“We met briefly on the same day I met Dre. I don’t remember anything about him besides those bright gold teeth and the dollar sign he had engraved on one of them.”
I laughed, and so did Ryan.
“Mike is, well... He’s a mixture of a hard head and Dre’s past.” He stopped talking like his words had satisfied my curiosity about the type of person Mike was. When he saw that they hadn’t, he started back talking. “I don’t like discussing other people because I believe you should make your own opinion about them with your first impression. You don’t need to enter a new relationship biased from what I told you.”
“Fuck that, tell me. If he’s going to be living under my roof for months, I need to know all I can about him. I’m still going to have my own opinion about him. Whether my opinion agrees with yours is what will be questioned.”
Ryan looked me in my eyes as if he was trying to make sure that I really wanted to know. Then he called the waiter over and ordered himself a beer.
“Since when does Drill Sergeant Ryan drink beer? In three weeks, all I’ve seen you drink is water and fruit juices.”
He blushed a little as the waiter returned with his long neck. He took a deep swallow, eyeing me out of the corner of his eye, and said, “I was on duty these last three weeks. When I’m not working, I’m drinking, and...” He leaned over the table, closer to me. “I might just roll up and take one to the head when I make it home tonight.”
Now, I was in disbelief. I’d wanted to smoke all this time, but thought I was in the presence of some Goody Two-shoes cop that would arrest me for possession if he saw me with a sack. I should have known he smoked weed if he was as close to Dre as they both had said. When Ryan saw the initial shock of his last words had worn off my face, he picked up where he had left off with telling me about Mike.
“To be blunt with you, Savannah, I don’t trust dude. I don’t doubt he can and will protect you at all. It’s all the other shit about him I don’t like. He’s not real about his. He called himself making a career out of selling drugs, but he’s a small-timer, and it’s in his head that he’s one of the biggies in the game. He rides around flossing and fronting like he’s the man, but if it weren’t for Dre keeping him on his feet and out of shit, he’d probably be dead or in jail somewhere with all the lying he does. From what I know, he and Dre have been down since elementary, and Dre’s been saving his ass since then too. Dre looks at him as his friend because of the number of years he’s known him, not the quality of the friendship. Dre says he’s a friend, but I think he’s a foe.”
“Well, damn, is that what you’ve gathered from him? You think he’ll smile in Dre’s face and stab him in the back at the same time, huh?”
Ryan kept drinking his beer, but he was nodding his head at the same time.
“Do you think I’ll be safe?” I asked because I wanted to know the truth, and it didn’t seem like he’d hesitate to give it to me straight.
“Like I said, you’ll be safe without a doubt, especially if he wants the pay Dre promised him for protecting you. All I’m going to say is sleep with your bedroom door locked and don’t get friendly with him. He’s a snake, regardless of whether Dre sees it.”
We left the conversation about Mike at that. Then Ryan ordered another beer. The live band had B. B. King’s dance floor packed as people danced to the sound of the blues blaring through the speakers. Ryan saw me watching the dancers and moving to the beat, so he grabbed my hand and walked me over to the floor.
“Come on, Savannah, I promised Dre I’d show you a good time.”
We danced to three songs consecutively, then grabbed our belongings and headed out the door. I did have a nice time with Ryan, and he was actually a cool guy when he wasn’t being an asshole to protect me. I wondered what I should expect from Mike. Ryan said he was sure I’d be safe in Mike’s protection, especially if he wanted the money Dre promised him. That made me wonder just how much Dre would spend on protecting his woman.
As Ryan opened the door of my car for me, I asked, “How much is Dre paying y’all for protecting me?”
I didn’t think Ryan would answer the question by the way he looked at me, but he did.
“Me? Nothing. That’s my boy, and, hell, I didn’t want to spend the holidays alone. But as for Mike, he’s paying him too much.”
“What’s too much to pay for someone to protect your wife?”
“There’s not a price that’s too much to pay when it comes to protecting someone you love. That’s not what I meant by that.”
“Okay, then help me to understand how you meant it,” I said, giggling to keep the mood we were having from changing.
