by B. M. Hardin
A little too much, but Eddie said to simply accept it, stating that Polo had the money to waste, and that it wasn’t a big deal.
Polo had always said that I would make a good writer because I talked too much, and because I always had an opinion.
I chuckled at how right he was.
From being lost in my thoughts, my two hours of alone time seemed more like ten minutes because soon, Eddie and the kids were walking through the front door.
“I missed you.”
“I believe you,” I chimed flirtatiously to Eddie.
Shortly after, Polo arrived and the rest of the night went by with a breeze.
We ate, laughed, reminisced and managed to have a very good time, which we always did if Polo was there.
The guys had a few drinks and once the kids were off to bed, we continued our conversations about the past.
They talked about childhood memories, and of course old girlfriends and women.
I could tell by the look on Polo’s face that things were about to go left.
And I was right.
“You were supposed to be mine,” Polo said aloud.
I stared at him, and then looked at Eddie who shrugged his shoulders.
“Go on, tell her Eddie. Tell her what you did,” Polo slurred.
He was about two drinks past drunk and from the way that Eddie giggled he wasn’t too far behind him.
“Shut up,” Eddie laughed but I wanted to know what Polo was talking about.
“He stole you from me.”
Eddie chuckled and took Polo’s drink.
But Polo picked up the bottle instead.
“Tell her how you stole her.”
“I didn’t steal her. How can I steal something you never had?”
Okay, so what were they talking about?
I was confused.
“What is he talking about Eddie?”
“Oh, nothing baby. He’s just talking about that night at the bar.”
“Damn right. I noticed you first. I had been looking at you all night and he knew it too. And soon as I took my eye off of him, bam, he was over there sweet talking you or whatever it is that he wanted to call it. Next thing I know, y’all a couple and shit,” Polo proclaimed.
I giggled at the looks on both of their faces at Polo’s comments, but I was definitely thinking about his statement.
What?
I never knew that.
How come Eddie never told me that before?
“You snooze. You lose my brother,” Eddie said and they jumped to another subject.
I found it funny that Polo had been interested in me.
I couldn’t imagine being with someone like him, but then again, like I said, other than his few bad habits, he wasn’t all that bad.
He definitely had the sense of humor and the charm, but Polo was a little too friendly with his penis for my liking.
And as far as I knew, he always had been.
I listened to them cackle for another hour or so and seeing that they were both wasted, Eddie offered Polo the couch but instead he wanted to go home.
So, Eddie asked me to take him.
After making sure that Eddie was fine, I helped Polo out the door and to my car.
He was leaving his car at our house until morning.
I drove slowly, hoping that Polo didn’t become nauseous.
“Polo do you need some air?” I asked him.
“No. I’m not drunk,” he said clearly.
He wasn’t talking all slurred like he had been only moments before.
He wasn’t looking at me, instead he looked straight ahead.
“What do you mean that you’re not drunk?”
“Like I said, I’m not drunk. Tipsy, definitely. But I’m not drunk. Not at all.”
“But you were just drunk a few minutes ago.”
“No I wasn’t. I was never drunk Sassi.”
I looked at him briefly and then back at the road.
Then why had he pretended to be?
He just got weirder and weirder every single day.
“So, you were pretending to be drunk?”
“I guess.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer my question.
Instead, he started talking about something else.
“That night at the bar wasn’t the first time that I saw you. I’d seen you a few times before then. I’d always said that I was going to get up the nerve to talk to you. Just looking at you I could tell that you were different and that when I stepped to you, I had to step correct,” Polo said clearly.
What?
“I told Eddie that night that you were the girl that I had told him about. The girl that I had been afraid to talk to and I have never been afraid to talk to any woman, ever, except for you. It was just something about you. Something about the way you walked and the way you moved. Once, I’d seen you at a gas station and I followed you, just to see where you would go or what you would do next. Just to try to figure you out.”
Ole’ stalking ass!
Strangely, I’d never seen Polo before that night at the bar. He and Eddie were a few years older than I was and I figured that was why I hadn’t seen either of them around prior to that night.
“I saw you walk into the bar that night. It was fate. I just knew that it was fate. I talked about you all night. I kept saying that I was going to make my move but I just needed a few drinks to loosen me up. But after a few drinks, I was in full party mode and my attention was on having a good time. But Eddie knew. He knew that I wanted you. He knew how beautiful you were to me and how scared I had been to approach you. I guess maybe he saw it in you too and strangely he was bold enough to make a move. Even that was a surprise to me.”
I was quiet and I tried to get my thoughts together.
I mean, even if Polo had approached me that night, I doubted that I would have been interested.
