Careful of the Company You Keep

1/Renee

There are a lot of things I expected to face in my life. Walking in on my husband with his dick stuck in another man’s ass was not one of them.

Shock was an understatement. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe, and damn near choked. All I could do was stand there and watch John and another man racing to the finish line in my bed. They were so busy fucking, neither of them heard the bedroom door open or noticed me standing there.

Think, bitch, think!

Inhale. Exhale. I knew I had to do something quick, fast, and in a hurry, because any second now the moment would be lost. So, I reached down to my waist, removed the cell phone from my hip, and aimed it in their direction.

“Cheese, mothafuckas!”

As soon as both of them looked my way, I pressed the camera button on my phone.

Priceless.

John jumped back so fast he tripped over a shoe and fell flat on his ass. “Renee! What the hell?”

“My words exactly. You should have taken that freaky shit to a motel.” I moved in for a close-up and pressed the button again.

John held up his hands in a panic. “Hold up, baby! I can explain.”

I glared at his fat ass. “Save it for someone who cares, because I don’t give a fuck.”

At a loss for words, John just sat there breathing heavily while Shemar scrambled for his pants.

I looked at him and rolled my eyes in disgust. To think, we’ve been fucking for the last couple of weeks.

Angrily, I snatched the first thing I could get my hands on—a bottle of scented lotion—and tossed it across the room, hitting pretty boy on the side of his head.

“What’s wrong with you?” Shemar shouted, then ducked out of the way before my hairbrush caught him in the forearm.

“What’s wrong with me?”

Oh no, he didn’t just ask me that. “What’s wrong is finding you…

bent over… like some bitch… with my husband’s dick in your ass!

” I tossed John’s aftershave and it hit the wall and shattered.

“What’s wrong is knowing my husband… my husband…

fucked you in the bed that I bought!” I kept screaming and throwing shit at the two of them.

John’s eyes grew wide with guilt.

“Renee, please, let’s talk about this,” he pleaded.

“We ain’t got shit to talk about!” I screamed.

Was he smoking crack? What could he possibly have to explain?

I moved over to my dresser and started throwing everything within reach.

I snatched up a bottle of Valentino perfume and was about to toss it when I remembered how much I paid for it.

I put it down and grabbed the cheap stuff instead.

By now I was throwing anything I could get my hands on in their direction, including a pair of three-pound dumbbells I kept on the floor in the corner.

Both of those fools were bobbing, weaving, and trying to cover their heads.

“As soon as you get dressed, get the fuck outta here!”

“We ain’t going nowhere!” Shemar screamed. “Tell her, John. Tell her you’re my man now and this is… this is your house!”

John looked over at him and cut his eyes. “Shemar, this is not the time.”

Shemar propped a hand at his waist. “The hell it ain’t. What have we been talking about for the last several months? You promised we’d be together, and I’m tired of waiting. Dammit, John, you belong to me!”

What the fuck? I couldn’t believe this soap opera shit. The longer I looked and listened, the angrier I got.

I reached for a pair of scissors and lunged at Shemar.

He saw me coming, hurried into the adjoining bathroom, and slammed the door.

I was moving so fast the blades stabbed into the wood.

I yanked the scissors free and headed toward John, who ducked, then grabbed my wrist and wrestled the scissors out of my hand.

“Let me go!” I screamed. I balled up my fist and started beating him across his face and chest. And just like a coward, he let me tear his ass up.

“Go ahead, Renee. Do what you have to do, but it’s not going to change anything.”

“Fuck you!” I shouted, then swung hard and got him in the nose.

Finally, he grabbed my hands and I jerked away from him. I was breathing so hard I was hyperventilating. Leaning over, I placed my hands on my knees and tried counting to ten to catch my breath. “How… could… you… do this to me?”

John moved and took a seat on the end of the bed, holding a T-shirt up to his nose. It was bleeding. Good.

“As soon as you calm down, we can sit down like two adults and talk.” I could tell by the tone of his voice that he never expected me to find out this way.

“I said we ain’t got shit to talk about!

I’ve been tolerating your itty-bitty limp-dick ass for the last five years, and this is how you treat me?

