by Turner, Xyla
He nodded his head, walked to Bernie, gave her a long kiss with a tight squeeze of her ass and carried Junior to the door, where he whispered something about taking care of Mommy and Godmommy. Oh, and that he was the man of the house.
Junior took this very seriously, as he marched back over to Bernie and said, “Mommy, please sit and put your feet up, so I can rub them.”
We burst out laughing at the little tot, but Bernie went and sat her pregnant ass down. Her son was doing what he had seen his father do many times.
I, on the other hand, was still reeling from Trent’s words, and I was standing in the very spot he left me in. He wanted me to be sure about Duncan. It wasn’t just a fling or a fuck. I was falling for the complicated man. He had shown me more attention and love than any man had. Maybe it was true that a woman looked for her father because that is where they learned to love first. My dad was the fucking best, and I loved him deeply, and missed him even more.
An hour later, the house phone rang, and Bernie confirmed it was Trent. She immediately held out the phone for me.
“Hey, Trent. What’s up?” I asked.
“So, tell me what happened with the kiss.” His tone was just as serious as it was earlier with me.
I told him everything that happened and how I nearly forgot about it because it wasn’t that serious. It was two people kissing.
Trent sighed into the phone. “The press is turning it into an entire media frenzy for the MeToo movement. The way you backed away and made a face, it is being made that it was not consensual. The way the picture tells the story, and the spin they are putting on it is that Duncan was taking liberties that did not belong to him. It is in the court of public opinion. He does not do well with this, so he is keeping out of sight. That secretary of his is guarding him like her life depends on it, so I haven’t even had a chance to talk with him. I think his friends are back from before. I’ll try to see what I can do, but I’m in meeting for the rest of the day. Are you okay?”
“No.” I was honest. “I’m worried.”
“This shit will blow over,” he assured me. “Put my wife on the phone.”
It was not a question, and I realized this was just who the man was. Bossy as hell. Bernie loved it, so I respected it. They spoke for a few more minutes, then I must have lost track of time, because she shook me and said, “Come on, let’s go to the guest room, so you can get some rest.”
I didn’t want to get any rest, but the pressure and anxiety were weighing heavy on me.
“Fine, but if Duncan calls, can you wake me up?” I asked Bernie. “I’m emailing him now.”
She nodded, and I quickly sent him a message:
Duncan,
I have been trying to reach you but Erin said you don’t want to be seen by anyone. Trent updated me and you know this is bullshit. What do you need me to do?
Please call me. I’m worried.
Portia
That night, I woke up suddenly and saw Bernie was in the guest room with the television on.
“Girl, wake up and look at this shit.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Trent just told me there was a press conference going on.”
On the screen was a woman with red hair, fair skin, and the biggest chest I had ever seen encased in a red turtleneck. Her lips matched her shirt, which made her red hair look fiercer. I instantly did not like her, and her next words solidified my first thought.
“Duncan Lee Morgan is a client of mine, and one way he has overcome anxiety and what others deem as aggressiveness is through therapy. I have his permission to share this information, and I ask that people give him and his loved one’s privacy. We live in this world that wants you to accept people as they are, until they are different from you or express themselves differently. Senator Morgan is the same man that you elected, and he is the type of person that will slave over this job and get it right. He will outrun any candidate, fight for the people of Rhode Island, and make sure people who are different have the same rights as everyone else.” She shifted her weight to the other hip and continued, “Plus normal is overrated.”
The crowd laughed, but I immediately grew angry. Who the fuck was this woman, and why hadn’t Duncan told me anything about her?
A male commentator jumped in, and Bernie turned around to face me. She must have thought the same thing I did because she whispered, “What in the actual fuck?”
“Exactly,” I hissed back and decided enough was enough. “Did Duncan leave his office? Is he home?”
She looked around, as if she was searching for something then murmured, “Not sure, let me check.”
Once Bernie found her phone, she confirmed he had left, and I was on my way to his place. My best friend did not like that idea and actually called the nanny to come over and watch Junior. I was going over to his house, no matter what.
By the time we arrived, because Bernie didn’t want me to catch a real case, I knocked on the door and though I could hear voices, no one opened it.
The devil came out of me, and I began to pound on the door, yelling, “Open this door. NOW!”
“Girl,” Bernie was whispering. “We are about to go to jail.”
I pounded harder. “I know you’re in there. Open this goddamn door!”
“STOP!” My friend whispered loudly. “Seriously, my husband will lose his fucking mind if he has to pick up his pregnant wife in jail.”
“Bernie, I didn’t tell you to come. Go home. Seriously. I’ll be fine, but he’s going to open this fucking door.”
The door jerked open as soon as I finished the last word in my statement, and there stood the woman who had been at the table in his office a while back.
“Where is he?” I forged inside his place and ole’ girl tried to get in my way, but I hip checked her ass. “Where is he?!?”