He was a player; a ladies man.
He was the type of man that I had been running from back then.
Physically, he was attractive; but there was nothing sexy about a man who boned more women a year than most men did in a lifetime.
STD’s are real and I didn’t want any parts of all of that.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I don’t know. Hell, in the beginning you were pretty much dating me and him anyway.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean after he told me that you guys exchanged numbers, I had no choice but to get over it and see it for what it was. But you know Eddie. You know how he is and he just didn’t think that he had what it takes to make you really want him. He didn’t think that he had the right personality to make you love him. So, he asked for my help.”
You mean to tell me that I had been bamboozled?
Well I’ll be damned!
“I was the one telling him what to say to you. I would be right in front of him, telling him what to say and how to say it. Almost every phone conversation that you had in the beginning, I was around him. Sitting right next to him. Coaching him through it.”
“Stop lying Polo.”
“I’m not lying.”
I was sure that he wasn’t.
That was the sad thing.
“I told him what to wear when he took you out. I told him where to take you and why to take you there. Hell I taught him to pay attention to your body language and when to make the right moves. I did that because he was my friend. I did that because I could see that he really wanted the chance to know you and love you. I did it despite what I felt. And it worked. He hooked you like a fish and you ended up marrying him.”
What kind of mess was this?
Did I feel some kind of way?
Hell yeah, I did.
I mean, it did explain as to why Eddie was a completely different man today than he had been in the very beginning.
I guess he was being the man that Polo had told him to be instead of being himself.
I could only assum
e that once he proposed and I said yes, that he no longer needed Polo’s assistance and he probably didn’t feel the need to have to try so hard anymore.
Now that I was thinking about it, it wasn’t until after he proposed that I really started to feel small feelings that he may not be “the one”.
Eddie was a lot of things, good things, but I knew that what Polo was saying was true.
I guess Polo had just helped make him appealing.
And he had done just that.
I felt deceived.
I even felt a little tricked into loving Eddie but what did Polo want me to do with it?
Why was he telling me all of this now?
“Well, that’s the past. What do you want? A thank you?”
Polo chuckled.
“No. I want you.”
Here we go with this again mess!
And this time I’d heard him loud and clear.
“I loved you first.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
“You didn’t even know me.”
“Doesn’t mean that I didn’t love you.”
“Polo, you can’t say stuff like that. And we both know that that’s really inappropriate to say don’t you think?”
“I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“I thought you just said that you weren’t drunk?”
“And you believed me?”
What?
We pulled up at his house and he didn’t hesitate to get out of the car.
He walked slowly, and I couldn’t help but ask him one last question.
I just had to ask.
“Polo?”
He turned around.
“Do you wish that you had said something to me? That night? Or the times that you’d seen me before?”
I didn’t really know why I wanted to know the answer to that question, but I did.
And I knew that he was going to answer it.
“Every day. Every single day,” he said and he walked away.
I drove off speechless.
Polo used to have a thing for me?
And from the looks of it, maybe he still did.
Or maybe he didn’t.
I was confused.
I debated whether I should inform Eddie of our little discussion.
I was sure that Polo wasn’t supposed to say anything and it made sense as to why Eddie brushed off the topic at dinner.
To be honest, if Eddie had been himself completely, from the very beginning, I was sure that I would have married him.
He was smart, kind, loving, genuine and all of that good stuff, but he wasn’t quite right for me.
We weren’t a perfect fit.
But they didn’t make men these days like Eddie and I wasn’t giving him up.
No other woman was going to get him.
Unless I was dead.
But it does make me wonder.
If Polo had told Eddie what to say and what to do in order to get me and keep me, then who had I really fallen in love with?
Was it Eddie?
Or was it an imitation of Polo?
Polo had definitely dropped one hell of a bomb on me and my heart and mind felt as though they were both about to explode.
I would have preferred for him to have kept that secret between him and Eddie.
But it was out now.
And still there wasn’t a thing that I could do with it.
At the end of the day, I was married to Eddie.
And at that moment, it was clearer than ever.
I wasn’t going to give him up despite the issues that I knew that I could find a way to deal with.
I loved my boring, workaholic, no fun, only good sex with a pill, husband.
Eddie was mine and I was keeping him.
Damn right, I was keeping him.
Most of the men in the world were just like Polo, except for Eddie, and I had him all to myself.
I would be a fool to let him go.
I turned up the radio, shook away my thoughts and I headed home to my husband.
Eddie and I were in this thing until death and I wasn’t giving him up for Polo or anyone else.
Period.
***********************************************
CHAPTER 3
“Hello?”
