by B. M. Hardin
And everybody knew it too.
I had two best friends, Patrice and Micki, and though we were close, we didn’t have a thing on them.
Eddie and Polo had been friends since they were all of five years old and boy could you tell.
They grew up right next door to each other and every memory that one seemed to share, so did the other.
Their bond was so strong that it was damn near suspect; especially if you didn’t know them.
Call me silly, but I strongly believed that if Eddie ever had to choose between us: Polo and I, for whatever reason, he might mess around and choose Polo.
Maybe I was exaggerating, but they were just that close .
Closer than any male friends that I’d ever seen.
And I had to say that from being around Polo all of these years, I could see why Eddie was fond of him, in a way.
I guess I could consider Polo a friend too.
I loved him because my husband loved him so much and despite some of his ways, he was a part of our family.
I used to feel like I had to compete with him for my husband’s time and attention, but once I figured out that he loved us both, in different ways and on different levels, I quickly adjusted and simply embraced Polo, seeing that it made life a whole lot easier.
Eddie was an only child, so pretty much Polo was the brother that he never had.
But although Eddie and Polo grew up around the same place, at the same school and had even gone to the same college, they couldn’t have been more different.
Eddie was conservative, passive, hard-working and so sweet that just by touching him you could get diabetes.
But Polo was the complete opposite.
He was a bit rough around the edges.
He was loud, aggressive and he could be an asshole at times.
He was a walking tornado.
It seemed as though trouble followed him everywhere that he went and if he was in a bad mood, everything in his path was at risk of being destroyed.
I’d seen him in action plenty of times, and even if I wasn’t the one that he had an issue with, I had to make sure that I had a weapon within my reach.
Just in case he started flipping out on everybody or something. He would surely mess around and flip into an ass whoopin’ coming my way.
But Eddie was the only one that could control him.
Polo had three baby’s mamas, two ex-wives, and enough drama and entertainment in his life, regularly, for a soap opera.
But I guess you could expect that from somebody that was rolling in dough.
If money made normal people act funny, you could only imagine how it made someone as unstable and thrown off as Polo act.
Eddie and I were pretty stable, a successful couple and didn’t want for anything.
But Polo was one of those people that had more money than he knew what to do with, and quite frankly, more than I felt like he could handle.
Polo invented a sex toy that took over the industry and he’d made millions off of it.
But money, nice cars, a big house and expensive suits, didn’t change the man.
He was still the same man inside.
He was always in some kind of trouble and Eddie was always coming to his rescue.
But that’s what friends were for I suppose.
And if I had to be honest, Polo was a pretty decent friend to Eddie as well.
If he didn’t care about anyone else, he cared about Eddie.
Polo had given Eddie the money to start his business and though Eddie had paid him back every penny, as the company continued to grow, he always mentioned that he couldn’t have done any of it without Polo’s help.
I personally thought of it as payback for all of the other stuff that Eddie and I had done for him over the years, but of course my opinion didn’t matter much when I was talking about his beloved best friend.
“You’re wearing the hell out of that red dress,” Polo said, interrupting my thoughts and taking a sip of whatever it was in his glass.
I could tell that he was drunk, but that was normal for him.
Polo was always drunk.
“Thanks boy.”
“Um what’s up under it?”
What?
What did he say?
“What did you say Polo?”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking to you. I was thinking about something.”
Um huh.
“Oh. Maybe you should lay off of the alcohol for the rest of the night,” I said to him.
“Maybe. But what fun would that be?”
Polo walked closer to me.
He was so close to my face that I could taste the alcohol on his breath.
It was vodka.
He breathed heavily.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t as uncomfortable as I probably should have been.
Instead, I seemed to be unbothered by the situation and I could tell that he could sense my comfort.
After all, he was almost like a brother to me.
Almost.
“Go sit your drunk behind down somewhere,” I said finally as I reached for the bowl.
Polo didn’t respond.
He simply smirked and took another sip of his drink.
What’s his problem tonight?
He continued to breathe hard, and might I add, familiarly.
Wait a minute…it couldn’t be.
But something told me that my hunch was right.
“Have you been playing on my phone Polo?”
He smiled.
“Yep.”
Polo always said the most when he was drunk; hell he didn’t even have a filter when he wasn’t, so I was sure that he was being honest.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why have you been playing on my phone?”
“I was just having a little fun with you,” he said.
“Um huh, I’m gonna’ whoop your ass if you call my phone playing again! Talking about you love me, boy,” I giggled.
“Well, I do love you.”
I looked at him.
“Like a sister of course,” Polo finished his statement.
I smirked at him and turned to walk away.
I didn’t have time for his foolishness tonight.
