Bi-Satisfied Read online

  “I hope everything is okay with your mom,” Sadi said. “Took you a while.”

  Summer attempted to smile. “Yeah. She’s fine. We like to talk. Run our mouths about nothing and everything at the same time.”

  “Oh, I know how that is. Did you see Michael out there anywhere?” Sadi asked Summer. I saw something change in Sadi’s features. The atmosphere suddenly felt cooler.

  Summer shook her head. “No.”

  “He left right after you did.”

  “So?”

  “So did you happen to run into him . . . Freckles?” Sadi said.

  Summer’s head jerked back. Sadi smiled, like she was about to reveal something Summer wanted to keep secret. I cleared my throat and leaned forward, then leaned to the side to look at Summer. A part of me wanted to see how she would handle this situation. It could have been my jealousy from seeing that she had to have Michael one last time. She just couldn’t let go without that last hit.

  “Don’t call me that,” Summer told her.

  “Why? Isn’t that what Michael calls you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “No. I don’t.” Summer’s whole face had turned red. She started rocking back and forth like she was Miss Sophia from the Color Purple.

  “I saw he liked a few of David’s pictures with you in them on Facebook, and now I know why. Does David know you’re fucking his best friend? Does David know about the naked pictures you send my husband? I looked through my husband’s phone. You never had your face in shots, but he calls you Freckles. Has the woman in the naked pictures saved in his phone under ‘Freckles’ I find it funny you have freckles, so don’t lie, either,” Sadi said. Then she turned to me. “They’ve been exchanging messages since the first time he was here. That’s why I asked you if you were sure they hadn’t had sex. It was her who answered his phone. As soon as she opened her slut mouth, I knew it was her. Did you know?”

  I wouldn’t answer her question. Wouldn’t tell her that not only did I know Michael and Summer were fucking, but that I had fucked him too. I’d fucked all three of them. Sadi was treading down a road on which she would be the only one with egg on her face in the end.

  Summer was about to respond when Michael came walking back into the establishment. He cast a smirk in my direction as he slid a hand down his chest and abs. He rubbed his hands together like he was Birdman from Cash Money.

  “If I were you, Sadi, I wouldn’t travel down this road,” Summer told her coolly.

  “Don’t threaten me,” Sadi responded in kind.

  I didn’t let on to Michael that he was walking into a shit storm. The smug look on Michael’s face disappeared when he heard the women’s exchange of words. He was no longer the ringleader of this circus.

  “That’s not a threat, I assure you,” Summer retorted. “Stop while you’re ahead.”

  “Or what?” Sadi snarled.

  “You have two very beautiful children, Sadi. Gemma’s the oldest, right?” Summer said.

  Something passed between the two women. Whatever it was, it was enough for Sadi to turn her lips down in a scowl that made Summer bristle. I knew that throwing kids into the mix was a low blow, but I didn’t know why she was mentioning Sadi and Michael’s kids.

  I stood, then pulled at Summer’s arm, which she snatched away. She had something to prove now. Wanted Sadi to know that she, too, knew something she wasn’t supposed to know.

  “Summer, get up. Let’s go,” I told her.

  “No! Since Sadi wants to throw stones at glass houses, let’s,” Summer huffed.

  Michael stepped in. “Summer, stop.”

  “No. Fuck that,” Sadi quipped. “Don’t tell her to stop. Let her keep going. This is what happens when you cheat on me with trash.”

  We had an audience. People were watching on in curiosity as a live episode of Cheaters played out in front of them.

  Michael’s features contorted. Aggravated, he ran a hand down the waves on his head, then blew out steam. “Sadi, why are you doing this? For what reason do you have to do this?” he asked her through gritted teeth.

  “Because you’re fucking this spotted-face black bitch and you have the nerve to act as if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Only trash would—”

  “I told you I wasn’t cheating on you, and you still insist on doing this shit!” he fussed, interrupting her.

  “And what about the tramp at the shop in Staten Island?” she asked him.

