Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) Read online

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  I shook my head with a sigh. “Bill collector.”

  “Oh.”

  That was his answer. “Oh.” There was no probing to find out which bill it was, how much money I needed, nothing like that. Just “oh.” Maybe I should have gotten off the phone, looked directly at him, and asked for a thousand dollars. That was just too close to begging to me, and as my fiancé, I expected him to be more attentive and naturally responsive to my needs. They say the squeaky wheel gets the oil and closed mouths don’t get fed, but if you saw the wheel was on the verge of falling off the damn wagon, did it really need to start squeaking? Maybe I just expected too much. After all, it was my financial mess, not his. I just couldn’t believe he’d sit back and watch me flounder, though. Especially when he was telling me he loved me all the time. But love doesn’t pay the bills, though, huh?

  The other thing about Bertrand was, he was super clingy and expected me to spend every moment of my day with him. If for some reason I couldn’t do that, he needed an hourly update on where I was and what I was doing, and he had to know if I was okay. He wanted me to call him when I left the house in the morning for work; once I arrived at my job, to let him know I’d gotten there safely; at least three times during my workday, so that he would know that I was thinking of him; and then once more when I left work and was on my way home. It was sweet at first just knowing that someone cared about me enough to want to hear from me all the time, but after a while, that mess got old. That was way too much calling in my day. Don’t let me mess around and be too busy to answer my phone. He’d have an attitude for at least a day.

  After spinning my last client out of the door, I dialed Bertrand’s number as I tidied up my workstation for the day.

  “Hey, babe. I’m running a little bit late. I’ll be home in about thirty minutes, so give me about forty-five or so.” He was picking me up for a dinner and movie date.

  Once I got home, I rushed in the house, took a quick shower, and stepped into a silk asymmetrical handkerchief halter dress that he’d bought me. I’d worn it only once before, and it got me compliments from everyone I came across that day. I stepped into a pair of smoky blue stilettos just as Bertrand tapped on the door.

  As he soaked in my appearance, his eyes and his smile confirmed how amazing I looked, and then his commentary added to it.

  “Look at you looking like a million bucks.” He nodded. “I like that, baby. You look good!”

  “Thanks. It’s just a little something from the back of my closet that my man picked for me,” I teased.

  “Your man has good taste. What else you got in your closet?” he asked, thinking about the night before.

  The hanging rack in my closet had somehow pulled away from the wall, dumping all my clothes on the floor. Bertrand had made an assessment, had gone home to get a few tools, had come back, and then repaired it for me. As he helped me move my clothes from my bed, where I’d placed them temporarily while he fixed the rack, our bodies kept brushing, until it turned into a game of fondling.

  Standing behind me, he slid a single hand beneath my T-shirt, tracing a path up my back. With almost no effort he unhooked my bra, then circled both his hands around to my breasts while he planted kisses on my neck. His throbbing manhood pressed against my behind as he let out a slow moan. I turned in his arms, and our lips collided in lustful passion. While he groped my body, I groped the wall for the light switch, then reached for and closed the door, immersing us in complete darkness. In minutes, we stripped each other of clothes and caressed each other’s flesh.

  “Look how you have me,” he said, taking one of my hands and giving me his hardness.

  I massaged him for a few minutes, and there, in the darkness, I took him in my mouth. Bertrand gasped for breath and held it for a few seconds while I slowly worked my tongue along his length.

  “Ahhhhh,” he moaned, encouraging me to continue. “Baby, yes!” he cried out, gently placing his hands in my hair, then pumping his hips slightly forward, showing me what he wanted. I loved to hear him express his pleasure, and I met his request, becoming more aggressive with my movements and listening to his moans grow louder.

  After a few minutes, he pulled away and dropped to the floor, guiding me to lie back. He trailed kisses from my neck to the center of my Tootsie Pop, then worked some tongue magic on me that was out of this world. When Bertrand finished with me, I barely knew my own name. Knowing that he’d satisfied me, he eased his way back on top of me and pushed his stiffness into my moistness, and together, in a series of heated breaths, pants, and chants, we took each other to ecstasy. Then we lay there on the floor, caressing each other, trying to recoup.

  “Why don’t you just come on and move in with me?” Bertrand whispered, sucking on my breasts.

  “Because we’re not married yet, babe. I’m not exactly comfortable with that.”

  “So what are you going to do about your bills? You just can’t let them keep getting behind,” he said, drawing circles on my arm with his finger.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m trying to get a second job.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he answered. “You’re going to be my wife, and a real man takes care of what’s his. If anything, I’ll get a second job.”

  Now, I wasn’t all into a man paying my bills—I liked to stand on my own two feet—but hearing that he would take pride in taking care of me was like music to my ears. He was trying to provide for me, and I’d learned that that was one of the ways to tell if a man was really serious about the woman he was seeing. It was one of the three Ps. Profess his love, provide, and protect. Bertrand had already professed his love for me, and it was apparent.

  I pulled him more closely to me and massaged his head.

