Page 141 of Heart Of A Goon II

“I can’t surprise an old woman?”

“Oh shush!” she smiled, her toothless grin making me smile even wider. I loved the shit out of my grandmother.

The older I became, the more I saw so much of her inside of my mother. The stubbornness, independence and always having something smart to say.

“You didn’t tell me that you were coming,” Maxine reached up to kiss me on the cheek.

If she knew her daughter was here, she would have really lost her shit. “It’s a surprise.”

I walked back over to the jeep and opened the door for Boobie. She held my hand as she stepped out. “I look a mess and you want me to meet them like this?”

“Nobody worried about what you got on. I want them to meet the love of my life, that’s more important.”

She reached up and held the side of my face. “Stop fucking gaslighting me.”

The laugh that I let out was loud as shit, because this woman was going to give me gray hairs. “Bring your ass on, Zoya.”

“Fine… hold my hand.”

I held her hand as my grandmother and aunt waited by the house. Maxine had heard about Zoya but hadn’t formally met her. My grandmother stood there with a stern face watching us walk over to her.

This was the first woman I had ever introduced to her. Zoya was the first woman I had ever loved. There had been other women, but none made me feel like she did. She could rip my heart out, stomp on it and place it back, and I would still love her.

“An a who dis yuh bring come yah?” Grandma asked, as she looked at Zoya whose hand was sweating inside of mine.

She was nervous.

“This is my girlfriend, Zoya Caselli.”

“Ugh, never thought I would be pregnant and be a girlfriend… stranger things have happened,” she muttered.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Ms. Lawyer Lady.”

“Eh, the lawya?”

I looked between the both of them. “You be telling my business, Maxine?”

“Your muva does that when she gets to chatting.” She smiled, as she reached to hug Zoya.

Zoya hugged her, while my grandmother looked her over. She wasn’t so easy to win over like my mother was. Ever since whatever happened with my mother, and aunt in the past, they never brought a man home.

“Yuh hungry?”

She smiled. “I can eat.”

“Got some jerk pork in the back with rice and peas.” I nearly chopped my grandmother in the throat when she offered my child pork.

I wasn’t thinking about Boobie, I was thinking about my child in her stomach. She damn near asked my child if they wanted to go to hell.

Right?

“She Muslim tew?”

“I’m not,” Zoya quickly spoke up. A little too fucking quick if you asked me. I was gonna let her ass make the decision she thought was best.

“Good. I hav some jerk pork for suppa.”

“I don’t eat pork though,” she quickly spoke up.