” No wonder his dick half worked when we made love.

Part of me felt like laughing, and probably would later, because this was the excuse I’d been waiting for to finally get out of my marriage, but right now, it was too humiliating for words.

“I can no longer hide how I feel.”

“You sick bastard.” I was so mad, I didn’t realize until I saw John holding the side of his head that I had hurled my wooden jewelry box at him.

“Quit it, Renee!” he ordered and tried to reach for me, but I jumped out of the way.

“Fuck you, John!”

I was too through. I had to bite my tongue to stop from telling him how I really felt about the last five years of our marriage.

Big Mama taught me a long time ago not to bite the hand that feeds you, and I needed John to keep supporting me until I could figure out a plan.

The best way was to play on his sympathy by making him think I was hurt to discover our marriage was over.

No, I wasn’t hurt. I was pissed the fuck off.

“How could you do this to me?” I forced myself not to blink so my eyes would become misty, and tears eventually appeared.

“I… I never expected you to find out this way. I’m really sorry. How—”

I cut him off before he could finish.

“Sorry, my ass! Both of y’all get out of my house!”

“Bitch, this is my man’s house!” Shemar screamed from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Shut the hell up!” I ran over and kicked the door and hurt my damn toe. I screamed at the top of my lungs, then started pacing the length of the room.

John just continued to sit there holding his head with one hand and applying pressure to his nose with the other.

I removed my cell phone from my hip and went ahead and sent those pictures to my email address, just in case one of those mothafuckas decided to get bold and try to snatch the phone. My hands were trembling with anger.

“What’re you planning to do with those pictures?”

I rolled my eyes in John’s direction. “Nothing just yet, but if you fuck with me, I’m going to send them to everybody, including your uppity-ass mama.”

I expected him to lunge from the bed and snatch the phone from my hands, because the last thing John wanted was to tarnish his image. Lenore never did think I was good enough for her son. Shit, if she only knew.

However, instead of wrestling me to the floor, John just sat there like a coward with his hands on his lap, looking at me like what I saw happening never really happened. As if it had been my imagination.

“Relax and quit trippin’,” he finally said.

“Trippin’? Trippin’!”

He gave me a dismissive laugh. “Yes, Renee. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Oh, it’s not? Okay, then let me show you how big a deal it is!”

I ran across the room to the large walk-in closet we shared and started fumbling on the top shelf. John must have heard me loading his gun, because he hurried into the bathroom with Shemar and shut and locked the door just in time.

“Renee, what the hell are you doing?” John screamed. “Put that gun down!”

“Shut the hell up!” I yelled and shot at the door again. Shemar was screaming at John to “control that crazy bitch.” I pulled the trigger again and shouted, “Shut up, punk, before I give you something to cry about.”

He must have realized I was serious, because everything got quiet.

“That’s more like it. Now listen and listen good. I want both of you out of my house by the time I get back. Otherwise, I’m shooting y’all for real!”

I decided it was time to bounce before one of the neighbors called the police.

I couldn’t get out of that house fast enough. I took the stairs two at a time and grabbed my purse from the table. The retired couple who lived across the street was standing on their porch. As soon as they saw me coming out the door with a gun in my hand, they raced back inside.

I climbed into my Infiniti QX60 and peeled down the driveway and onto the street. A mile up the road, the tears began to fall and I angrily wiped them away.

“Don’t you dare cry over that sorry bastard.”

I drove, replaying everything that had happened and trying to figure out how in the hell I missed the warning signs.

I hear women all the time talking about how they had no idea their man was on the down low, and I always think, what the fuck ever.

The signs were there. Hell, most of the time I could spend five minutes with a man and tell. Yet I had no idea about my own husband.

But then ours was a weird relationship from the start.

Our marriage was a one-night stand that turned into a five-year commitment. We’d barely dated a month before he proposed. My ass was unemployed and about to be homeless. With two little kids, that wasn’t an option. So, when John proposed—marry me now and love me later—I jumped at the opportunity.

And that’s what your stupid ass gets.

Yep. I should have left him years ago. Quit talking about it and be about it—that’s the shit I say to my friends all the time, yet I didn’t follow my own advice.

