Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) (6 page)

“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 Bertrand 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.”

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
X
s and
O
s 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 . . .”

“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 thing 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!

“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.

“Yeah, but did he have to just give it to me like that? We could have at least had a discussion about it first or something. He just pulled it out of the backseat and gave it to me like he was handing me a box of chocolates or a birthday card.”

“I have to agree that that was pretty tacky, but look beyond that point and look at what was really going on. He wants to protect his stuff, and you should want to protect yours too.”

“But don't you think that sets a negative tone for the marriage?”

“Well, kind of, but at the same time, you can't be too careful, Dina. As much as people intend for their marriages to last forever, things don't always turn out that way.”

Celeste was right, but still, Bertrand's delivery was awful. Not to mention that in his eyes, on paper I looked like some little broken-down girl from the ghetto who needed him to save me. The sad part was, that was exactly where my life was at the moment—in need of saving.

It got me thinking about my assets and what I did and did not have, and it actually made me a bit depressed, because at thirty-one years old, I felt like I should have more to show for myself besides my car, which was a few more months away from being completely paid for, but it wasn't like I drove a Lamborghini. There wasn't much blue book value to a twelve-year-old Honda Accord. Outside of that, I had a small term life insurance policy, which apparently counted as an asset, because it was included in Bertrand's template.

Even with me plugging in the value of my life insurance, my net worth still looked awful, reflecting a negative value. This reality was a huge slap in my face, but I couldn't let Bertrand think I was seriously this broke, so I made up some numbers, inflating the amount of money I had in savings and beefing up my insurance policy values. By the time I was done fudging the numbers, I looked pretty good. All I had to do was explain to Bertrand what was going on with me getting calls from debt collectors. I'd just tell him that there was a certain part of my savings that I never dug into, no matter what. Didn't make much sense to me, but he was so financially disciplined, he might go for it.

With Bertrand's original document now full of red marks where I made corrections to my financial standing, I dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hey, babe,” he said, testing the waters.

“Hi.” My voice was intentionally flat and stoic, as I was still feeling some type of way about this whole thing.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. I just wanted to talk to you about this . . . this . . . document,” I said, unable to get the words
prenuptial agreement
out of my mouth.

“I'm sorry if I offended you, Dina,” he immediately blurted.

“No, it's all right. You just caught me off guard,” I lied. “I have had a chance to read through it thoroughly, and there are some things on it that need to be changed.”

“Okay,” he said, more as a question. “Like what?”

“Well, first of all, you didn't have enough financial information on me to complete my portion, so the figures there need correcting.”

“Okay,” he easily agreed.

“Why did you do it without trying to at least find that information out?”

“Well, I didn't realize that I didn't know any different. I mean, I know you've been talking about the shop being slow for a while, so I knew the salary part was right, and then you shared with me that you were having a hard time making ends meet, so I just assumed that your resources were exhausted.”

“For your information, Mr. Bertrand Peyton, I do have other resources. I am just very careful about how I utilize them,” I said firmly, delivering my prepared lie.

“I'm sorry. I guess I should have consulted with you first to make sure I had all my facts straight.”

“Yes, you should have.” I let silence settle for a few seconds as a reprimand, then started speaking again. “Secondly, I want an infidelity clause added in.”

“An infidelity clause?”

“Yes.”

“What do you propose it states?” he asked.

“I want it to say that if either of us gets caught cheating, as retribution, the injured spouse is owed the value of the current home where we reside, in cash dollars.”

“What!” Bertrand sounded just as shocked as I was just a couple of hours ago.

“In other words, if you cheat on me, you owe me the value of the home we live in,” I restated.

“What about if you cheat?” he countered, sounding irritated.

“Same thing goes for me. The clause works both ways.”

“So let me get this right. You want to move into my house and then try to take it from me?” There was a disbelieving tone to his voice.

“I don't have to move into your house. We can buy a whole new house once we get married if you want to, and no, I'm not trying to take anything. I'm only trying to do what you're trying to do—protect what is important to me.”

“How is that?” he questioned.

“Well, clearly, your assets are important to you, which is why you want me to sign a prenup, right?”

“Okay,” he said in a “Go on” kind of way.

“What's important to me is my heart, and that's what I want to protect.”

“How is you trying to take my house protecting your heart?”

“In my opinion, when you cheat on your spouse, you rob them of a happy home, so that's what you need to replace. There's no peace, love, and happiness inside four walls where someone has violated the marriage vows by cheating. So to make up for ripping away a happy home, the cheater has to replace it with a home that is just as valuable, where the injured spouse can live in peace.” Sounded fair to me.

“That's not right!” Bertrand barked.

“Why not?” He was really going to have to explain his point of disagreement to me.

“Because it's not!”

“And if you were to cheat on me, that wouldn't be right, either.”

“Why wouldn't you just go back to living in your own apartment? Why would you try to take my house?”

“Again, I am not trying to take anything. I'm only trying to protect what is most important to me. A house can be replaced, money can be remade, sofas and televisions and whatnot can be rebought, but you can't unbreak a heart, and I want to be assured that number one, you won't do that, and number two, if you do, there are consequences for it.” I didn't see why he was giving me so much flack on this point.

“So if
you
cheat, then what?”

“I told you, the same thing goes for me. Wherever we live at the time the indiscretion is found out, whatever the value of that particular home is, I'd have to pay you that in cash.”

“That doesn't sound right,” he huffed.

“Why do you have a problem with it? Are you planning on cheating?”

“It's just not right, Dina,” he repeated without answering my question. “I've worked hard for everything that I have, and for you to just try to come in and take it all from me . . .” He trailed off.

“Sounds like you might be a cheater to me.”

“It ain't even like that.”

“Then what is it like? For me it's no big deal.”

“Because you don't have what I have,” he retorted.

“And you can keep all your stuff as long as you don't cheat. I don't see where the problem lies.”

Bertrand pushed a heavy sigh into my ear. “I gotta think about this one.”

“Take your time. I'm not signing this document without that being added.”

“That's just like a woman,” he mumbled under his breath, but audibly enough for me to hear him.

“Excuse me?”

“I'll get back to you about it.”

“Okay. Cool,” I stated before he uttered an obligatory “Love you.”

“Love you too,” I said, almost too jubilantly.

I tossed the document on the floor beside my bed and leaned back on my pillows.
Well played, ma'am. Well played.
The only thing was, I was having serious doubts about moving into his home, but now I couldn't afford not to.