“Mike is in debt to Dre, and the number is too great to even describe in money. The problem with that is, Mike knows he’s in debt, and Dre refuses to open his eyes to see it. Broken loyalty can cost people millions, but in the life we live, the only way to pay that type of debt is with your life.”
We drove fifteen minutes to a small city next to Nashville called Madison and pulled into an apartment complex. Ryan sent a text, then got out of the car. About five minutes later, Mike came walking out with four large duffle bags, and I popped my trunk. I couldn’t hear the conversation that was going on between the two because I had my music on. I didn’t want to make it obvious that I was trying to listen in by turning it down, but something was wrong. By the body language between the two, it looked more like an argument than a conversation. When they finished almost ten minutes later, Ryan sat back in the front passenger seat, and Mike hopped in the back, ready to spark up a conversation.
“What’s up, Savannah? You ready for this little adventure we going on ’til my boy gets out?” Then out of nowhere, he screamed, “Free my nigga, Dre!” He started laughing like he was tickled by his own words.
I looked at Ryan, then glanced over my shoulder to get a good look at Mike. I couldn’t see him that well because it was the end of the sunset, but from what I could tell, he was high. He had a weed high, and there was a good chance that he was drunk as well. His eyes were bloodshot red and low to where they almost looked closed. Even though it wasn’t cold in Nashville, Mike had on an ankle-length black leather jacket, a button-up brown and cream shirt that I bet was long-sleeved, a pair of brown corduroy pants, and short-laced, untied, chocolate-brown boots. Sweat beads were popping up all over his forehead, an indication that he was hot, but yet, he didn’t take the jacket off.
“Hey, Mike,” was all I mustered up to say.
“It’s Mike’s birthday today, Savannah, and as you can see, he started celebrating it already.” Ryan was pissed off and not trying to hide it, but I understood why. By the same token, I couldn’t allow myself to be mad at Mike for being under the influence. It was his birthday, and I’m sure babysitting his best friend’s fiancée wasn’t the way he wanted to spend it.
“Dirty thirty in this bitch, Savannah, and we partying in the ‘A’ tonight. You gon’ shake it with me, right?” Mike started dancing around in the backseat to give his definition of “shaking it” to me. It was funny, to say the least.
I looked at Ryan before answering and thought I should say what best suited him while he was in the car with us. “I might have a drink with you at the apartment in honor of your birthday. My thirty-plus-one is in three weeks.”
We made to the jailhouse parking lot to retrieve Ryan’s car, and he nudged me to get out with him. When we made it out of earshot of Mike, he said, “Here’s my number. Call or text me anytime you need me, and I’m on my way. I know it’s that fool’s birthday, but don’t let him do a lot of partying and drinking tonight. He’s supposed to be protecting you. He’s a paid employee of y’alls, not a visiting friend. Make sure he doesn’t forget that. I’ll be checking in on you.” He leaned in and gave me a peck on my cheek. “You be careful and keep going to the range daily. Make sure you get Savannah’s Bitch registered to you Monday, even if you have to take a few hours off work. Get it done!”
The ride to Atlanta w
as eventful, to say the least. We weren’t on the interstate more than ten minutes before Mike was taking a swig out of the bottle of vodka he had hidden in his jacket pocket. When he saw me watching him, he held the bottle in front of me. “You want a swallow?”
At my decline, he started running his mouth about everything. He started with talks of his favorite liquors to places he’d fucked while he was drunk and even started naming the women he fucked while drunk. This went on for about an hour into the ride before he scared the shit out of me by begging me to pull over on the interstate.
“Savannah, pull over quick. I gotta pee, and a nigga can’t hold it no more. Pull over.”
He didn’t have to ask again, because there was no way I was going to sit back and let him spray his urine around my new car. After he made that initial request, it seemed like the bathroom breaks came every thirty minutes that followed. This made an already long ride home even longer. We needed gas, so I pulled over at a truck stop about an hour away from our destination and filled up. There was a Cajun chicken fast-food restaurant conjoined to it that I had eaten at before, and I decided to grab something to eat while we were there.