  “I got you, baby,” he whispered.

  It made me smile. My pride wasn’t comfortable with him bailing me out, but my wallet sure was. It felt good knowing that Bertrand had my back. Moving in early wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Engaged couples lived together all the time on their way to the altar. As long as we were at least planning the wedding, I guess I could be all right with moving in a little bit early. Moving in would mean no rent expense, no power or water bill to pay, no extra Internet bill, and all that other stuff. Bertrand would pay them since this was his house, and he was used to paying them, anyway. It would relieve me of paying at least a thousand dollars a month, and that could come in right handy for wedding planning or paying off my credit cards.

  There was no sense in paying for two roofs when we needed only one, especially for a broke girl like me.

  We finally pulled ourselves up from the floor, redressed, and brought my closet back to order, grinning and giggling at each other the whole time. By the time we finished, we decided that I’d move in to his house after giving my apartment complex the required thirty-day notice.

  “Now that we’ve got everything put back, I guess it’s time to pull it all down and start packing,” I said and laughed.

  We started packing that following week and slowly transitioned my things to his place. Before the month was over, the only thing left in my apartment was my bed and a few necessities, but I wanted to stay there as long as I could.

  Now with just a week before I had to be out of my apartment, Bertrand hit me with the unexpected.

  “I have something to show you,” he said with a smile as we rode to dinner.

  “What is it?” He was always surprising me with gifts and whatnot, so I grinned, expecting something wonderful.

  “I’ll let you see it when I stop the car.”

  “Is it something to wear? Like new boots,” I sang.

  “Not exactly.” Bertrand chuckled, reaching over and rubbing my thigh. “You’ll see.”

  Once he parked the car, he reached in the backseat and retrieved a plastic folder, which he handed to me with a grin.

  Unsuspecting, I opened it up and saw the cover page. It read: “Prenuptial Agreement between Ber
trand R. Peyton and Dina K. Winston.”

  Did this man just slap me with a prenup? Caught completely off guard and shocked, I jerked my head toward him.

  “What is this?” I waved the folder at him.

  “I thought it would be a good idea that we had one before we got married,” he said, looking rather smug and proud of himself.

  I, on the other hand, was more than offended and was at a loss for words other than “Take me home.”

  “What? Why? I thought we were going to catch a movie.” His grin faded as he darted his eyes between my grimace and the folder.

  “Bertrand, take me home please,” I stated again, fighting back several emotions that were trying to release themselves from my insides.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “How are you going to give me this on a casual ride in the car?” I asked, my anger begging to bleed through.

  “Babe, I’m sorry if I offended you. I just thought—”

  “Don’t think. Just take me home.”

  Bertrand pushed out a breath, shifted the car into gear, and in silence drove me back to my front door, where he’d picked me up just minutes before.

  “Dina, I really didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, brushing it off. “I’m just not feeling well.” I tucked the folder under my arm, pushed the car door open, and step out onto the pavement.

  “You could at least let me walk you to the door.”

  “That’s okay. I’m fine.” I slammed the car door shut before he could say another word.

  Once inside, I slumped on the couch, opened the folder, and read over the words. Bertrand had inserted various elements into a template, starting with his house. For the next thirty minutes, I gazed over the papers, and every word that I read made me seethe. In a nutshell, he’d spelled out that everything he owned at the time of our marriage would remain his if we should happen to split. There were about eight pages of legalese concerning his assets and their respective values, and his debt, which was absolutely none, other than his mortgage. There was one more page about him, which showed his net worth at about a half a million dollars. The last two pages were devoted to me and what he knew my assets to be. Since all I had was bills and a little raggedy car, along with a car note, my net worth was far into the red. I was insulted and embarrassed.

  I tossed the folder onto the table, rose from the couch, and decided to soak in the tub with a glass of wine to try to get my thoughts together. Once I was seated in the hot water and John Legend was crooning through my iPod to calm my nerves, I tried to think more sensibly. Maybe I was upset because I didn’t think about presenting him with a prenup, but I had this silly notion in my head that what was mine would be his, and what was his would become mine, and we would live this nice, long, happy life together, have a couple of children, and thirty or forty years from now sit out on the front porch with glasses of sweet tea, reading the newspaper. But now I had to think differently, and actually a prenup was a good idea . . . if I had something to my name other than a ton of debt.

  I finished my bath, reclined on the bed, and called Candis.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m on another call,” she said. I could hear the bubbles in her voice.

  “With who? You sure sound happy about it.”

  “Just a guy I met. Nothing big.”

  “What guy? You let me find out you got a secret boyfriend . . . ,” I said, chastising her.

  “Girl, it ain’t nothing like that. His name is SeanMichael, and we’re just talking, that’s all.”

  “Mmm-hmm. That’s how it all gets started.” She joined me in a light chuckle. “I guess I’ll call Celeste, then. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay, girl.”

  I dialed Celeste’s number, but her phone just rang. “Celeste, call me when you get this message. I need to vent.”

