“Love you, Queen.” he called behind her.
Blair stopped mid skip and turned toward him. “Love you, King.”
I looked at the both of them and laughed because it took a while for them to get here. It wasn’t always butterflies and rainbows when it came to love. It could be, but the love worth fighting for will have you with dirt on your hands and chest exposed, because loving someone was the most vulnerable and messy act.
You had to open yourself to someone, even if you didn’t know the outcome. I knew loving Zoya was worth the fight. She was worth the storm, and I was prepared, knowing that I had my work cut out for me.
“You straight, King?” I snapped my fingers in his face, ’cause he was staring a hole in the back of his wife.
“Yeah… chilling.”
I smirked. “Chilling looks good on you.”
“I like to think so… shit feels nice too.”
Navy had gone into the barbershop behind Zoya. “Think I got a chance?”
“With Zoya? Yeah.”
“How you figure?”
“Why you asking?”
“Cause Queen had to damn near beat your chest in to snatch your heart, and this feels like that same situation. What made you keep running from what you wanted?”
Zoya ran from the shit that she feared, so I never took her playing hard to get to heart. She was afraid of having what she spent so many years convincing herself she didn’t need.
“Guilt. It’s easy to toss the dirt on the coffin when you lose someone, but it’s not the physical part of mourning that fucks with you. It’s what comes after they’re already in the ground. New grass has sprouted and covered their grave, meanwhile, the shit is still raw and hard to process. Doesn’t matter how much time has gone by. Shit feels like a lump of food that you can’t choke down. I felt guilty for moving on without them. Felt like I didn’t deserve happiness. Survivor’s guilt is a muthafucka.” He whistled, and looked to the sky, before returning his attention back to me.
Quasim was used to being that person to everyone that he surrounded himself with. When I was locked up, I could look forward to him coming to visit, a letter in the mail, or sitting on the phone and letting me process what I was going through.
He never counted favors because that nigga was just built like that. Most solid man on the planet and was too damn humble to ever take credit for that shit.
I looked over at him. “You believe that shit now, right?”
He smirked while slowly nodding his head. “My wife and kids remind me every day how blessed I am. Harley put this shit in play for me… she wanted this for me.”
I held my hand out and we hit the IG shake and pulled each other into a hug. “Get your girl, G… Zoya’s a tough nut to crack. She’s strong because she had no other choice but to be. We stubborn, but we mean well. If Anjo would have given up on me, shit, I’d still be in that house reliving everything that went wrong day in and out.”
“Real shi?—”
“Leroy!”
“Winston!”
We both turned as we watched Alaia and Erin run out the barbershop behind their husbands. Cappadonna was running while laughing, and Capone was chasing his brother with a barber’s cape around his neck.
“I’m gonna fuck him up… why the fuck would you zeek my shit!” he roared, as he continued to try and catch his brother.
Cappadonna ran every morning, nigga did that shit for fun. Capone was in shape, but his ass wasn’t getting up at the ass crack of dawn to run with his twin every morning.
“It’s not that bad, Winnie… I promise.” Erin yelled out, trying to make her husband feel better.
“And I love dolphins, Erin!” he replied, irritated with his brother, while his wife tried to make him feel better. “You see how we both fucking liars?”
“What?”
“Erin, baby, not right now,” Alaia laughed, as Cappadonna rounded by us, and stopped to take a breath.
