Bi-Sensual

by Nikki- Michelle

  His brows furrowed. “I don’t know. Is it still in you?”

  The panic that soared through me was almost blinding. “Are you serious right now?” I asked.

  “Yes, Mona. Check and see if it came off inside of you.”

  The alarm in his voice was real, which caused a chain reaction in me. I wiped. Hopped off the toilet and squatted after making sure it hadn’t fallen in the toilet. It was pretty pathetic, the sight of us in that bathroom, looking for a runaway condom. I even lay on the cool floor and let him play ob-gyn inside my vagina.

  “You didn’t know the fucking thing had come off?” I snapped at him when he couldn’t find or feel anything.

  He looked at me like I was stupid. “Did you feel the shit come off?” he snapped back, his accent so thick I barely understood a word he said.

  Maybe we were too anxious and he didn’t put it on right. Maybe I stayed on top of him too long after he’d come, and as his shaft softened, it slipped off. I didn’t know. Took another ten minutes of me sneezing, jumping up and down, and him playing ob-gyn to find it. Didn’t matter. All that fear we had? All the looks of “Oh, shit”? All the recitations of “Please, God, don’t let me be pregnant, and if I am, don’t let me be like my girl Summer and have the other man’s baby”? In a few hours, none of it would matter.

  Mona

  After all that madness, Demitri convinced me to ride with him. I started to grab my Taser but decided to leave it behind. He didn’t say where we were going, but when we pulled up to the Marriot Gateway, I figured it out. He pulled into the parking deck. Used his spare key to locate Elliot’s truck. Just needed to see if he was still there with Nicole. He was.

  Demitri and I were acting crazy. He was the perfect lover, and I was obsessed. He was Michael Ealy, and I was Ali Larter. Or was I more Richard Gere in Unfaithful? I wanted to take a snow globe and bash Nicole’s fucking skull in. I should have been ashamed of myself. I should have known better than to hate another woman before getting her side of the story. I wondered if Demitri was thinking about running Nicole off the road and then finishing what the accident couldn’t.

  “Call him,” Demitri said.

  “Why? Thought you said—”

  “Changed my mind.”

  There I was, sitting on the back of my lover’s lover’s bike—say that shit three times fast—calling my lover, who was in a hotel room with his ex-lover. I blinked away the madness. Dialed Elliot.

  “Yeah, Mona?” he answered.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Not right away. Made me wonder what he was doing. He stayed silent a little too long, and I took that as an answer.

  I said, “Oh . . .”

  “You and Demi okay?” he asked.

  “I think Demitri is having some kind of mental breakdown,” I lied, my feelings hurt.

  “How so?”

  “We came back to you guys’ place after you left. He locked himself in another room. Won’t come out. Won’t answer me. Nothing.”

  Demitri just sat there. He let me tell all those lies without saying a word. He had a hand on my thigh, like I belonged to him, as he stared down at the hotel from where we were sitting on his bike.

  I said, “He’s just acting really odd, and I’m worried. Are you still with her?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Talking.”

  “About your son?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Are you in her room, Elliot?”

  “Let me call Demi, and I’ll call you—”

  I hung up on him before he could finish. I did that for my benefit. Wanted to see if he would call me back. He didn’t. He called Demitri back again and again and again. Jealousy reared its ugly head.

  “You’re not going to answer?” I asked Demitri.

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Demitri waited a whole five minutes before calling back. I didn’t know what he was thinking about or why he did it, but at that point, I didn’t give a damn.

  Elliot picked up. At least, it seemed that way.

  “Hello,” she blurted into the phone.

  My eyes widened just as Demitri’s head snapped toward his phone. His spine was straight up and down, like the hands of a clock at six o’clock.

  “Say something!” she yelled into the phone. “I can hear your breathing, you sick son of a bitch.” Covers rustled angrily in the background. Nicole sounded like she was getting fucked or trying to get away from Elliot.

  Elliot grunted, and then we heard, “Give me the fucking phone, Nikki.”