  Chapter 8

  Candis

  I was glad Dina didn’t try to hold me hostage on the phone, although she did sound like something was wrong. I promised myself to follow up with her later as I switched my line back over to SeanMichael.

  “I’m back, baby,” I said in what was just a hair above a whisper. SeanMichael and I had been talking voice to voice for a good while now and had embraced terms of endearment. I’d never been in a long-distance relationship before, and honestly, I was apprehensive about saying I was in one now, but more and more, it was feeling that way. He had me jumping for my phone every time it vibrated, not wanting to miss his call or text. I’d caught myself grinning when I saw it was him and whatnot. I felt silly because we’d never even met, and here I was, letting my emotions get involved.

  “I missed you.”

  “I wasn’t even gone a full minute,” I said in a giggly schoolgirl voice. That was exactly how SeanMichael made me feel—like a schoolgirl. Like Fantasia scribbling Xs and Os in a notebook, all dreamy eyed.

  “And that was too long,” he mumbled. “You know what I’d wish if I had one right now?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d wish that I was in your arms or that you were in mine.”

  “I’d like that,” I said in all honesty. I was falling in love with him, but that notion sounded too ridiculous in my thinking for me to allow myself to dwell on it. “So what’s holding you back?”

  “Holding me back from what?”

  “From allowing me to be in your arms.” That was my way of asking him to come see me without just putting it out there.

  “Money,” he blurted out in a guffaw. “I was going to try to come out there, but do you know how much a ticket between here and there is?” His tone was both incredulous and rhetorical.

  “I’ve never been out there, so I have no idea, but let me look. I have my laptop right here.” With a quick Google search, I found a few quotes, the least expensive one being just a couple hundred dollars. I shared. “I see a ticket that’s only two sixty-five.”

  “Yeah, I can’t afford that,” he countered just as soon as my words hit his ear.

  “That’s not that bad.”

  “It is if you don’t have it,” he said and chuckled.

  “I can understand you not having it planned in the budget,” I said, trying to understand his angle. “But you can save up for it. I’m having a party for my birthday, and I’d love for you to come.”

  “The way my check gets garnished . . .”

  Garnished? What?

  “I hardly have enough money to get stuff I need.” SeanMichael sounded defeated and relieved at the same time, like he had been waiting to tell me that and had finally gotten it out.

  “What do you mean?” It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he’d said. I was just taken aback by it. His check was being garnished? Don’t tell me he has ten kids somewhere and is being forced to pay child support. This man better not be trying to fix his mouth to ask me to send him some money, I thought. “Why is your check being garnished?”

  “I just had some bills that got out of control,” he said, trying to dismiss the matter.

  But I had more questions. Usually when people didn’t pay a regular bill, it just ended up on their credit report, but garnishments were generally for things like taxes, credit cards, student loans, and . . . child support.

  “What kind of bills?” I quizzed, taking a risk.

  “Just some stuff.”

  “Stuff like what? Like, umm . . . taking care of some children?” To me, that sounded better than child support.

  “Naw,” he rushed to say. “I told you I don’t have any kids.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t want to push too much, because it really was none of my business. SeanMichael wasn’t really my man, and he owed me no explanations. But one thing was for sure. If he was being garnished, he didn’t pay his bills on time, and if he didn’t pay his bills on time, he was probably broke. I tried to change the subject, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to . . . well, wanted to know more, because one th
ing I didn’t need in my life was a broke-ass man.

  “So is it, like, credit card debt or something?”

  “Girl, do you know how much trouble you can get into with a credit card?” he said, like I’d just named the worse possible debt ever. “I don’t use credit cards. I pay for everything in cash.”

  If his wages were being garnished, he probably couldn’t even get a credit card, but I kept that thought to myself. It took me a bit more prying and some strategic questioning, but SeanMichael did spill the beans. Came to find out he owed on a car loan from a buy-here, pay-here car lot. The car had been repossessed after he tried to hide it for a few months while he was between jobs.

  “Until I get that taken care of, I just have to catch the bus or walk to work. The walking keeps me in shape,” he said.

  I guess that was how he made himself feel better about not having a car. SeanMichael was a nice guy and all, but damn, he had only a little minimum-wage job, a garnished check, and no car. Red flag on the play!

  Chapter 9

  Dina

  “He gave you a what?” Celeste gasped when I told her about the prenup. “Who is he? A descendant of John D. Rockefeller?”

  “I guess so, girl. I knew he had a few dollars, but I didn’t know I was marrying into real money,” I joked, but really, nothing was funny.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him to take me home, so he did. I need you to help me think rationally.” The prenup did upset me, but now that I was calmer, I could think about it more sensibly. What would I do with my stuff if something happened and the marriage didn’t work out? I surely wouldn’t want him to have possession of it, just like he didn’t want me to have any of his stuff.

  “Well, in this day and time, unfortunately, you do have to think about these things, so you can’t completely hate on him for being proactive,” Celeste observed.