My annoyance that he’d invaded my privacy was clearly visible in the way my voice shook. When David reached into a pocket of his sweats, pulled out his phone, and held it out for me to take, I shook my head and tsk-tsked.
“I got nothing to hide. Never hid anything from you,” he said calmly.
I spun around and glared at him. “I wasn’t hiding shit from you. I didn’t think you would care that he and I had been speaking.”
David simply stared at me. The only indication of his anger was the way his eyes narrowed. Those chocolate pupils dilated, and his eyes got darker.
“That’s what you get for thinking,” he finally said.
I shook my head and turned back around. “This makes no sense. We’re both fucking him. You’re okay when he’s fucking me in front of you.”
I needed to defend myself. Couldn’t bear the thought that maybe he had seen the picture of the little girl who was his daughter, and was mad at me for knowing about it and keeping it from him.
“It’s not the fact that you two have been talking. It’s what he says to you and what you say in return,” he retorted.
“Like what?”
“He’s falling for you, huh?”
I shrugged hard; my shoulders bunched up to where it looked like I had no neck. “I can’t control his feelings.”
“But you could let him know that he needs to back the fuck up.”
I didn’t have words for a comeback in that moment. I was speechless. In a sense, David was right. Michael had been telling me stuff, saying things that he shouldn’t have been saying. He had a wife, and I—no matter how much I denied it—was in love with David. We shouldn’t have even been toying with the idea of Michael falling for me.
“David . . .”
“Take my phone,” he told me.
I backed away. “I don’t need to. I trust you.”
“Take it,” he demanded.
“No.”
“Take the goddamned phone!” he yelled at me.
I jumped back. I’d never seen him that way before. The elevator dinged and saved us from going somewhere we’d never been. I rushed off as an elderly black couple walked in. We weren’t even in the lobby, where we were supposed to get off, but I had to get away from the lunacy. I quickly walked past other guests. I could feel David behind me. Knew it was he who snatched me from behind and pulled me toward the stairs. I tripped over my own feet as he did so.
I was starting to think that Sadi showing up had drudged up old feelings that David had for Michael. Not to mention that my own guilt was eating away at me.
I let him lead me down two flights of stairs before I jerked away from him. I stopped. “What in the hell is wrong with you?” I asked him. “What’s all this really about, huh? Sadi being here got you feeling some type of way about you and Michael again?”
He didn’t say anything. Just glared at me like he wanted to fight me.
“Tell me! Is that it? Still in love with Michael? So much so that his falling for me puts you back in that old head space of when you lost him to Sadi?” I spat out, instantly regretting it.
David balled his lips as he shook his head. He gave a chuckle that meant he was not amused, a chuckle he resorted to when he was upset. “You don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “I’m laying all this shit out for you, and you still don’t fucking get it.”
“Get what!” I yelled at him. “All of this because you saw that Michael and I have been texting, sharing nude pictures, and that he has feelings for me?”
“And what about you, Summer? Do you have feelings for him?”
I sighed. Took a deep inhale and exhaled loudly. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” I admitted.
“This bullshit,” he mumbled, then started down the stairs again.
“David,” I called as I followed him. “It’s not like that. I like him in the sense of having a crush. It’s silly. I’m not. . . falling for him the way he is for me.”
David kept going. “Yeah, whatever, Summer.”
“I promise. I put that on everything.”
“Yep. It’s cool.”
“David?”
“I said it’s cool. Let it go.”
“But—”
He whipped his head around to look at me. “Summer, I said, ‘Let it go.’”
There we were, fighting again, when hours before we had been lovers doing what lovers did. I trekked behind him in silence until we made it to the lobby. We walked out of the stairwell and startled a few people who were walking by. I still looked like I had been fucked, I was sure. And judging by the way a few people side eyed my appearance, I was sure they were thinking the same thing. When David and I reached the lobby doors, he held a door open for me. I thought about what could be going on in Michael’s hotel room. Wondered if he and the infamous Sadi were still fighting.
David’s phone rang as we walked outside. He looked at it, then handed it to me. I took the phone, thinking that maybe my mother or sister was calling. Sometimes when they couldn’t get me on my phone, they would call David’s phone. But to my surprise, it was Michael. I sighed, shook my head, and picked up.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“Where’s David?” Michael responded.
“He isn’t in a talking mood,” I said.
“Oh, I see. You left your phone, Freckles,” he then said. There was no life in Michael’s voice. There normally was. The Michael I’d met wasn’t on the phone.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He didn’t respond right away, but when he did, all he said was, “Have you guys left?”
“No.”
“You coming to get your phone?”
“Michael . . .”
“Come get your phone, Freckles,” was all he said before hanging up on me.
I didn’t say anything right away. Passed the phone back to David.
“I left my phone upstairs,” I told David.