  Not to be outdone with the insults, Summer thundered, “Only trash would what? Fuck her man’s best friend?” Whatever Sadi had been about to say got caught in her throat. “Keep going, Sadi. Please keep going,” Summer snarled, daring her.

  Sadi cast a treacherous glance at me, then looked back at Summer. I could tell Sadi wanted to call Summer’s bluff, but something Summer had said stopped her. Michael kept cutting his eyes at Summer. Something between them was going unspoken.

  “You think anything you’re going to say is going to rattle me? Think just because you try to bully me into silence that I’m still not going to call you on your shit?” Sadi asked her. “The fact of the matter is, you’re still”—Sadi stepped around the table—“fucking my husband, bitch!” She swung at Summer. The slap caught Summer’s cheek before I could pull her back.

  Sadi swung twice more but missed, as Michael had grabbed her, and I had Summer. Sadi’s second and third blows caught me in the back. Summer struggled in my hold. Tried her best to get at Sadi, but I had seen enough. Had remained silent long enough. As I held her, Summer kicked her legs like a child would if she was having a tantrum.

  “David, let me go,” she pleaded. “I didn’t put my hands on her, and she fucking hit me!” she all but screamed. “Please let me go.”

  “No. Chill out, and I mean it. Calm down, pick your shit up, and let’s go,” I told her sternly. “I told you we should leave, but you had to come back and prove something to yourself.”

  “What does any of that have to do with her fucking hitting me?” Summer snapped at me.

  I put her down, turned her to face me. I didn’t let her go though. Michael tried to calm Sadi. He had her wrapped in a bear hug too. There we were, ex-lovers, now referees to the women in our lives. Sadi’s chest heaved, and no matter how I felt, it was clear they loved one another. Michael spoke to her calmly, and she nodded at what he was saying. She was apologizing for embarrassing him. Sadi’s handprint look liked it had been stitched to the side of Summer’s face. Water trickled down Summer’s cheeks.

  The manager of the Ham Bar came over to me and Summer and asked her if she wanted him to call security. She declined. He then walked over and told Michael that he and Sadi had to leave. I looked down at Summer, who was glaring over at Sadi.

  “She fucking hit me, David,” Summer said again. “She hit me,” she kept saying, like she couldn’t believe it.

  “You fucked her husband,” I told her.

  “So. Bitch hit me. Snuck me.”

  “You fucked her husband.”

  “So did you. She didn’t hit you. She hit me!”

  “She doesn’t know I stuck my dick in her husband. She knows he stuck his dick in you. Your karma.”

  Summer’s breathing was rapid and harsh. Like that of an asthmatic gasping for air.

  “Let me get my phone and purse so we can leave.”

  “You’re chill?”

  She nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going to go swinging, right? We’re going to leave this time, right?”

  She nodded.

  “This is done?”

  “Bitch slapped me!”

  “Summer?”

  “What?”

  “Is it done?”

  “Yeah.”

  I slowly uncoiled my arms and let her go. “Get your stuff.”

  Her phone and purse were on the floor near the table. Michael was grabbing his wif
e’s sweater and her purse. Summer stalked over, then kneeled to pick up her things.

  I saw it all happen in slow motion.

  I called out to Summer. Tried to rush in to pull her back. Before I could, Sadi gave a running punt kick like she was the star kicker for the Atlanta Falcons. Blood splattered as Summer fell back on the floor. Sadi had delivered a kick that knocked Summer’s head back.

  Summer

  Before I could figure out what was going on, one of her feet connected with my face and my head fell back against the floor. I heard the screams of other patrons, but all I saw was flashes of light behind my eyelids. My eyes fluttered open as I heard people scream some more and chairs dance around. Something hot burned my eyes as it dripped rapidly into them. David called my name, but I felt as if someone was pulling me in and out of consciousness.

  “Sadi, what the fuck!” I heard Michael yell. “Why did you do that? Are you out of your damned mind!”

  “I almost smacked the shit out of a woman,” I heard David tell Michael. “You better get her the hell up out of here!”

