When it came to sex between the two of us, it had always been heated, hedonistic, and primal. Michael reminded me of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
As he stood there, both of us staring into the other’s eyes, reliving times it was best not to try to re-create, I felt the tip of my dick leak in remembrance. I could tell by the way he smirked that he was remembering too. So it didn’t surprise me when he leaned in for a kiss. I didn’t deny him. It had been a minute since I’d kissed a man. There’d been plenty of fucking sessions, but no kissing. Kissing was intimate. Reserved only for those I intended to share more than sex with.
Our kiss was different than the one I had shared with Summer. My kiss with Summer was something I couldn’t explain. The kisses I’d shared with her earlier felt as though they’d been dipped in the thought of What if? The kiss with Michael was laced with poison. I was drowning in the knowledge of what I knew could be our undoing. Funny thing was, neither of us touched when we kissed. Just let our lips lead our tongues to the promised land. I groaned. He gave something as guttural and then pulled back as he adjusted his dick and I did the same with mine.
For a while we stood there as the cold wind molested us.
“Girl, these niggas in Atlanta be gay as fuck,” we heard a woman say as loudly as she could. “You see them two big, masculine-ass mafuckers kissing? I done seen it all. This shit right here is why the fuck I will never date a nigga in Atlanta,” she said, venting, like she didn’t care that we heard her.
Her girls laughed and egged her on.
“That’s some nasty shit,” another one said.
“Fucking faggots,” one more added, chiming in.
The ringleader said, “And that son of a bitch has on a wedding ring. If I knew his wife, I’d blow this nigga’s spot all up.”
We both looked at the women. A group of beautiful, but angry, black women. Truth be told, they probably had a right to be. The world had turned against them. The media was obsessed with their bodies, looks, hair.... The black men of Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook had told them that they were no good. That they were just angry, bitter, materialistic, fat bitches. Books on down-low brothers had made them think all black men were gay. Angry was the least they should be.
Michael and I chuckled. Things like that had never bothered us. Back in college, we had prided ourselves on the fact that we gave women a choice. Neither of us had let a woman think she was getting anything other than what we were. Most times, once we told women we were bisexual, they would turn their noses up and run off in disgust, but we still didn’t stop being honest . . . until Sadi showed up.
“I’d fuck you into a coma right now,” Michael said to me. He’d never been one to mince words.
I laughed. “Always the giver . . .”
“Never the taker,” he said, finishing my sentence for me.
As bad as I wanted to stop by a drugstore and grab an extra pack of Magnums, I wouldn’t. Summer was on my brain, and Michael had a wife and kids back home. I wouldn’t turn into one of those niggas we despised. Wouldn’t go on some down-low tryst with him because he and I wanted to fuck one another and give in to erogenous needs.
“Going home to Summer?” he asked me as he unlocked his rental with the remote key.
“Summer has her own place,” I answered.
“Still didn’t answer my question, though.”
And I wouldn’t. I hugged him—we held the hug a little longer than we should have—and then headed to my car. I sent Summer a text along the way.
Summer
Not going home. Wait up for me.
I looked at my phone, then at the time on the clock. Almost one o’clock. David’s text had woken me up from my drunken stupor. I’d come home, embarrassed about the way I’d carried on. Maybe he and I didn’t need to remain friends. Shit was too volatile. Feelings were getting involved, and I was starting to act like a crazy bitch on her period.
I got up from the couch and stumbled to the bathroom. In the mirror, I saw scratches on my neck and chest, along with bruises, from our fight in my car. I couldn’t believe I had acted like that, like he was my man and I had a right to be mad about what he’d done in his past. David had been putting up with my shit for years, and I didn’t know why. I had called my mother when I got in, but she had cursed me out and had told me to take my drunk ass to bed. Then I’d called my sister Hannah, and she had pretty much told me the same thing. I knew not to call my brother Samson. He would not only curse me out but would also block my number so I wouldn’t call him when I was drunk again. He’d done it before.
Out of our big foster family, my foster mom, my foster sister Hannah, and my foster brother Samson were the closest. They love
d me, dirty drawers and all. I paid my water bill to the toilet bowl man and slowly made my way back to the couch. I was going to try to clean up the mess I’d made, but I didn’t feel like it. I kept looking at the time, praying David wouldn’t be too mad when he got to me. Was also praying he would hurry up, so I could lie back down.
By the time he got there, I’d fallen back asleep, and it took him calling my phone to wake me up. It was a little after two when I opened my front door.
“Where you been?” I asked him. “What took you so long?”
I was still afraid that maybe Michael had been the recipient of his loving.
He held his arms open. “Went home to shower and change. Grabbed some food, too,” he answered. I saw he had on sweats and a T-shirt. His locks were back in a ponytail. “You been drinking?” His words came out more like he was stating the obvious rather than posing a question.
“Had a few more glasses of wine when I got home,” I told him.
I moved to the side and let him walk in. He had food in his hand. IHOP. I hadn’t eaten anything all day other than the sushi. The breakfast food smelled good, but I was too emotional to eat. He walked into my kitchen, flipped the lights on, and put his keys and his phone on the marble countertop. I folded my arms and leaned against the doorpost as he moved around my kitchen like he owned it. He went to the cabinet and pulled out red and black square plates.
“You hungry?” he asked without looking at me.
“Yeah, kind of,” I answered.
I didn’t know if I could really stomach any food, but I wanted to be near him.
“Steak omelet or country omelet?”
“Steak.”
“Grits?”
“You get cheese?”
“Of course I did, Summer.”
He answered me like I was getting on his nerves. Like I should have known that he knew I wouldn’t eat my grits without cheese.
“Yeah, grits.”
I watched as he took the food from the carryout containers and placed it on the plates. He took the plates to the glass table in my dining room. Came back and grabbed two glasses and filled them up with orange juice before taking them back to the table. He took the time to clean up the small mess he’d made. David had always been a clean man. He didn’t have OCD, but you would never catch his home messy. Once he had set the drinks by the food, he pulled my chair out and held a hand out for me.
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