  “Take it,” she dared Elliot. “You should have called earlier, Demitri. You could have heard him trying to fuck me.”

  Bile rose to my throat. I shook my head like I was trying to get that image out of my mind. I’d seen the way they had sex. Had seen the way Elliot handled her. Had seen the same things she taught him and he taught her. They were some of the same things he’d taught me. My mind was going into a maddening haze.

  And then there was another phone ringing in the background. Elliot’s line went dead. Demitri stood from the bike. Stuffed his keys in his pocket, grabbed his helmet. He marched toward the hotel. He didn’t even wait for me. I had to jog to catch up to his long strides. My braids swished and swayed as I marched next to the angry giant in the black leather biker jacket and black biker boots. His jeans showcased his perfect calves, thighs, and ass.

  I was dressed similarly. Skinny denim jeans, combat boots, and a hoodie that shielded me from the wind as I rode the bike. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but we were going to do it. We were so angry, we didn’t see the mentally unstable man in the hoodie, with the bald head, watching us.

  People didn’t know whether to gawk at Demitri or move the hell out of his way. All the sane ones opted to move and gawk from the sidelines.

  “Goddamn. That big motherfucker fine,” I heard a sister say.

  “Go ’head, girl,” another sister said to me, thinking the giant was mine.

  “You need some help?” a white woman asked me, straining her neck to look up at Demitri.

  “Lord dem mercy,” some woman said when Demitri dipped his head to walk through the sliding doors to the lobby.

  We marched side by side like soldiers, allies, going to war against a common enemy. Whereas before we had fought one another, tonight, this early morning, Nicole was the target. We headed toward the elevators; then I remembered, we didn’t know what room he was in. That was neither here nor there. As we headed toward the elevators, Elliot was coming out of one.

  His shirt was unbuttoned. Clothes looked unkempt. He was tucking his shirt in when he looked up and saw us. We stopped. He stopped. I couldn’t see what Demitri’s eyes held, but mine were accusatory. I felt betrayed. If tension had a weather pattern, right now the winds of a tornado would be whipping around the lobby.

  Elliot sent his gaze from me to Demitri, then from Demitri back to me. Before he could say whatever it was he was about to say, the other elevator dinged and opened. A woman stepped out. I knew who she was. She was older but still every bit as beautiful as the younger version from the DVDs. She looked my way. Did a double take. Her eyes widened, and she shook her head like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  Any person with twenty-twenty vision could see we indeed looked alike. I was taller, a little darker, being that the Atlanta sun had tanned me, but we were damn near mirror images of one another in my mind. She was set to turn to Elliot, but something stopped her. Something or someone frightened her.

  Her brown face went ashen. Lips trembled. She blinked rapidly as her breaths came in bursts. She started to shake. The woman literally started shaking. She backed away, damn near falling over the people who had come up behind her. She was looking at Demitri. Looking at him like she was staring death in the face.

  A shrill voice escaped her lips. “Stay away from me!” she yelled at Demitri; then her eyes
went to Elliot. “Get him away from me!”

  Nicole was so scared, her voice so loud, everyone else in the lobby stopped to look. Nicole was pressing the buttons on the wall, trying to get the elevator doors to open again, but they wouldn’t. At least not fast enough for her.

  One of the people behind the front desk walked over and asked her if she was okay. He asked her if she needed security. Nicole paid the man no attention. She just wanted Demitri away from her. Her reaction to him scared even me. Goose bumps rose on my flesh.

  Elliot rushed over to Nicole. Asked her to calm down. She didn’t want to calm down. She wanted Demi away from her.

  She called him Demi. Not Demitri. She was familiar with him. Moments before on the phone, she’d called him a sick son of a bitch. But now that she was face-to-face with him, she was acting out a scene from a Hitchcock movie, giving the impression that she was standing before a flight of stairs and a crazed man with a knife. The elevator doors opened. Elliot picked Nicole up and stepped back inside the elevator with her in his arms. Again, Nicole came first. He left Demitri and me behind.

