Page 52 of Saint
“He’s not slow. He’s more intelligent than all of you at this table combined. His brain isn’t broken. It just runs on a different operating system. People like y’all are truly, deeply what’s wrong with the world. The inconsideration, the ignorance, the condescending tone, the disrespect…”
I grunted and shook my head as if it would clear the ickiness emanating from them onto me and then turned to Luna.
“How dare you come for me as if your taste in men hasn’t been questionable, Luna. And Dream? You can’t keep a man to save your next breath. The nerve of you all to sit here and judge me as if–”
“We weren’t judging you, Tori,” Luna tried to assuage my rage, but at that point, I was on a war path. She should’ve eaten those words because they made the affront worse. “We just want to know who this new nigga is.”
“That’s not the way you framed the shit,” I huffed.
“Because we’re ready to go to war for our friend?” Dream chimed while Robyn sat back and sipped her mimosa. Fuck her, too, for being silent.
“Bravo bitches” I raved, clapping my hands for every camera in the restaurant. “Do you feel better about your fucked lives? They have to have been for you to feel the need to berate someone you don’t know. An attack against him is an attack against me! What the fuck is wrong with y’all? And Robyn? How could you sit there and say nothing?”
She began to open her mouth, but I was done listening to those heifers talk.
“Sis, you haven’t even given us the deets on this one, and you’re ready to bury us on the battlefield,” Luna tittered.
“What I do with my pussy is my motherfucking business. Whatever dick I land on is my concern, not any of yours!”
I motioned around the table to every one of them to drive my point home. And that dick they wanted to discuss at length as we often did with our non-prospects actually belonged to me. Saint was my husband, regardless of our agreement. I’d erected barriers around my man. Our sex life was not up for discussion.
Sure, I’d gotten lax with Dream, Robyn, and Luna in the past as we discussed the men in our lives and their performance in the bedroom. We were never serious about anyone when those discussions took place. All four of us were single, mingling, and casually dating up until I secretly bowed out. I was married now. Things with Saint were… different. I’d chosen to carry on as such because he wasn’t like those other niggas. Saint wasn’t a nigga at all. He was a man.
“Never have I ever judged or condemned any of you for the fucked up choices in the men you all have made. The fact that any of you could sit here and make tasteless commentary about a man you don’t know – a man I very vulnerably informed you I was serious with – tells me this is no place for me.”
They’d tried to keep the conversation light despite my anger, but I was done expending energy for their sake. My life had changed drastically since the addition of Miller to my last name. I was ready to get the hell back to my little oasis on the beach.
I gathered my belongings and the full bottle of prosecco we were previously enjoying and eased out of the round booth amidst their shocked expressions. Never mind the materialized phones from other tables recording the drama as it unfolded.
Limbs tingly, heart fluttery, head a cyclone, I returned to the house on Paramour Beach tipsy but on top of the world. Brunch with the girls was indeed immaculate until it wasn’t. Now safely back at home, I stumbled up the walkway to the front door, hauling the pair of heels I’d worn along with an empty prosecco bottle in my left hand. My purse was strewn over my shoulder, anchored by my right hand.
Determined to key in the code for entry, I put everything in my hands on the floor and pressed the buttons I assumed were correct. After the first failed attempt, the door swung open, saving me the effort. Clumsily, I fell into the steel chest of the mahogany-infused man standing before me.
“Saint,” I crooned, tossing my purse to the floor and wrapping my arms around his neck.”
He smelled good, he looked good, and I already knew he tasted good. Immediately, I wanted him between my lips. The verbal lashing I’d given my friends required my mouth to be rinsed clean, and I knew just the solution. As I dipped into that fantasy world, I was swiftly tugged out. I could feel myself being hoisted over the threshold and the front door closing behind me.
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m horny, husband. Put it in.” I swayed, rocking my hips against him.
“I’m about to put you in bed,” he said pointedly, both rejecting and riling me. His face dipped into a frown as he stepped back to observe me. It was a look that inspired a vision of me rocking on top. He continued to scrutinize me with those beady rounds, deeper summoning my arousal.
“How was brunch, Beauty?”
Immensely sobering, the question forced me to stand up straight. Up until Saint had become the focus of the conversation, brunch had gone well. As it shifted to me having to defend him, I found myself angry with my friends. Dream and Luna had been so ignorant and insensitive, and Robyn sat in silence, examining the attack as a bystander. Her complicity in remaining quiet further agitated me. They hadn’t even met him and were judging and berating him. Saint was being discussed at length without the ability to defend himself, and that triggered me to be protective.
I felt attacked. I felt territorial. For the first time in a long time, I felt uncomfortable around my friends. They’d been discussing my husband as if he wasn’t a person at all, and that left me unsettled, stewing, and happy to dismiss myself after reading them from crown to toe about their apathetic commentary and disrespect. I left the booth, chugging the prosecco I’d stolen as I hailed a cab. Without delay, I got the hell away from there. Tears were staining and stinging my cheeks, drying as quickly as they surfaced against the arid heat.
“Fuck those bitches,” I spat, recalling the memory comparable to bile surfacing on an empty stomach.
Saint’s brow hiked as he locked rounds with me. I’d told him about my friends and how important it was for us to maintain our closeness, so my apparent frustration was the pinnacle of his curiosity. The exchange between them wasn’t one I cared to discuss.
“So, not good?”
“It was fine until…just never mind. Can you take me upstairs and break my back?”
“Not like this, Beauty,” he declined, convinced that I wasn’t clear enough in the head to engage in sexual activity.