  “Don’t threaten my wife!” Michael snarled in return.

  “Fuck you! I let her get away with that shit twice now. I won’t again.”

  Just moments before, Michael and I had been sexing like crazed high school teenagers, and now he stood there, defending his wife. As his wife had sat next to him, he’d texted me and asked me to meet him in the lobby, because he wanted to talk. Wanted to say good-bye properly. I’d told him to follow me to the stairwell. Knew from being there earlier with David that it would be a safe spot. We never did get a chance to talk. Not verbally, anyway. . . We talked without words. Did the kind of talking that Sadi had hinted at earlier, when she all but told David he could have her.

  “Maybe I am out of my mind, but you’re not going to disrespect me in my face, Mike. It’s one thing to have your whore all the way across town and to fuck her in the business I helped you to build. It’s another to walk your black ass back in here, smelling like this cunt,” Sadi said calmly.

  She was calm. She had kicked the piss out of me, and yet she was placid. Seriously, I thought I’d felt urine trickle down my thighs after she kicked me. David was talking to me. I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. It was all a blur.

  “Summer, baby, talk to me,” he said.

  Took me a minute to get my bearings. Even longer to see the emerald-colored eyes glaring at me. I sat up with the help of David. He pulled his shirt off and placed it against my eye to stop the blood from trickling down. I sat there for a moment. My whole world was still spinning. Sadi’s look was a smug one. She stood there with her arms folded across her chest.

  People had surrounded me. Many of them were asking if I was okay. The manager was back to tell me that this time he was calling security. An elderly black man rushed over to help David out as he tended to me.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” a woman asked me as she handed David napkins.

  I couldn’t nod my head or anything. I was too dizzy to do so. “You can call security!” Sadi yelled. “She’s about to need them in a minute since she’s fucking my husband!”

  The eyes of the woman who’d joined in helping me widened. The look on her face went from apologetic to accusatory as she gave me the once-over. I could spot a hurt woman from a mile away. It was obvious that she’d been hurt by a man in the same fashion as Sadi had. It was written all over her face. She turned her lips down as she walked off.

  David helped me to my feet with the help of the elderly black man. I staggered and stumbled a bit. Spotted Sadi across from me.

  She placed her hands on her shapely hips as she inhaled and exhaled hard. Water was in her eyes, but she shed no tears. She looked like a woman who still had some fight left in her. An angry black woman trapped in a white woman’s body. I wanted to ask her why she felt the need to be so holier than thou. How in the hell did she justify being so angry at me when she had been lying for ten years? The woman staring me down didn’t look like she wanted to talk, though. And I, for one, wasn’t in the mood to talk, either. That bitch had given me a running punt kick to the head. I dropped my purse I’d never been confronted by an angry wife. No matter how many married men I’d had sex with, not one wife had come to confront me.

  David had told me not to retaliate. Had kept me from putting Sadi on her ass when she attacked me the first time. It put me back in a space and a time when my parents told me to turn the other cheek. When the white girls at school would pick on me, talk about my hair and my features, my thick lips, my freckles, and my high cheekbones, my parents would always tell me I had to be bigger than they were. Well, I’d run out of cheeks to turn.

  I’d taken so much shit when I was a kid and throughout my teenage years from girls like Sadi that there was no way in hell I was going to let that bitch kick me and get away with it. Not to mention that I kept looking at her and imagining her walking around, carrying David’s child once upon a time. Thought back to all the insults earlier. Remembered her look of longing and lust when she looked at David.... Before logic kicked in, I rushed that Amazon. Dodged David, who was trying to grab me. I almost fell because of my head spinning, but my adrenaline and anger kept me afoot.

  Even though he tried, Michael couldn’t hold me and his wife. It was my turn to deliver a kick, and when I did, it landed right in her pussy. She toppled over, and as I tried to get around Michael, I grabbed a handful of her hair. Delivered a punch that knocked that smug look right off her face. That was the only hit I got in, though. As angry as I was, I couldn’t come between a man and the woman he loved. Michael shoved me backward, and I fell hard on my ass again. His eyes had a look that told me that just as David had felt like putting Sadi on her ass for kicking me, he was seconds away from doing the same thing to me. I watched from the floor as he grabbed his wife around her waist and headed toward the exit. I could only imagine that he was taking her to the suite where he, David, and I had all been intimate all those days.

