The Eleventh Commandment by Lutishia Lovely Page A

the fireplace mantel. “All right, Bo. I’ll be right back.”
    Bo looked up from the TV show he was watching. “Okay. You got a hug for me, Nugget?” DJ walked over and hugged him. “Okay, baby, hurry back.”
    As they walked out the front door to the Infiniti SUV waiting in the driveway, Bo went into the kitchen for a soda. Seeing a cell phone on the counter, he snatched it up, ran toward the front door, and opened it in time to see the brand new sporty BMW turn onto the road. “Darius!”
    But it was too late. Darius hadn’t heard him and, knowing how loud his husband played the car stereo, Bo knew why. He also knew that Darius hated going anywhere without his phone. He often even took it with him when he used the john. Oh, well. He’s just dropping off DJ. I guess he’ll live without it till then. Bo watched the car until it turned the corner and then walked back into the house. He was just about to set the phone down on the one-of-a-kind, stainless steel coffee table in front of him when it chirped in his hand. Someone had sent Darius a message.
    â€œBo,” he said to the empty room, in a voice laced with warning, “you go looking for shit, you’re going to find shit.”
    But it was a temptation he couldn’t resist. He tapped the message indicator envelope. His jaws tightened when he saw the sender’s name. “Muthafucka, you are just like herpes. You won’t go away!” With anger mounting, he tapped the screen to open the message, and read it:

    Hey, Handsome: Heard the commercial where you’re going to be in NY on the 4th. Me too. Leave Bo at home and let’s do the town . . . and then each other. Let me know.

    â€œOh, you’ve got this shit real twisted, nucka.” Bo scrolled to the beginning of the message thread and saw that there had been several. While most had come from Paz, there were some that had been answered. “What? An independent project with my baby providing the sound track? Oh, H-E-double-L to the muthafuckin’ no! You think it’s that easy? You think you’re going to dangle some money and take my man?” Bo’s ire now had him walking the floor, boxing with an imaginary adversary. “You mess with him, Paz, and that will be your ass. You don’t want none of this Brooklyn-born playa. You don’t want none. Of. This.”
    As soon as Bo sat down to plot out his husband-saving strategy, an angel landed on one shoulder and a devil made himself at home on the other.
    Â 
    Angel: He didn’t respond to the flirtatious e-mails, only the business ones.
    Devil: But that don’t mean he hasn’t called him, or met him somewhere.
    Angel: Except for Stacy, in all these years, he’s never given you a reason to doubt him.
    Devil: He’s never given you a reason that you know of .
    Angel: Don’t make a mountain from a molehill, Bo.
    Devil: Today’s Mr. Cool, tomorrow’s fool.
    Â 
    Bo jumped from the couch. “Both of y’all shut the hell up!” Walking to the back of the house to the great room where the bar was located, Bo made quick work of pouring a shot of Courvoisier and slamming it down. It felt so nice, he did it twice. “Think, Bo.” And he did, back to the days and months following DJ’s birth, and Darius’s dilemma about who the person was with whom he should spend the rest of his life. His heart had said Bo while his head had screamed Stacy and their newborn son. It had been one heck of a tug-of-war, but eventually soul mate love and Stacy’s histrionics had pushed Darius right into Bo’s waiting arms. Now they coexisted amicably—Darius, Bo, Stacy, and DJ. Tony, not so much. The gay couple was tolerated because Darius was DJ’s father, but Tony had let there be no mistake made when, during a visit shortly after he and Stacy married, he informed Darius and Bo that “he didn’t get down with anybody who