  Elliot

  She was trembling in my arms. Long after we stepped off the elevator at her floor, she still trembled.

  “Why did you bring him here?” she asked.

  “I didn’t bring him here,” I replied, defending myself.

  “Why did you tell him where I was?”

  “I al—”

  “Don’t answer that. Get him away from me.” Tears were falling down her face as we stood at the door to her room.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “You should have let me come to you.”

  The elevator dinged.

  “I thought—” she began, then stopped, stared over my shoulder so coolly, it made me turn around to look.

  Mona.

  “Shit,” I mumbled under my breath. Nothing about the moment was going to end well.

  “Who’s she?” Nicole asked. “What kind of sick game are you two playing now? Whoever you are,” Nicole said loudly. “Run. Run like hell.”

  I turned to meet Mona halfway. I tried to touch her, but she jerked away from me.

  With fire in her eyes, she said, “Don’t touch me.”

  I said, “Go back downstairs, where Demitri is.”

  Mona shook her head. “No.” Then she looked at Nicole. “Why do I need to run?”

  Nicole groaned low in her throat, then shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t know, do you?” she asked Mona.

  “Know what?” she said as I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away from Nicole. She shoved me, looked at me like I disgusted her. That was so familiar to me.

  “Get off me, Elliot,” Mona growled.

  I grabbed her arm again. “Mona, don’t do this.”

  She ignored me and looked at Nicole. “Know what? Tell me.” She shoved me again.

  “They’re crazy,” Nicole said. “Both of them. They deserve one another, and what you’d better do is get away from them before they drive you just as crazy.”

  I still had a hold on Mona’s arm. Wouldn’t let her go. There was a look of madness in her eyes that scared me. And she had a helmet in her hand, which could be used as a weapon. That was the arm I had a hold on. There was no doubt in my mind that she would swing that helmet if pushed far enough. Mona tried to get away from me. Saw that she couldn’t. I wasn’t going to let her go. Had no intention of letting her get away from me.

  “Tell me,” she said to Nicole. “What did they do?” Mona turned to me. “Elliot,” she yelled, “Let me the fuck go!” She was so loud that doors to other rooms opened and people stuck their heads out.

  The elevator dinged again. I half expected hotel security or the police to step off. My mood dampened more when Demi stepped off that elevator.

  Nicole’s eyes widened. She fumbled in her back pocket, trying to find her room key. She wanted nothing to do with him. She didn’t even want to breathe the same air as him. Those tears started pouring down Nicole’s face again. She had to get away from him.

  “Shelle,” Demi called out to her.

  Nicole stopped what she was doing and stood statue still. Then she began shaking her head back and forth. Her ponytail whipped this way and that.

  Mona jerked like she had been slapped. She did a slow blink. She shuffled back a step or two. If I hadn’t been holding her, she would have fallen. Nicole couldn’t get her hotel room door to open. Her silent cries turned into frustrated wails.

  Mona looked at Demi. She asked him, “That . . . that’s Shelle?”

  Demi dropped his head, shame making him appear smaller than he was.

  Mona looked from me to him. “Nicole and Shelle, one and the same?”

  Neither I nor Demi answered her.

  Nicole stopped fumbling with her door. Her breaths came out slow and hard. Her back rising and falling with each sharp intake of breath. She turned around. The past danced around us like an angry spirit. Mona was collateral damage.

  Nicole stared at Demi. Stared him down with a hate so vivid, it made my flesh crawl. If she’d had a gun, I was sure she would have shot him dead. I kept Mona close to me. I didn’t trust her with that damn helmet in her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Demi said to Nicole.

  Nicole shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Nope. Screw your apology,” she said.

  “I just need you to know that,” he said.

  Over and over Nicole said, “Nope.” She kept shaking her head. “Go to hell,” she snarled, lashing out at him. “In gasoline drawers on a fucking skateboard. You should bust hell wide the fuck open.” She had no nice words for him. Then she cut her eyes at me. “You can join him,” she shot at me. “He can suck your dick on the way down.”

