She picked up a scented crystal, sniffed, and put it back down. “So, essentially you’re saying that you didn’t believe me? You don’t think I was coherent enough to mean that I was yours?”
“You told me your pussy was mine,” I said as I made a purchase, not caring that the cashier at the Aroma Paradise Bar was staring, wide-eyed. “I was so deep inside you, I was breathing for you. You gave me your sex, but do I have you?”
Summer swallowed slowly and licked her lips. My words had gotten to her. “Really, David?”
“Seriously, Summer.”
“I guess I could ask you which you were asking for.”
“I was asking for you, all of you, which includes your sex.” My hand cupped her love below. She inhaled in surprise. “Mind.” I kissed her left temple, then her right. “Body.” I placed my hands on her waist and pull her body close to mine. “Heart.” I kissed her bare skin above her heart, a spot that her loose-fitting sweater didn’t cover. “And soul,” I said at last, wrapping my arms around her as I kissed the spot between her eyes.
“God, David. Why do you do this to me?” she asked as she looked up at me.
“Do what, Summer? Ask you to let me love you?”
“Yes, when you know I’ll never be enough.”
I kept my composure. I knew there was a reason something inside me wouldn’t let me be content with her saying yes the night before. I didn’t say anything else while we waited for my items to be wrapped, as the cashier was all ears. Didn’t want to expose our lives too much. I paid for the crystals and oils Summer wanted, and then we moved on.
“You feel you’ll never be enough simply because I’m attracted to men as well as women, right?”
She widened her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, I feel like nothing I do can compete with that or complete you.”
“I hate when you say that shit. You make it seem as if I’m a slave to my sexuality, which is insulting, and I’m not. If I’m with you, then I’m with you. Just because I’m bisexual doesn’t mean I have to have a man and a woman at the same time or at all. It doesn’t mean that I have to love both sexes equally at the same time, or I can’t function. I don’t have this overwhelming urge to carry on two relationships, one with a man and one with a woman, at once. I can be faithful to the person I’m with. I can be happy with one person.”
“You say that, but I see what Michael does to you now. The sexual tension between you two is so strong that it rubs off on me.”
“No, the sexual tension between you and me has always been there. Michael is the gasoline for the fire we make.”
“And it’s blazing.”
I chuckled as we walked hand in hand. Underground Atlanta was filled with people, as usual on a Sunday. Hustlers and con artists alike were milling about. Everybody was trying to make a dollar or three. A Boney James wannabe was blowing away on his saxophone as walked through the throng of ATLiens. People had crowded around him to listen to his soulful display of jazz. They dropped a few dollars and coins in his hat to show how much they enjoyed him. Summer looked around in her purse and pulled out a couple of dollars to add to his take for the day.
“Scorching,” I commented.
She was smiling a wide smile. “But, seriously, I see the love you still have for him in your eyes, even though you say you don’t love him anymore.”
“No, what you see is the fact that I still care for him . . . a lot.”
“And if we get together, how will that affect how I feel and what we have?”
“It shouldn’t affect you at all. I’ve been honest with you about all things involving Michael.”
“Not at first,” she said quickly.
“True, but I have been since he first got here. Give me that.”
She studied me for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you. I care about him deeply. But I’m not in love with him.”
“How do you know?”
I stopped walking so she could look at me when I answered her. “Because I’m in love with someone else. It was love at first sight when I laid eyes on her in Lenox Square eight years ago. I just didn’t know it then like I know it now.”
She glanced away and then looked back up at me. She was speechless. Kept opening and closing her mouth, like she was a fish out of water. She was about to say something when my cell interrupted her.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“Where did you two go?” Michael asked. Irritation laced his voice.
“Follow the sound of the saxophone,” I told him.
“A’ight.”
I ended the call and looked back at Summer. She was watching the saxophonist play like he was making love to his instrument.
She finally turned to look at me. “You can’t love me, David. I don’t know who I am. Don’t know where I come from. I’m flawed. A married man’s whore, remember?”
I glanced up to see Michael heading toward us. Summer had reminded me of words not spoken but implied during our last argument.
“I’m sorry, Summer. I was angry.”
“But you really feel that way about me, or it wouldn’t have been said.”
“I didn’t say it.”
“Okay, it wouldn’t have been implied.”
“You pissed me off, and I let my anger get the best of me. Even so, I’d feel the same love for you regardless.”
She was quiet awhile. Gave a semi-smile when she saw Michael closing in on us. “Look, give me some time to think about it, okay? A little time to make sure my head is on straight before I make the decision, okay?”
I wanted to ask her how much time. Felt the need to question her as to why she needed time to think about letting a man love her openly and honestly. I wanted to know if she had asked all the married men she had slept with to give her time to decide if she was going to be their mistress or not. When Michael walked up to her and kissed her on the lips like he didn’t have a wife at home, I wanted to ask her who I had to be to get reciprocity.
But I didn’t ask her any of those things. Not in that moment.
