Still Wifey Material by Kiki Swinson Page A

didn’t stop there.
    Once Fatu made all his rounds, or rather showed me off to his people, we retired to his back office. I quickly took a seat on the black leather sofa and wasted no time removing my four-inch heels. When I started massaging my feet to soothe the aches, Fatu became a little concerned.
    “Are you OK?” he asked.
    I smiled. “I am fine, sweetie! I’ve just been standing on my feet too long, but I’ll be all right.”
    “Let me help you with that,” he said, grabbing my feet. But his plans were interrupted by a knock on the door.
    He answered the door and Bintu walked in and handed him what appeared to be a small, brick-like object wrapped in newspaper. “This is from Ian,” he stated.
    “Is he outside?” Fatu wanted to know.
    “No. He dropped off the money and left.”
    “OK. But let me know if Emmett comes, because I need to speak with him.”
    “No problem. I will be sure to let you know.” Bintu turned around and made his exit.
    After Bintu’s departure, Fatu locked the door behind him. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” he apologized.
    “No need to apologize. Take care of your business,” I encouraged him. Fatu unwrapped the package to reveal four ten-stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, each with a ten-thousand-dollar bank label wrapped around it. He was holding forty thousand dollars in his hands. He placed the money inside a safe he had hidden in the wall, behind a mounted statue of an African goddess. I acted like I didn’t see him put the money away because I didn’t want to come across as being the nosey type.
    Fatu returned and took a seat beside me on the sofa. We talked about everything under the sun. He told me he was thirty-six-years-old and Muslim, but he hadn’t picked up his Koran in a while. He also said that his birthday was August 29, which meant that he was a Leo. His family was from Lagos, Nigeria, and they were very rich in their country. I was shocked as hell when he told me that shit. I had always believed that a lot of Africans grew up poor, which was why they came to America for a better life. I guess I learned my new thing for the day.
    After he schooled me on his lifestyle back in Nigeria, he blew off my wig when he told me that his father had four wives, and that three of them lived back in Nigeria. I asked Fatu how many children his father had. When he told me that his father had eighteen children, I almost had a heart attack. I mean, there was not that much sex in the world. Not only that, I would not have allowed my man to marry another woman. I knew that was their culture over in Africa, so my best advice to them was that they needed to keep it over there, because I wasn’t down with that bullshit. It was bad enough that I had to deal with Ricky cheating on me behind my back, but to know that I had to share my husband with a couple of bitches who’d probably live in the same house as me was unacceptable, and I would have let it be known.
    Later in the conversation we talked about my likes, dislikes, and why I wasn’t in a relationship. I briefly mentioned that I had been married before, but my husband was deceased. I didn’t elaborate on the cause of his death, because I didn’t want to scare Fatu away.
    “How long has it been since he passed away?” Fatu asked with concern.
    “It’ll be two years next month.”
    “Has it been hard for you to move on with your life?”
    “Let’s just say that I moved out here to Houston specifically so that I could move on. There was no way I would have been able to move on from my past if I was still in Virginia. That place had nothing but bad memories for me, and I couldn’t take it any longer.”
    “You must’ve been through a lot, because I see the hurt in your eyes.”
    “We’ll just say that it was more than I could handle.”
    “Well, you’re here now. And I’m going to make sure you’re taken good care of.”
    “Fatu, you don’t have to do that. Sweetie, you don’t owe me