Without uttering a word, he turned and walked back into the hotel. We were silent as we hopped back on the elevator. He stood opposite me as the elevator slowly made its way up to the floor on which Michael’s hotel room was located. Once we got off, we made the walk of shame down the hallway toward his room again. David stood behind me as I knocked on the door. He sat our bags down and folded his arms across his chest as we waited.
The lock turned in the door, and though I’d expected Michael to open the door, it was Sadi who did so. She stood there in almost nothing. Her face and eyes were red. I couldn’t tell if she had been crying, but there was a bruise on her neck that stood out to me. I kept looking at it because it was identical to the one I had on my neck, courtesy of Michael. It was almost in the exact same spot too.
I could see her pink nipples through the thin fabric she had on. The little negligee—I guessed I could call it that—stopped where her thighs made a V, and if she moved the wrong way, I was sure I could see where she had birthed her children. I was still panicked. Her children . . . David had gone through my phone. Had he seen the picture of Gemma? Was that why he had been so upset? Did he suspect, by looks alone, that the little girl was his, the same as I had?
David was a very smart man, a member of Mensa, so I was sure he would have been able to look at Gemma and see the spitting image of himself. Suddenly, I was angry again. Angry at the woman standing at the door, looking like she and Michael had fought, then fucked. She looked as if she had been taken in the spur of the moment. Looked as if the red pussy-hugging tights she’d had on had been ripped off as Michael flipped her over. And right before he’d roughly slid into her, he’d bit down on her neck and left his mark.
Just as he’d marked me earlier, he’d done the same to his wife. Shit. How long had we been gone before they turned their fight into a roughhouse fuck session? I still had the remnants of his semen in between my thighs, and there he was, fucking his wife like it had all meant nothing.
“Michael said this belongs to you,” she said, so unenthused she was.
I held
my hand out, and she all but shoved my phone into my hand. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she responded. She looked past me and spoke to David. “I’m sorry about my attitude earlier. I have to deal with a lot when it comes to Michael, and lately, shit has been rough at home. I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” was all he said.
“Okay. Well, how have you been?”
“Living. You know how it goes. Cases, clients, and more cases,” he replied.
She smiled. “Tell me about it.”
They threw legal jargon around, while I stood there and felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I stared at the woman. Had never been sexually attracted to another woman, but there could be no denying that Sadi was sexy. She knew she was. She knew she had everything that any black man would ever want, just like she had to know that she was talking to one of her children’s father. No way she could look at David and not know he was Gemma’s father.
I came back into the conversation as she was telling David how great the merger had been for her law firm. She kept telling David that her firm and his would be perfect candidates for a North and South merger.
“I don’t see Lowery, Hall, and Lowery merging anytime soon,” he told her.
Sadi was smiling wide, like she’d won the lotto. “Well, I mean, if you guys ever decide or start to think about it, keep us in mind.”
I’d been studying David during this conversation, and not once had he smiled. I’d moved to the side a bit so I wouldn’t be standing in between the two of them as they spoke. Sadi’s body language said she wouldn’t be opposed to David fucking her like the wanton slut she was advertising herself to be.
“Will do,” he told her. “We have to get going.”
She looked over at me, and I smirked a bit. “Where did Michael run off to?” I asked her, just because.
“He was speaking to our children, apologizing to our daughter for letting his whore answer his phone,” she said with a sneer as she looked at me. “He’s in the shower now.”
As she talked, her eyes lingered on the passion mark Michael had left on my neck. I kept looking at the identical one on hers. We both made eye contact again and gave forced smiles.
“I hope everything is okay between you two. I hate to see married couples who seem to be so in love come to such a place of discord,” I said.
David tsk-tsked, chuckled, and shook his head. He mumbled, “This shit . . .”
Sadi asked him, “What did you say?”
“I said, I agree,” he lied with ease.
“Oh. Well, trust me, we may fight, but neither of us is going anywhere,” she assured us. “As you can see, we always find a happy medium,” she continued, hinting around at what we already knew. She and Michael had indeed fought, then fucked.
David told her, “That’s a good thing, then.”
“David, I didn’t know that you were serious about anyone. Michael never made mention of her,” Sadi said.
The way she said “her,” it was as if I was an afterthought. Like she could see why David hadn’t mentioned me, if there had indeed been a reason.
“Michael never makes mention of a lot of things, Sadi,” David said.
I laughed low. Tensions were high. Sadi kept staring at my neck.
“In any case, I see you two are madly in love. I’ve called housekeeping to change the sheets, as Michael said he heard you two going half on a baby. You don’t have kids yet do you, David?” she asked him.
I didn’t give him time to answer. “We should go,” I said abruptly.
David looked sidelong at me but didn’t object. “Yes, we should. Nice seeing you again, Sadi.”
“Trust me, the pleasure was all mine, as it has always been. Maybe next time I visit, you and I can catch up on old times,” she suggested.
David picked up our bags. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sadi. Not unless Michael is around to join in on the conversation.”