“Don’t say anything. Just listen. I was just thinking about you. I just needed to hear your voice. I can’t seem to get you out of my mind, no matter how hard I try. It’s wrong, but it feels so right. If only you were mine…bye.”
Polo hung up.
“Who was that honey?”
“I don’t know. Private call again. They didn’t say anything. They just hung up.” I lied.
Why was I lying to Eddie?
I wasn’t sure.
Well, yes I was.
There was no way in hell that I could tell Eddie that it was Polo and tell him what he’d said.
Ever since Polo’s little car ride confession, his behavior towards me had changed yet again.
This time it was in a flirty, obsessive kind of way.
He was becoming more and more inappropriate with me, every day, and he even getting a little touchy feely whenever he could do it without being noticeable.
I would fuss and curse at him, but he found it amusing.
But I knew that it was only an amount of time before Eddie caught his ass.
So I decided that it was time to tell my husband.
Well, kind of.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Polo helped you snag me?”
I tried to sound as though the conversation wasn’t about to turn serious, but it was.
Eddie snickered.
“He told you that?”
“You both did the other night when you were drinking.”
“No, he said I stole you from him. He didn’t say anything about helping me “snag you” as you called it.”
“Yes he did. On the way home he continued with his drunken spat and he mentioned assisting you when it came to dating me. We both know that a drunken man tells no tales so what’s up with that huh?”
“So he gave me a few pointers, so what? I felt that you were a little out of my league. I was so nervous around you and I wanted to make a good impression. So, sure, after he got over the fact that we’d hit it off, I’d asked him for a little advice. Nothing big. Nothing serious. He’s a ladies man, we both know that. So, who better to get advice from when it came to wanting to impress a beautiful lady?”
He said it like it wasn’t a big deal.
I guess it wasn’t all that bad once he’d put it that way.
“Well, since that night, Polo seems to be a little different towards me. Maybe it’s nothing but he has definitely been strange.”
Eddie simply nodded.
“I’ll talk to him.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, but Eddie was done with the conversation.
I didn’t get the chance to give him any details because he walked away.
I was sure that he was going to mention it to Polo but I was also sure that Polo was going to act like he didn’t know what he was talking about.
But, hey, at least I’d tried.
I’d done my part.
That was all that mattered.
Besides, Polo was nothing to worry about.
I was sure of it.
It was Saturday and as Eddie headed to play basketball with Polo and a few of his other friends, I decided to take the kids to the park with one of my best friend’s Micki.
Micki was as crazy as they came and I do mean crazy.
But I loved her to death.
She was that ghetto fabulous friend that was loud and embarrassing half of the time, but you loved her and kept her around because she was extremely loyal and she knew way too much about you and your past.
She knew all of my dirty little secrets and some of them could hurt and destroy some of the people that I loved the most.
So she was stuck
being my friend forever.
It had been a while, and it was time for us to catch up.
Patrice was supposed to have met us there, but she changed her mind saying that she wasn’t in the mood to be around a lot of kids.
I’d actually been friends with Patrice first, and then she introduced me to Micki and all three of us have been so close ever since.
I loved those women unconditionally, and had it not been for them, I would have given up on my marriage and everything else a long time ago.
With the kids dressed, we headed out the door but just as we were backing out, Polo pulled into the driveway behind me.
I sat looking at him from the rearview mirror and soon he got out of his Jag to approach my car.
“Where is Eddie?”
“He went to meet you at the court.”
“He told me to pick him up.”
“I guess he forgot. He drove.”
Polo nodded and spoke to the kids and then he looked at me.
“You look beautiful today as always Sassi,” he whispered.
He was absolutely flirting with me…again!
And I didn’t know how to feel about it.
He was my husband’s best friend, but he wasn’t acting like it.
“Look Polo, I don’t know what has gotten into you lately, but I love Eddie okay?”
“I love him too.”
“You’re not acting like it. He’s your best friend, you know.”
“I know that.”
“Then stop coming on to his wife.”
“I’m coming on to the woman that was supposed to be my wife. You fell in love with me, not him. You’re just to blind to see that. But fine. Okay.”
And with that, he headed back to his car and drove away.
I turned a movie on the car DVD for the kids to keep them quiet so that I could sit and get my thoughts together for a second.
Polo was crazy.
He was absolutely insane.
I couldn’t believe the things that he actually let come out of his mouth.
I was not supposed to be his wife.
Where in the hell was he getting that from?
Sure, he had been behind Eddie’s actions, and comments in the beginning, but I never would have chosen him over Eddie.
Right?
No, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have.
I mean, was he attractive?
Sure.