“Are you hungry, Mike?” I asked as he pumped my gas, expecting him to say no because he was drinking.
“Hell yeah, I’m hungry. I’ll take a few pieces of chicken. Do you mind if I hit this blunt a few times in your car before I come in?”
“Hell yeah, I mind,” I snapped at him. “You can go over there and smoke while I grab us both a box to go. What sides and drink do you want?”
I pointed him to an open field I had referenced behind the truck stop, took his order, and walked back into the gas station. Dre had warned me that Mike would be riding dirty, but how dirty was he? I had assumed dirty meant an unlicensed gun, but I guess dirty meant drugs too. I got our food to go so I could hurry up and get him back to the apartment with all his illegal paraphernalia. Mike ate everything in his box, including scraping up the crumbs from his biscuit. Then he went straight to sleep. I had to listen to him snoring loudly the rest of the ride home. I don’t know how Dre thought this was going to work if this is how Mike acted all the time.
I was tempted to leave him asleep in my car when we made it to my apartment. If it weren’t for not knowing what he had in those bags in my trunk, I wouldn’t have gotten him up. When we made it inside, I pointed him to the guest room while I went to use the bathroom in my bedroom. I kicked off my heels, rubbed my feet for a little bit, and threw on my house slippers before heading back to the living room. In less than five minutes, he had emptied the contents of two of the four bags he had brought with him across the living-room floor, had left the toilet seat up in the hallway bathroom, and was in the guest room playing rap music on his phone while he ironed a pair of jeans on my carpeted, although bare, floor.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? We’re not in a fraternity, and this ain’t no dorm room. If you don’t clean that shit up in my living room, put the toilet seat down after making sure you flushed, and get a towel or ask for my ironing board to put under them jeans, I’m dropping your ass off at the Greyhound station. I don’t give a fuck if it’s your birthday or that I need your protection. You ain’t coming in here, fucking my shit up.”
He turned his music down and eyed me for a second. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I knew what I was. The thought of having to use my brand-new Glock came to mind. He walked past me, headed to the hallway bathroom, and said, “My nigga Dre said you could be a bitch about dumb shit.”
Seconds later, I heard the toilet flush and watched him start picking up his shit in the living room. I wasn’t going to babysit him as he cleaned up until he continued to talk shit.
“It’s my motherfucking birthday, and I want to go out tonight. It’s already ten o’clock with your slow-driving ass. You don’t even have furniture in this bitch, yet, and you acting like a nigga fucked your shit up. Keep talking shit, and I’m gon’ leave yo’ ass here while I go party tonight by myself.”
Who did this drunken motherfucka think he was talking to? Angels must have been on his side because my cell phone started ringing before I could curse his ass out. It was Dre.
“Dre, you need to talk to your boy before I put his ass out tonight.”
“What? What happened, baby?”
I told Dre what he did and said and included the bitch he had already managed to call me.
“Put that nigga on the phone.”
Dre was hot, and I’m sure Mike was about to hear it. I handed him the phone and stood back. I wanted to hear what the bitch had to say now.
“Hello,” he yelled into the phone. “My nigga, Dre. Huh? Naw. Man, it’s my birthday, and little David and the rest of them niggas had brought me some drank and shit before we left...”
He got quiet for a while, then started laughing and shaking his head. “That’s what I thought when I saw them niggas too. Ha-ha. Yep... Yep, but we straight up in here. Yo’ gal got mad at me for fucking up her living room with all this nice-ass invisible furniture she got in it. I’m cleaning my shit up now, my nigga. You got you a handful you’re about to marry, but she seems like she’s cool. Her ass might be detoxing from that military shit your boy Ryan be on.” He fell silent and then broke out in laughter. “Yeah, I won’t fuck up all this expensive shit she has in here. Okay, okay... be easy.”
Mike handed me back the phone and continued cleaning up his mess. I was pissed because their phone conversation sounded more like happy times than Dre checking his boy for disrespecting me.
“What!” I yelled into the phone at the sound of Dre saying my name.