“Well, maybe this time when we talk, he can be. I’ve always wanted to talk to you two at the same time.”
Sadi had a look in her eyes that said she wanted to go there with David again. David cleared his throat. Looked at me to see if I had picked up on the sexual innuendos being thrown around. I had, but I wouldn’t snap like I wanted to. Not yet, anyway.
But just to be a bitch, I laughed too, then said, “Girl, let me tell you, having them in the same room, talking, is everything. You have to be on your A-game to hang in a conversation with both of them. I loved talking to both of them at the same time. Going to be sad to see Michael go, but, alas, I understand that he must get back home to his family.”
I smiled wide as I waved, and then walked away.
“Tell Michael I’ll holla at him later,” I heard David tell her.
By the time he caught up to me, I’d made it to the elevators. I looked down the hall to see Sadi standing there, scowling at me. I smiled my friendliest smile and waved at her before stepping onto the elevator.
“Did you have to go there?” David asked me once the elevator doors had closed.
“Me? So it was okay for her to basically give her pussy to you while her husband is in the room?”
“Oh, you mean, like you did with Michael while I was in the same room?” he asked sarcastically.
I tilted my head and looked at him.
“Oh, I see,” he said.
“Whatever, David.”
“Yeah, whatever, Summer.”
I got quiet for a moment. Had started to think about Gemma. It made me wonder if David had ever seen the little girl. I mean, I knew he hadn’t seen Michael in ten years, but did that mean he hadn’t seen the children?
“You ever see their kids?” I asked him out of the blue.
“What?” he asked.
“I was wondering if you’ve ever seen pictures of Michael’s kids.”
“Saw a baby picture of Gemma. Michael’s sister showed it to me a while back.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Does she look like him?”
He tilted his head and looked at me, then shrugged. “She looked like her mother in the picture I saw. Why? You want his baby now too?”
I had to remember he didn’t know my real reason for asking. He had no idea that I wanted to know if he’d been able to see himself in the little girl.
We rode the rest of the way down in silence. Got to his truck and still said nothing to one another. My car was parked on the other side of the lot, so he was going to drive me to it. I needed to get home to shower and clear my head. I had to get away from the madness and accept the fact that David had a child and that the mother was married to Michael.
As we got in the truck, my phone buzzed.
Michael had sent a text. Don’t leave, it read.
I glanced at David. He was looking at me.
I responded, Why? You’re busy fucking your wife. Why do we need to stay?
David cranked his truck and we pulled out.
Michael responded, She’s my wife. I don’t say no to her. We were fighting. I found a way to calm the storm. You mad?
Fuck you.
Again?
Kiss my ass, Michael.
You were barely able to handle it the first time.
Whatever. Your wife was trying to get David to screw her again.
You’re lying.
No. I’m not.
Yes, you are.
Okay.
Just stay. Let me say good-bye the right way.
I shook my head but didn’t respond to Michael. He was either fucking with me or in real deep denial about his wife still wanting a piece of David.
David’s phone chirped. He stopped the truck. Looked down at his phone and then handed it to me. I hadn’t wanted to look at his texts before. This time I did.
Michael’s text to David was the same as mine. Don’t leave, he’d texted.
Why? I sent back, as if I was David.
Just stay. Let me say good
-bye the right way.
I shook my head. I didn’t respond and started to scroll through David’s texts. There were plenty from Michael. They’d even exchanged a nude flick or two. According to Michael, he was starting to get those old feelings for David back as well. “Falling for David,” was what he’d told him. The only difference between me and David was that he had told Michael that rekindling that old thing between them was never going to happen. He had told Michael that his heart belonged to me, and that wherever his heart was, his body would be also. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
David pulled into a random parking spot as I read through his phone. He propped a fist under his chin, with one hand on the steering wheel, while he stared straight ahead.
He already knew Michael. Had been warning me about the man he was since before he stepped foot in Atlanta. Everything Michael had been telling me, he’d been telling David. Not that it mattered. I was lying. It did matter. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I’d started to feel something for him . . . and it was more than a crush.
“We should stay and let him say good-bye,” I said to David.
He looked over at me. “I think we should leave well enough alone and go home, Summer.”
I turned to him. “I want to say good-bye.”
“Text it.”
“Face-to-face.”
“Bullshit.”
“Because I want to say good-bye?”
“Because you want to see if he will stand in your face and lie about falling for you.”
“And?”
“Been there, done that. Let it go.”
“I want to say good-bye.”
“We should go.”
“I want to see him. Want to say my farewell face-to-face.”
David sighed and shook his head, but we didn’t leave.
David
Summer was my strength and my weakness. She gave me that extra push when I needed it. Then there were those times when she would cause me to do things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Like now, I knew we should have been halfway to her place already, but so that she could do whatever it was that she felt she needed to do, I’d stayed. I’d do anything for her. Even go against my own set of principles to please her. I knew she would do the same for me. Wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
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