Page 6 of Meet Me at the Altar

I ran out the door and didn’t bother grabbing anything. I wanted to be nowhere near them, and we had nothing to talk about.

I heard Remy shouting my name as I stormed out of the house. I jumped in my car, pulled off, and drove until I reachedmy parents’ house. I sat in the car crying for a long while. It was times like this when I missed my best friend.

He was always there to comfort me, to help me look at the bright side of things, and to beat anyone’s ass who hurt me. I would love for him to be here now beating the hell out of Remy. There was a gaping hole in my heart where there shouldn’t have been one.

Remy had been my comfort when I lost Andrès. I knew that it bothered him, and he had been jealous, but he was there. If I hadn’t felt Andrès’s absence before, I truly felt it now. God, the pain hurt so bad.

“Drè, where in the world are you?” I sobbed.

Because he was the only one who could make the pain go away. He was the only one who could make me laugh, live, love, and breathe again.

Chapter 2

Andrès Sebastián Jones

Iwalked away from the enticing view of the bikini-clad women who dotted the golden sands of Manhattan Beach and walked back to the seating area in my office.

Three months after I arrived in L.A., I was caught with a quarter of a pound of weed, and I was locked up for a year. That wasn’t the best way to be introduced to my new life, but I’d learned a hard lesson fast and quick. My dad told me there was no way that I was going to have a different life if I kept doing the same dumb shit I’d done before.

A few days after my release, I’d been blowing off steam by playing basketball at a twenty-four-hour gym. I needed to figure out my next steps in life and had been praying for the answers. I met Silas that day, and he invited me out to the strip club with him and his boys later that night.

After I’d gone home and showered and changed clothes, I met up with him later, and we bonded over liquor, women, and our love for the game of basketball. No less than half an hour after we arrived, he started talking about his plans.

I learned that he was enrolling at Santa Monica College to pursue a degree in business management with a concentration in finance. That was when I shared that I had been enrolledin college, pursuing a degree in business administration with a concentration in information systems. I told him that I’d started wildin’ out and had dropped out.

Over the next couple of weeks, every time we met for a ball game, he talked about school. He eventually encouraged me to give it a shot again.

Six months after graduation, we both received our PMP certification and were working as project managers for a marketing firm. In my spare time, my love for the game had me traveling locally to play basketball. I’m a beast at basketball, and I was recruited to participate in a regional tournament, which my team not only won, but I was voted MVP.

There was a two hundred grand cash prize for being MVP, which allowed me to invest in my true dream: creating a gym shoe brand as a sneakerhead. I poured hours of research, work, and building connections to get the brand off the ground and finding the right manufacturer.

Using my business degree and the connections Silas and I made through our PMP work, we linked up with some social media influencers, and we promoted the hell out of that shit until it blew up. All sales were online only, which kept costs down and allowed for quick growth.

We created a company and leveraged the hype around the shoes to add T-shirts and hoodies to the brand. Within two years, we had launched an entire urban clothing brand, Gen U for generation urban. It didn’t matter if you were a millennial or Gen Z or Alpha, there was something for everyone. We also built a PMP consulting company and recruited new staff through the school we received our certification from. Money started flowing through like water, but I was careful not to revert to my old ways. I was careful with my money and investing in things that were lucrative, like art, real estate, and gold.

“You good, my nigga?” Silas, my best friend and business partner, asked.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just thinking about what you’ve laid out on the table,” I replied, referring to the details about the PMP side of our business.

“It’s the best time for an expansion. The market is open. We’re doing great here in California, Florida, and in New York. From the stats that our research company returned, Georgia is the next place for us to go.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt Kingston’s research at all. The nigga is a beast when it comes to numbers and data,” I remarked, referring to our consultant who we used for data and research. “It’s just there are a lot of things to consider.”

“I get it. I’ve been thinking this through, and it makes money and sense. I know you love the sunny beaches, and you don’t want to leave.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” I replied with a chuckle.

“Where’s your mind at?” he asked, grabbing a beer from my refrigerator and popping it open.

“I think I should head it up.”

“You launched the locations in Manhattan, Miami, and Tampa, and hired the staff. I thought we decided that I would do the next one.”

“We did, but this is different.”

“What are you saying? Because I’m not picking up what you’re putting down, Drè.”

“His data showed a struggling company in Cherokee Springs, Georgia, which we should take over. It would be the more logical option than going into Atlanta.”