“Ay, don’t be saying ‘what’ to me like that. That nigga Mike is drunk. He ain’t really like that. Let him enjoy his day, and tomorrow, you’ll see how he really is. Stop getting mad and tripping. Where do you plan on taking him tonight?”
I didn’t plan on taking his ass nowhere but the Greyhound station. It would be like Dre to want me to babysit his drunken-ass best friend. It’s going to pain me to do it, but as his wife, I guess I have to.
“I didn’t know I had to take him out until now. I don’t know where we’ll end up going, but I promise you it won’t be nowhere far because he’s fucked up, Dre. If we get out here, and he acts a fool, I’m leaving him.”
There was a click, and then the phone hung up. I looked at the time on my phone. It read eleven o’clock. Dre’s phones got cut off at ten, and he was an hour behind me.
“Be ready to go in thirty minutes, or we ain’t going nowhere,” I said, rolling my eyes at him before I headed to my room.
Thirty minutes later, he was sitting like an Indian on my living-room floor drinking out of his vodka bottle with a blunt full of weed behind both of his ears. I walked over to him, snatched one of his blunts, and smelled.
“Is this weed only?”
He looked at me like I were crazy, then said, “Hell yeah, that’s weed only. That’s my bitch Kesha in that blunt you holding. I don’t smoke bullshit.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Give me a lighter.”
“Aw shit, I forgot you blew trees. That’s how I met your thick ass, and I fucked around and sent you to Dre. That nigga owe me for that one. You could have been my girl.”
He dug around in his pants pockets, then handed me his lighter. I fired it up and inhaled. It was Kesha, all right. I hit the blunt twice more, then handed it to him. We smoked the whole thing in silence, then left. I hadn’t smoked since the night I had smoked with Dre over two months ago, and I was high. Saying I was high was candy-coating the truth. The truth was that I was floating on clouds. I decided that a club full of loud music and people was too much to deal with. I needed something more private. I needed somewhere I could sit down, have a drink or two, and relax. That’s how we ended up in the VIP lounge at the strip club.
I still don’t recall how I ended up in the men’s bathroom, gap-legged on the sink rubbing my pussy all over Mike’s face like a washrag while he licked my
clit and stuck his tongue in and out of my hole or how we made it back to my apartment to fuck on the kitchen counter. What I did remember was he worked that dick good, and he was, hands down, the owner of the biggest dick I had ever encountered.
“You fucked up. This could have been your pussy,” I whispered in his ear as we switched positions on the countertop to allow me to sit on it.
“It can still be my pussy. Fuck you mean? Don’t it feel like your dick?”
“It feels like my dick right now.”
“It can be your dick until that nigga gets out, and the way he lives his life, every time he goes back in that bitch.”
“Sounds good.”
“It is good. You feel that dick in you?”
I started grinding on it until I could feel him in my guts and then slid up to the head of it slowly before dropping down to repeat the action. After the fifth go-around, I jumped off of it, flipped my body, and sat my pussy in his mouth like Dre had mentioned earlier that day as I sucked my fluids off of him.
“Hell yeah, suck all of this dick like it’s yours while I suck on this phat-ass pussy. Yeah, you my bitch now, and you gon’ do what the fuck I tell you to do. Bust on my tongue, bitch.”
His voice made me want to get nastier with him than I had ever been with anybody. It was rougher and heavier accented than Dre’s, so when he said anything to me, my body shook. I wanted to show him why Dre had chosen me and make him jealous of what his best friend had for the rest of his life. Mike was fucking my high down, and whenever I noticed it, I grabbed my glass, took a swig, and made him light up another blunt. Those sober moments let the guilt of what I was doing come in, but it was already too late to stop. I let my high boost back up and then vowed after fucking him until my thighs and everything between them went numb that I’d never do it again.
I slept in all day Sunday, trying to avoid him and the awkwardness that would follow. Around five o’clock that evening, I heard him leave from the front door. I dashed to the kitchen and grabbed enough food to make it through the night before he made it back. I heard him come back at around eight o’clock. I wondered where he had gone but wasn’t curious enough to find out. Around ten o’clock, I heard Mike knock on my bedroom door, but I pretended to be asleep.
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