  A few gasps and laughs in the hall alerted me to our ever growing audience. Nicole’s hotel phone was ringing. She turned to open her door. Disappeared inside. I was sure by now someone had called the cops or security.

  “We need to leave,” I said to Mona.

  “No,” she said. “Not going anywhere until one of you tells me what the fuck is going on.”

  The door to Nicole’s room opened. She stood against the door. “They’re sending security up,” she said. Her eyes were on Mona. Something akin to pity and empathy was in her eyes. “Come inside,” Nicole said. “All of you,” she added.

  Mona was the first one to move in Nicole’s direction. I took the helmet from her hand before I let her go. We all filed into Nicole’s room. Before Demi walked inside, Nicole moved away from the door.

  “I don’t want any police involvement. Not with the social climate right now,” Nicole said.

  Mona’s eyes were on Demi. “She was the girl you met while she was on vacation?”

  He looked at Mona but didn’t respond.

  “Answer me,” Mona yelled at him.

  He nodded once.

  Mona looked at Nicole. “Then you started dating Elliot?” she asked her.

  Nicole nodded.

  Mona gawked at me and asked, “Then you cheated on her with him?”

  I nodded once.

  “Did you know, Elliot? Did you know that was her ex?”

  “Not then.”

  “When did you find out?”

  Nicole said, “I told him a few months later, after I caught them in bed. I told him who Demi was. Told him Demi was the one he’d rescued me from.”

  Mona look confused. Nicole alleviated some of her confusion. She told Mona the whole convoluted story. Told Mona how she and Demi had broken up. How he had come from his homeland to the States, taken a whole year away from school to try to win her back. In the end, Nicole couldn’t forgive him for the lies, for being a male whore. So while Demi thought Nicole was really into trying to work on them, Nicole was building a relationship with me.

  The day she and I decided to be together, she told Demi it was over, really over, and she had moved on. Demi was angry, vindictive even. Saw Nicole and me on the Christopher Stre
et Pier one day. He was an ex–male escort. His eyes had been trained to pick up on certain things others wouldn’t. He was used to dealing with men who were straight when the world was looking and bisexual when it wasn’t.

  That was when he set his plan in motion. If he couldn’t have Nicole, then I for damn sure couldn’t be happy with her. It was a fucked-up thing to do, but he did it. Seduced me. For a whole year, until the day she walked in on us, Demi and I snuck around. Her screams that day were due more to finding Demi in bed with me than finding me in bed with a man. Yeah, seeing me with a man had shocked her, but seeing Demi had scared her.

  The night Nicole called me, told me the truth of the matter, Demi and I fought. It was like a clash of the fucking titans, and I tried to bash his face in. But by then I’d experienced Nicole. I knew what her love felt like. So even after I bloodied his face, cracked his ribs, and damn near choked him to death in his apartment—I thought about killing him that day—I knew what had driven him to that point.

  I understood being willing to do anything to get her back. How could I be so angry at a man for seducing me to get her back and be willing to kill him because he was the reason she left me? How were we any different?

  I let him go. Stopped choking him. Released the sleeper hold I had on him. His eye was busted open. He begged me to call for help. He was barely breathing. I watched him struggle to breath a good five minutes before I called for help. Left Brooklyn before the cops showed up. Made my way back to Harlem, bloodied and bruised.

  “How did you and Demi end up back together?” Mona wanted to know.

  I answered her. “Went to see him in the hospital a few days later. Still hadn’t decided if I wanted to kill him or not. It was up in the air. I tried explaining to Nicole again that I was tricked into it. That didn’t take away from the fact that I’d cheated on her. She didn’t want anything to do with me. Didn’t for one second believe I didn’t know who Demi was before cheating with him. So I went back to the one person who knew all my inner workings. Had honestly thought about killing him, but first I had to know if any of the shit we had said to one another during that year was real. The mind is a strange place. He didn’t apologize. Told me he’d do it again, because he loved her and he wasn’t finished loving her.