I marched toward the bedroom. I saw his damn secretary in my peripheral vision, and she had the nerve to be smirking. I immediately flung the door open to his room and saw the unimaginable. Duncan. In bed. With another woman; the bitch, the redhead was down to her bra and panties hugging him with her legs and arms. Bernie must have been right on my heels because she bumped into me from behind.
“Shit,” she muttered, then she hissed. “Oh, shit.”
My heart shattered, like I felt the pieces of it dropping, as I saw the scene before me, and it branded on my brain. I would never be able to forget every detail of how I was betrayed by the man who made me fall in love with him. Duncan Lee, fucking, Morgan made me fall in love with him, and now he was in bed with another woman, the redheaded bitch from television, the one talking about her goddamn client.
Nope, I did not want to forget.
“Let’s go,” I heard Bernie say, far off in the distance. “This ain’t worth it.”
My friend knew me all too well. While I could be the life of the party, I could also turn one upside down too. The problem with shattered glass was that it was too much to clean up, and as my heart was still crumbling with each new memorized image. I saw him lying there in running pants, a long sleeve t-shirt, socks, and a blanket; it suddenly stopped.
My eyelids blinked twice, then I turned to look at Bernie.
“Let’s go,” she said with sympathetic eyes on me.
I shook my head in the negative, and Bernie went on alert.
“Portia, no,” she whispered. “Come on.”
“No,” I confirmed. “That bitch has to go. Record this.”
Back to my marching, I stomped over to the woman and jerked on her arm, and she fell off the bed and hit the floor hard.
“What in the world?” she exclaimed as she realized she was on the ground, and I was standing over her.
“Get the fuck out!” I exclaimed. “Now!”
“What? Who are you?” She scrambled to a standing position in her white lacey bra and panties.
“You don’t have to worry about who I am, but I know that you need to get the fuck out.” I grabbed what I assumed were her clothes hanging off the
back of the chair and threw them at her. “Now, get.”
She called for the two in the other room. They must have been close by because they were in the doorway when I turned around.
“Who is this?” The woman hissed as if I were a bug or something.
“She is Duncan’s girlfriend,” the man, Charles, said with folded arms.
The woman scoffed, but the secretary, Erin, chimed in, “He never said that. She is his fuck buddy.”
“You have been here for two weeks. What the fuck do you know?” Sophia snapped. “Duncan loves her. He told me himself.”
My head began to spin for a moment because even with all of the hollering, he had not moved. What in the hell was happening, and how did I get here with all this drama and bullshit?
A few months ago, I lived vicariously through my best friend’s whirlwind relationship with a congressman who was a Republican. Yet here I stood in the bedroom of the man I loved when he had just been in bed with another woman. He was a Republican who had a series of issues. He had seen a therapist for these issues, but had never told me about it.
This is not the drama I needed in my life, but it was too fucking late. I turned my head toward the redhead bitch and sneered, “I am not telling you again. Get the fuck out or I am dragging your ass outta here.”
“I suggest you do it,” Sophia chimed in.
“Yeah, for real,” Bernie added with her phone up.
“He is in the middle of intense therapy and should be under the care of a medical physician. He was gearing towards an active meltdown. When you three saw him, I was calming him down,” Big Red stated her case, but I wasn’t here for that.
“Bitch, I don’t give a fuck about what you did. You were in bed with my man, while he was fully dressed, and you were in lacy underwear, with your body wrapped around somebody that does not belong to you. That’s how you perform therapy?” My finger and neck were moving in the way women do when it’s about to go down.
“Well, yeah. Sex therapy.” She nodded as if this was a known fact.
I looked over at Duncan who was still sleeping, and then cut my eyes back to Charles. I moved toward the redheaded bitch, and she took off running for the door, leaving her shoes behind. As I attempted to go after her ass, Bernie stood in front of me and said, “She’s gone. Okay. Duncan needs you now.”
Fuck.
I wanted to see if all that hair was hers or not by yanking it off her big ass head. I stared at my friend for a long time, then nodded to acknowledge her words and get my shit together. Looking around, I pointed to his secretary and yelled, “Give me his phone right now and get the fuck out, too.”
Her eyes grew wide, and she looked as if she were about to say something. I started moving toward her when Charles snatched Duncan’s phone out of her hand and pointed to the door.
“Go,” he said, barring any discussion from the uptight bitch.
She huffed and had the good sense to leave, which was good because she’s been on my list for weeks now.
“Was she really doing sex therapy with him?” I asked Charles, since Sophia hadn’t really said anything else.
He shook his head and said, “I can’t speak for what happened in the past, but that shit didn’t happen tonight. We gave him a sedative because he was not doing well. Erin had his phone and was screening all his calls and visitors. She thought she could handle him, but when Donna started with everything and gave the press conference, he was calling for you, but Erin told him some bullshit, and then reached out for reinforcements.” He sighed. “I should have taken the phone away from her earlier and called, but I didn’t want you to see this.”
He waved his hand around at the mess I walked into.