“Shouldn’t we be heading back to your hotel?” I asked Michael. I dropped Summer’s hand. Pretended like I needed to clean my glasses when she looked at me. I didn’t want to be angry in the moment, but I could feel the simmering fury riding me.
He looked at the watch on his arm and then shook his head. “I’ll fly out in the morning,” he said. “Already changed my flight.”
“More trouble in paradise?” Summer asked, butting in.
Michael smiled down at her. “Nah. No trouble in my paradise right now.”
Summer looked back at me. Her eyes were asking me if there was trouble in our paradise. There was for me, but I didn’t want to ruin her day. So I held my hand out to her while Michael took her other hand, and we carried on.
We stayed in Underground Atlanta and Five Points until noon. Probably should have left sooner, but the thing with time was, when you were having fun, you lost track of it. Summer and Michael flirted like high school students. Sneaking kisses here. Stealing touches there. They disappeared behind a building for a few minutes, and Michael came out adjusting his khaki cargo shorts and wiping his mouth. That was after she and I had snuck behind that same building an hour or so before.
I’d been rough with her. Had taken her hard from behind. Had snatched her hair by the roots. Had clawed at her neck while I bit down and sucked on the other side. Like any dominant male, I had been marking my territory. I had to put my hand over her mouth when I got deeper and rougher. I had to make sure her singsongy moans didn’t alert anyone to our stolen moment of sexual gratification. Her come oozed out and glazed my dick as I pumped my hips in and out of her.
“Don’t make me wait too long,” I told her while I dicked her down.
“Ugh, ah, shit, David!” she cried out.
“Promise me. . . .”
She hissed loudly. “I promise, I promise.”
She sounded like a jungle cat. I fucked her
like an animal. And when I was ready to climax, I made sure she felt me deep in the depth of her gut.
Summer
I was wet. In a constant state of wetness. And it was all because of the two men on either side of me. I’d never been as turned on or as stimulated in all my life. I felt like a lush who had had too much at the bar and didn’t know when enough was enough. Every chance I had, I was singing like Elle Varner, begging for a refill. My desperate pleas never went unanswered. My underwear and jeans had become a bit uncomfortable as the three of us shared a paper cone of praline pecans.
“This shit is going to give me cavities,” Michael complained, but he didn’t stop popping the pecans in his mouth.
We were walking through Kenny’s Alley, looking for a spot to eat since Michael had gotten hungry again. Kenny’s Alley was one of downtown Atlanta’s best-kept secrets, although judging by the mass of people milling about, you wouldn’t be able to tell. There was something in the alley for everyone’s taste. From Irish pubs to urban nightlife to a Jamaican restaurant and lounge, you could find it all in Kenny’s Alley.
Michael settled on Caribbean food, while I was focused on how quiet David had gotten. I knew he was upset about the conversation we’d had earlier. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I wanted to believe him when he said I’d be enough for him, but something in me wouldn’t allow it.
“You’re not talking to me again,” I said as we settled at a table. “Are we okay?”
Michael chuckled as he eavesdropped, and then disappeared, on his way to the bathroom. I sat next to David and tried to see how much damage I’d done.
“We’re fine, Summer. Same as we’ve always been,” he answered.
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
He slowly cut his eyes over at me. “I’m cool.”
I didn’t want to push the issue, so I took his word for it. I laid my head on his shoulder and enjoyed being near him. What he and I had talked about was heavy on my mind. I had to admit that at times I wanted David more than I needed to breathe. I thought back to my foster parents. My mom and dad had a very loving and healthy relationship, and they both seemed happy. Still, I wondered what it was in my mother that had allowed her to be okay with him having sex with other men. I mean, they had had sex with other women too, but I had always wondered if she had had threesomes and foursomes with other men for herself or to please that other side of him.
“Is it different?” I asked David.
He was busy looking at his schedule for the week on his smartphone when he answered me. “Is what different?” he asked, with a glance up at me before returning his gaze to his phone.
“Being with men?”
He stopped scrolling with his finger and looked over at me. “What do you mean?”
“Does it feel the same?”
“What? The sex?”
“Everything. The sex. The love. The passion. Everything. Does it feel different?”
“Are you asking me this for a reason or just because you want to know?”
“Both. I need to know so I will know how to answer you, so I can be comfortable and secure.”
“So if I said that sex or being in a relationship with men is better than when I’m with a woman, you’d tell me no?”
I swallowed and lifted my head. He was going to make this difficult for me. And that was not what I wanted. “David, look, I ask because I’m insecure when it comes to your sexuality. I feel very insecure knowing that if we get together, your attraction to men may be a problem for me. I don’t want you to be in a relationship like that. You deserve better. You deserve someone who can love you, all of you, for who you are. I feel like I’m inadequate. I can be a lot of things for you and to you, but I can never be a man,” I explained emphatically.
He inhaled hard. Exhaled just as hard and then gave me a hard stare. “Are you . . . ,” he started to ask and then cleared his throat before continuing. “Do you ask any of the married men you sleep with questions about their sexuality or questions about their wives and children when you fall into affairs with them? What if I start to feel like I won’t be enough for you? What if I start to feel like, because there isn’t a ring on my finger, I won’t have the same appeal as the married men you sleep with do?” he asked with a shrug. “Just asking. You know, for my security and all. So that I don’t have to feel inadequate.”