But I know one thing, he had better not call my damn phone again.
I entered back into the living room to see Eddie letting loose and actually enjoying himself.
Boy did he need it.
He was always so uptight and I just wanted him to relax and enjoy life a little more.
He deserved a break sometimes.
Eddie worked hard and he did above and beyond on a daily basis for me and our sons, and everyone else around him.
He was the man of every woman’s dreams…well…except for mine.
Some would say that he was the guy that every woman wanted but didn’t know what to do with him once they had him.
They were probably right.
For some reason, I’d always felt like something just wasn’t what it should have been between us.
He was a wonderful guy on paper, and even in reality, but something for me had always been missing.
I’d always felt that way.
And my feelings weren’t just a result of the terrible sex life that we shared lately.
You know when you know, that you know, that you know that you know, that even if you don’t wanna know that you know, that it’s something, but you just couldn’t put your finger on it?
That’s how it had been being married to Eddie.
Some might say that Eddie was perfect.
But I couldn’t exactly say that he was perfect for me.
He looked at me and I smiled as though I’d won some kind of prize or something.
Hey, I’d learned the power of a painted smile years ago.
But just because a woman was smiling, that doesn’t mean that she’s happy.
You have to learn to see past a woman’s smile because nine times out of ten, sh
e might just be really good at pretending.
But I could be real with myself even if I couldn’t be real with anyone else.
I wasn’t happy.
My husband was loyal, faithful, and everything else in between, but deep down I’d always known that I’d settled.
Yeah, that’s right, I’d settled and I wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
Eddie and I met in my early twenties.
We were only a few years apart and though we were from the same neck of the woods, we’d never crossed paths until one night at a bar.
I was sitting alone, while my best friends, Micki and Patrice, danced with strangers that had been buying them drinks all night.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Eddie had asked.
“I don’t drink. This is just pineapple juice,” I’d smiled at him.
Immediately and though it was kind of dark, I noticed how attractive he was.
He had all of his teeth, a nice smile, gorgeous eyes and even a nice build and height.
“Well, is this seat taken?”
I’d shaken my head no.
I could tell that he was kind of nervous.
It was almost as though he didn’t randomly talk to women too often and I could tell that approaching me had taken every ounce of his courage.
But he’d done it anyway.
That night, I’d found his nervousness and his innocence kind of cute.
Of course he had been there with Polo; which he was hard not to notice due to the fact that he was being loud and getting drunk just like he did today.
He had women all around him and Eddie kept glancing at him to make sure that he was okay.
“What’s your name?”
“Sassi.”
“Sassi? Is that your real name?”
I remembered grinning at him.
Everyone asked me that.
“It’s the name on my birth certificate, so I would have to say yes. I don’t know what my mama was thinking,” I’d joked.
And from there he introduced himself and we spent the next hour or so chatting and getting to know each other.
He loosened up, just a little, and I’d actually managed to enjoy our conversation.
But it was cut short once Polo got into a brawl with another guy as a result of trying to push up on his woman.
The owner of the bar asked them both to leave, so of course that’d meant that Eddie had to go too.
“I have to get him out of here. But do you mind if I called you sometime?”
And that was the beginning of Eddie and I.
Dating Eddie had been refreshing.
Immediately I knew that he was different.
I was only around twenty-three at the time, but I’d had my share of no-good men, bad dates, hit it and quit it type of guys, so I knew that with Eddie I was getting something different.
Something better.
He was sweet, charming, and so much more.
He opened doors, pulled out chairs, complimented me, and to me, at the time, it just didn’t get any better than that.
Eddie still believed in respecting a lady and courting a woman and I liked the idea of having such a mature man in my back pocket.
And after two years, hesitantly, I made my way down the aisle towards him.
I’d had a few feelings before the wedding but back then, I’d thought that they were just pre-wedding jitters and that I was just getting cold feet.
So, I shook it off and I married Eddie anyway.
Intuition is a persistent little bitch ain’t she?
So many times we tell her to be quiet, when really the best thing for us to do is listen.
I wish that I had.
Immediately after the wedding, I questioned my decision.
I even mentioned my feelings to my mama but she’d only said that I was scared of forever and that it was normal for me to feel that way.
But there was nothing normal about feeling like you may have just made the biggest mistake of your life on your wedding day.
I had no business listening to her old tail anyway.
I should have listened to my heart.
But Eddie had everything, every woman needed so I figured that something was wrong with me.
For years I’d looked over the small stuff and once our first son came into the picture, I knew that it was best to lock those feelings behind a door in my heart and throw away the key.
And that’s just what I’d done.