My heart was still hurting, but the splintering pieces of my shattered proverbial organ were still beating as I tried to take in everything I was hearing and make the right decisions. I had no idea how to calm the savage beast down, but I knew I didn’t want that heifer doing it fully clothed, and damn sure not in her undies. It also wasn’t necessary to have all of these people in Duncan’s bedroom.
“What needs to happen when he’s been in a state like this?” I asked Charles.
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded as if to confirm that what he was about to do was okay.
“Look, he’s my best friend, almost like a brother. I feel partially responsible for him being here. He’s been thrust in the spotlight, and then he doesn’t have his normal routines and systems to keep him grounded. He’s made so much progress over the years. He used to have bi-weekly meltdowns. Like. You. Do. Not. Know. And now he rarely gets them.” He ran his hands through his short, boxed haircut then continued talking. “The therapy sessions were working, the psychotherapy and social skills classes, but then this thing with the sex therapy started. He never talked about it, but we saw the difference. He was interacting better socially, making more eye contact, and having almost no meltdowns. He was easily redirected, which was a godsend. Donna was a nightmare, but this process of getting him in office got rid of her. But, then he had you and…” he paused. “He’s only had two meltdowns. One was because you simply did not know, and the other was because of what was happening with and to you.”
Charles looked at Sophia and shook his head. She turned to me and finally uttered, “He needs to know you are here and not upset with him, and he will be fine.”
Her eyes narrowed, then she finally said what I assumed she had wanted to say all along.
“Duncan is special. He is different, and if you are going to be with him, you need to know about him and his triggers. You’re…you’re his obsession now. Everything is about you, and he will know more about you than your mother will know because you’re his world.”
With her final words, she turned and stormed out of the room, leaving very little doubt that she did not like any of it one bit.
“Don’t mind her,” Charles murmured. “She’s always been fond of Duncan, and he has never shown any interest in her.”
Well then, that would be an issue.
“Bernie, are you going to be okay, going home?” I asked her.
“Yeah, yeah.” She nodded, then held up her phone. “Trent has been texting like crazy, so I’m totally blaming you.”
I laughed, took off my shoes, and climbed in bed in front of Duncan. He was out like a light, but I snuggled in under his arm and closed my eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
Portia
A gasp escaped me as I jolted awake, startled by what was happening.
It was hard for me to breathe. I kept trying to catch or inhale deeply with no luck. A noise startled me, and I realized what was taking place, Duncan was hugging me. Tightly.
“Duncan,” I said with my mouth pressed to his shoulder blade.
It was impossible to move my head back to look up at him because his large hand was clasped around my neck, pushing me into him.
“Portia,” he let out with a groan. “I’m sorry.”
“Duncan,” I wheezed. “Can’t…breathe.”
He immediately loosened his grip, then pulled back to look at my face. His eyes were as clear as a still body of water, but they were haunted. After pulling air into my lungs, I smiled at him, and physically felt the muscles in his body loosen.
“Hey handsome,” I said with a rub of his back.
“Another term of endearment, and I still do not have one for you,” he said with a furrow of his brow, but I smoothed it out and kissed him between the eyes.
“Shhh.” I rubbed his back some more. “I want you inside me.”
That comment got me a one-way ticket on my back with him on top of me. He quickly grabbed the condom from his top drawer and stripped off his clothes, while laying them neatly across the bed. I tore mine off, and as he was folding his shirt, I lay back down in utter excitement because I knew he’d drive into me, just like I needed.
“Fuck me, Duncan,” I cooed, and once that condom was secured, he pushed inside, rendering me temporarily speechle
ss.
The man rocked me to Never Never Land, because I was out like a light.
The next morning Duncan woke me up at the crack of dawn, and we ran like we normally do because we needed to stay in the routine, although it was much slower.
I cooked breakfast for him, and he sat at the little kitchen table and explained what happened yesterday.
He was calm, rested, and aware, which was good.
“Reporters were in my face and shoving microphones at me. I was not prepared or in control, like I usually am. I was overloaded with information and began to pace, but Erin pulled me into my office and took my phone. I knew you would be upset and bombarded by reporters too, and I could not be there for you, like your father always was, and this fact added to my distress. Then, Charles and Sophia came and called Donna.” He tapped his spoon for the oatmeal against the table at a steady rhythm while telling the story. “She usually calms me down.”
“Without sex,” I interjected.
Duncan’s eyes met mine, and then he looked elsewhere.
“Are you upset?” he asked.
“Did you have sex with her yesterday or while we have been together?” I asked carefully, as I did not want to set him off, but I also did not want to set myself off with the answer.
He jumped up with pure panic in his eyes.
“I did not. We did not have sex,” he rushed out. “She rubbed my back and recited the constitution to me, as this is a focus of mine.”
“I am not mad, Duncan,” I replied to his words. “I just didn’t know about her.”
He nodded, thought about it, and then replied, “We agreed to not tell anyone about us. I promised, and she swore it too. She gave me the ultimatum of running for office or being with her, and I chose the office. Our relationship was not built on the right foundation. She was my therapist, and I am not sure if she was my friend or simply manipulating me to do what she wanted because she did most of my training.”