I hadn’t expected him to go there. Hadn’t expected that he would turn the tables on me and put me in the hot seat. Although a part of me wanted to be defensive, I knew that I’d probably pushed him to the point of annoyance and anger.
“David . . .”
“Let me guess. You must have told David how you really felt, and now you get to feel his wrath,” Michael said as he intruded on our conversation.
I hadn’t even seen him approaching us. And I was kind of annoyed that he had decided to walk into the middle of what David and I had been talking about. I turned from Michael and put my attention back on David, who seemed to be two seconds away from snapping. He gave Michael a look that I’d never seen from him as long as we’d known one another. David frowned, and his eyes turned to something akin to slits. His lips were turned down, like something stunk.
“And just what the fuck does this have to do with you?” David asked him.
Michael adjusted his cargo shorts, pulling them above his knees, before he took a seat across from us. “Nothing really, except I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of your anger when you can’t handle the truth.”
“Handle the truth? What do you know about that?” David asked.
From the time Michael had got to Atlanta until a few minutes before, there had been nothing but tension between us, sexual tension. Now I got to see a different kind of tension between the two men who had shown me what it felt like to have your body worshipped by earthbound gods.
Michael gave something of a smile and looked at me. “You have to get used to this, Freckles. David wants everyone to accept his true feelings at face value, but as soon as you tell him how you really feel, this is what you get. He can’t accept rejection. Has never been able to accept rejection,” Michael stated with a slick smile. “Good thing you don’t have a husband, someone you really love,” he added, then turned his attention back to David. “You won’t have to worry about David fucking him to get back at you.”
David chuckled low. Even though I could tell he was nowhere near amused, he kept chuckling. He laid his phone on the table and leaned forward. For a minute, I thought he was seconds away from hitting Michael.
“That’s comical coming from a nigga who wouldn’t know what love looked like if it was staring him in the face,” he said as he gave Michael direct eye contact.
“I know I love my wife.”
The way Michael said that indicated that something had been left unspoken. Just that quick, I was stuck in an ex-lovers’ spat.
“Yeah, but does she love you? is the question,” David retorted.
“That must be the question you always asked yourself when it came to me. Must have sucked like hell to know you loved me, but not to be sure if I loved you, huh?”
“You know, it’s no wonder you two get along so well. Both of you are a piece of the same cloth. You think it’s okay to take my feelings lightly. Play with me, then toss me to the side, like I don’t count. Like I’m just something to do,” David said as he grabbed his phone and stood.
Something Michael had said had rubbed him the wrong way. He’d already been upset with me, but Michael had thrown in that last straw and had broken the camel’s back. I didn’t even understand where Michael’s anger had come from. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had been fighting with his wife. Maybe he and David still hadn’t resolved those issues between them. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t want our day to end, and I didn’t want David to leave.
“The bitch in you is starting to show,” Michael threw back at David.
I threw daggers at Michael with my eyes as
I snapped my head to look at him.
David shrugged. “Maybe it was the same bitch in me that was in your wife too.”
Michael looked at me and then back at David with a slick smirk on his face. They were two alpha males locked in a battle of dominance over who was in whose pussy while they belonged to the other. David shook his head and then walked off.
“David, where’re you going?” I asked as I rushed after him.
The man walked with a stride that made me remember the way he had stroked me into orgasmic oblivion. Even though it was clear he was angry, he kept his composure, which was another thing I loved to love about him.
I caught up with him and grabbed his arm.
He pulled his arm away from me. “I need to go before I do or say something I can’t take back.” He kissed my lips and walked away.
I was left standing there, trying to figure out how we had gone from having a great time to being enemies on an imaginary battlefield. That was love. Always a damn battlefield. You could easily step on an IED and not even know it until love had TKOed you.
I walked back over to Michael, who’d started eating his food, like he had no care in the world. I grabbed my purse and the Styrofoam carryout container of food that David and I had planned to share.
“Did I miss something?” I asked him.
He looked up at me as he licked his lips. On his plate were oxtails in heavy gravy, rice and beans, steamed cabbage, and plantains. Michael was sexy even when he ate. Even when he was being an asshole, his attractiveness couldn’t be denied. His tongue ran across his bottom lip again, and I felt a stirring in my underwear.
“About what?” he asked nonchalantly.
“What was that? Why did you go hard at him like that?”
“Because David doesn’t like to be told his shit stinks. He’s Mr. Perfect, and everyone else is flawed. His flaw is thinking he doesn’t have one. Get used to it. It’s a trait he and my wife have in common.”
I stood there and stared at Michael for a while. I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but my heart, mind, soul, and body were pulling me toward the man I’d known for eight years. I turned and walked away at a fast clip, hoping I could catch David before he drove off. Michael and I had ridden with David, so I suddenly wondered how Michael would get back to his hotel room.
Bi-Satisfied Page 12