  I saw a blur moving past me. Had forgotten David was still there, because in my anger all I had thought about was knocking the shit out of Sadi. His face was contorted, like he was seconds away from snapping. Before I could get up, David rushed at Michael. The punch he threw almost leveled Michael. Michael dropped Sadi to the floor.

  “You have to be out of your fucking mind to put your hands on her like that!” David shouted at Michael.

  Michael picked himself up, threw a punch at David that rocked him. I saw when the anger in David took over his common sense. Had seen him get mad only once before. He’d had to defend my honor in that situation as well. I’d never seen him get as angry over anything or anyone else. I was his weakness. I was his strength. He’d told me that many times.

  David, wait,” I pleaded as I rushed behind him.

  He didn’t hear me, though. He was on a mission. Traded punches with Michael until Michael grabbed him. Tried to pick David up and slam him down, but it didn’t work. David had been in hostile situations for years, before his education had afforded him the luxury of leaving it all behind. All the fight he had in him was street level. He was a street fighter who had perfected the art so well, he could fight with an aggression that would put the most skilled of boxers on their asses. This time was no different. Michael didn’t win the last fight they’d had. He wouldn’t win this fight with David, either.

  I tried to rush in and grab David’s arm as he charged Michael again. Sadi’s eyes widened as she watched on. The manager had said, “Screw security,” and had yelled to the bartender to call the police. The elderly gentlemen stepped in between Michael and David. Got punched a few times but managed to get them apart with the help of the manager.

  “David, stop!” I yelled. “That’s enough. They’ve already called the police, baby, please,” I cried.

  He spit blood on the floor. He was still angry enough to kill a motherfucker, but lucid enough to hear my voice. Only when David looked down and saw the tears in my eyes did he stop
. He breathed like he was spitting fire. His eyes watered; lips were turned down in a scowl, like he had something foul in his mouth. Michael’s face was bloodied. I turned away from him. Too embarrassed to look at the mess David had made of him.

  I didn’t want David to go to jail. I didn’t want to go, either, for that matter, but David had much more to lose than I did. I couldn’t stand the thought of him losing all he’d built for himself because of what was happening. There we were, four educated people acting like we had nothing to lose. I grabbed my purse, my phone, David’s keys, and hurriedly walked behind David as he left the bar. One of the hostesses led us to a bathroom for employees, where David snatched his ripped T-shirt over his head, then punched the bathroom door so hard, his hand started to bleed.

  I jumped at the sound. He was silent. Silent and deadly. For a while, all he did was stare at me in the mirror. He looked at the gash over my eye, which made me take notice. I was still bleeding and had forgotten about my own injury. My eye had swelled. That I could feel. I walked over to the sink, where David was, grabbed a paper towel, and tried to wipe the blood from his lip, but he moved his head.

  “Go stand over there,” he demanded.

  “Let me help you,” I said. I was nervous. My voice was shaky because of the edginess in his voice. He was pissed, and this time I knew nothing I could say would change it.

  “Get the fuck over there, Summer. Just move. Move away from me.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “You just had to go there—”

  “She fucking kicked me in the head!” I said, cutting him off. “One slap I could let go, but she kicked me in my fucking head, David. Look at it!”

  “This shit is always about you. The past eight fucking years have been about you and the bullshit you’ve taken me through. Everything I am, everything I’ve become in the past eight years is because of you! When are you going to make anything about me, huh?” he snapped at me.

  His voice was so loud, I was sure people could hear us through the door. Tears burned my eyes, the injured one more so than the other. Maybe I could have let it go and let David take me away from the madness. But she had slapped me, and then she had kicked me. Kicked me like a kicker kicked the ball when his three points were all that was needed to win the Super Bowl.