I was ten miles from home, speeding down the highway, when my cell phone rang. I glanced down and saw it was a private call.

I bet you five dollars and a Long Island iced tea it’s John’s ass.

“What?” I snapped.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d not share those pictures.” He said the words so slowly it gave me an eerie feeling.

“That depends,” I replied calmly.

“Depends on what?”

“On how much you plan to pay, mothafucka!”

Even with the windows down and the wind whipping across my face, I could hear Shemar yelling something in the background.

“Tell him to shut the hell up!”

John covered the mouthpiece and mumbled something, then came back on the line. “Sorry, he’s upset too.”

“Who gives a fuck how he feels?” I screamed. This was like a straight-up Tyler Perry movie.

“Don’t be like that,” he scolded.

“Don’t tell me what the fuck to do before I come back over there and really lose my mind.”

“Listen, Renee, we can work this out if you’d give us a chance. I love you, Renee. But I’m not going to lie… I love Shemar as well. You didn’t mind sharing me before, so what’s different about now?”

“It was your idea to start swinging with other couples. And it was you who thought you weren’t satisfying me sexually, so you invited Shemar into our bed while you watched.

Nowhere in that conversation did you say you’d be sleeping with him too.

Not once in the five years we’ve been married did you mention anything about being attracted to men. ”

“I’m not gay,” he barked defensively.

“Then what the hell would you call it?”

There was a brief pause before he answered. “I’d call it… liking variety.”

“And I call it liking dick!”

I was screaming so hard the lady in the next car was staring nervously at me. I flipped her off for not minding her own business.

“I’m divorcing your ass. And according to our prenuptial agreement, if either of us catches the other in a compromising position, the other gets paid. And I’m about to collect.”

“And what about the men you’ve been with? Remember, I have home videos,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, and your ass is in every single one!”

From the first day we started adding flavor to our marriage, I made sure that every time John pulled out the camcorder, he was in the frame too. All the things we’d done with Shemar and the others started racing through my head.

Oh my God.

I felt sick. My stomach churned so violently my dinner tried to come back up. I swallowed hard and forced it back down.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Hell no! I just walked in on you with another man and you have the nerve to ask if I’m okay?”

Silence.

“Renee, I don’t know what else to say other than I’m sorry and I hope we can work this out.”

“What the hell is there left to work out?”

This was so unbelievable I didn’t know what to think or how to react, and that’s rare for me.

Never in a million years would I have expected to walk in on my husband with another man.

I don’t even watch that type of content.

Sitcoms like Modern Family are hilarious, but there is nothing funny about this.

“I want my monthly allotment doubled. And don’t even think about canceling my insurance benefits. You’ve got one hour to pack your shit and get out of my house. And take those sheets with you!”

I ended the call.

Tears were running down my face. I don’t even know why I was crying over that fool.

John had never been good in bed. He spent more time tweaking my nipples like they were knobs on a transistor radio than anything else.

Nevertheless, he was rich, and I convinced myself it was a small price to pay for everything he’d given me.

Big house. New car. Private schools for the kids. Money in my personal bank account.

In exchange, all I had to do was sleep with him three times a week.

It was easier in the beginning. But over the last three years, it started feeling like too much damn work. Hell, if I wanted a job, I would’ve applied for one.

So, to escape, I started writing and became a published bestselling author of erotic romance. What I wasn’t getting in my bed, I was getting in my books, and plenty of it.

And when that wasn’t enough, I started stepping out too.

But even then, I wasn’t happy.

Somehow, John sensed my misery, and two months ago he invited Shemar into our bed for a ménage à trois. I thought cha-ching, I’d hit the jackpot. Shemar and I would hook up while John watched. Then John and I started swinging with other couples. I thought I was getting the best of both worlds.

Only the joke was on my black ass.

I guess I can’t blame anyone but myself. I should have known it was too good to be true. That’s what I get for thinking I was getting something for nothing.

I’d been talking about leaving John for years. Now that the time had come, I had to quit talking about it and be about it.

Starting right now, my life was beginning anew.

A tear slid down my cheek, because I wasn’t sure I even knew where to begin.