I had my king and he treated me like a queen, and I just became thankful that he’d chosen me.
I was one of the few married woman that I knew of that had a wonderful, faithful husband and a pair of amazing kids to match; and for those two reasons alone, I’d learned to grateful.
But as the years went by, and once the sex became an issue, I started to remember that I wasn’t as complete as I pretended to be.
I was just comfortable.
I was just content.
And ten years into this thing, it was too late for me to change my mind.
My kids needed their father, and I wasn’t going to take him away from them.
Hell I needed stability and companionship, so I wasn’t going to give that up either.
Eddie wasn’t just right for me, but he was enough.
And I wasn’t letting him go.
And besides, despite it all, I really did love him.
And even though some said that love wasn’t enough, for me it just had to be.
It was enough to make me fight.
It was enough to make me believe.
And most importantly, it was enough to make me stay.
“Baby, I love you. Thank you for this,” Eddie said disturbing my thoughts.
“Give me a kiss,” I said to him and poked out my lips.
I heard him chuckle just before he kissed me and wrapped his arms around me.
My husband.
My protector.
My baby’s daddy.
And my friend.
Only the Man above and I knew the whole truth.
Only I knew that Eddie was the wrong husband.
But that was just something that I had learned to live with.
Deciding to enjoy the moment, I shook away my thoughts, and I managed to join in on the fun.
“Uh oh, come on sis, let me get a dance in,” Polo said, coming out of nowhere.
Generously, Eddie handed me off to his best friend and he started to dance with my friend Patrice, who had made her way back to the country just to celebrate with us.
I shook my head at Polo as the next song started to play, and I laughed at him as he started to dance.
He could barely keep his balance but he was determined on dancing with me no matter what his body was telling him to do.
I danced to the beat, and turned around to cautiously back it up on him.
And that’s when I felt it.
I jumped and hurriedly turned back around to face him.
Polo’s penis had been so hard that I was sure that it had left some kind of bruise as a result of him grinded it up against my left butt cheek.
“You felt that rock didn’t you?” He asked in a whisper.
I looked at him, but he only grinned and walked away.
“Where’s he going?” Eddie asked.
I breathed and turned around with a fake smile.
“I don’t know. I guess he got tired,” I replied and resumed dancing by myself.
What was that all about?
Hours later and as soon as the last guest was out of our driveway, Eddie looked at me with eyes full of lust and I knew what time it was.
Long, passionate sex would have been a great ending to a perfect night but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
At this point I was just hoping to get some type of pleasure out of the whole ordeal.
Eddie locked the front door and grabbed my hand as we ran like teenagers to our bedroom.
He cut on a lamp as I sat on the bed.
Before I c
ould say anything, he pushed me back and I giggled as he tugged at my dress.
“I love you so much Sassi. I really do. These past ten years with you have been like a dream come true. I wouldn’t trade you for the world. You, here with me, loving me, and the kids are the only birthday gifts that I needed,” Eddie said softly.
See, this is why my ass wasn’t going anywhere!
He always had the sweetest, most genuine things to say and the actions to match.
“I love you too,” I said to him and I kissed him.
Eddie kissed me, hard, rough, just like he always did when he had a few drinks.
I already knew that he might not last as long as I wanted him too, but I also knew that with alcohol in his system he was going to want to be freaky; which meant that he was going to go down town on me.
Translation…I was going to get one heck of an orgasm tonight!
Finally!
Without hesitating, Eddie took off my panties and he kissed different parts of my body until he made his way down to Pussycat Lane.
And she was waiting for him too.
It had been maybe two weeks since he’d ate my cookies and I almost exploded from just the first lick.
Eddie licked, sucked, nibbled and kissed my most valuable possession and I felt as though I was about to lose it.
I held his head firmly in place as I howled to the moon in satisfaction and appreciation.
There was nothing like it.
I started to call him Daddy as he licked harder and faster.
My body temperature was way up past normal and I could feel my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
My legs started to shake and I started to curse.
Yes!
Yes!
Wait a minute…
Nooooo!
The noise startled both of us and we both jumped.
“I’m sorry. I thought this was the bathroom,” Polo slurred.
What?
What the hell was he still doing here?
Immediately I tried to cover myself and Eddie sat up in front of me.
“Polo I thought you were gone? What are you still doing here?” Eddie asked him.
“I rode here with you remember? You didn’t let me drive because you said that I would be drinking. I’ve been sitting in the backyard for hours. I think I fell asleep for a minute. I had to pee so I came in. Guess I could’ve have went outside huh? But I was looking for the bathroom. Bro, my bad,” Polo said turning his back and staggering out of our bedroom.
Eddie looked at me.