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Janae
I couldn’t get out of bed. My chest felt like it had a cement block sitting on top of my heart. Each time I tried to move, I couldn’t. It simply… hurt too much. Felt too suffocating. Each breath I took was shorter and choppier than the one before.
I was probably going to die today—die of a broken, crushed heart—I was sure.
Today was always hard.
This week wasalwayshard.
Hell, this month was torture.
It didn’t matter how much I tried to prepare, the memories of what I lost exactly two years ago always haunted me and left me debilitated today… this week… this month.
But this month needed to be different. This month, my best friend was getting married, and I needed to get my shit together. This month, my best friend had a beautiful baby girl who was my goddaughter, and though I hadn’t given birth to her myself, she was like my own. This month, there was so much love that would be surrounding me… I could only pray I had the strength to let it drench me. Because the truth was, only love healed pain, no matter how much fear had me running from it.
My mind instantly went to Tyreek as I closed my eyes and allowed tears to slide down my face, onto my ears. He’d wanted so desperately to love me… yet I allowed the pain of the man before him to hold me hostage. I wanted to say it was foolish, but I knew deep down in my heart that I’d done the right thing. Tyreek deserved a woman who was whole and healed, or at least, whole enough to not have so many holes in her heart that his love would immediately seep out. I imagined he felt extremely empty trying to constantly fill a woman who didn’t have the capacity to receive let alone return what he was giving.
But right now… my God… I wished I could hold the love he had to give. If I could, maybe I wouldn’t feel chained to my bed with all this… pain.
Lifting my hand to my throat, I swallowed hard before pulling in a deep, shaky breath. I sobbed, rolling over onto my side in a fetal position. I wanted to get out of bed… needed to get out of bed. I wanted to work… needed to grab my phone and let people know I was okay. It wasn’t like me to go ghost—to completely shut down. I didn’t even have the strength to grab my phone on the nightstand. I was sure if I tried to stand, I’d crumble into a million little pieces… like a puzzle that had been forced together with pieces that didn’t fit.
Deciding to just surrender to the paralyzing state I was in, I wrapped my arm around my legs, closed my eyes, and cried.
CHAPTER3
Tyreek
When I walked into Kahlil’s man cave, he was in a deep sleep. I took a picture and sent it to the group chat. His head was tossed back on the recliner he was seated in, mouth wide open as he snored. He talked big shit about how having my niece wouldn’t affect his sleep and energy, and for the last three months, Kayla had been giving him and Honey a run for their money. She was worth it though.
She was the most perfect baby I’d ever met… no question about it. Even when she was fussing or throwing up on my shirts, I loved that little girl more than anything in this world. Kayla was a determining factor in my decision to leave the streets too. When it was just me and Kahlil, I didn’t give a damn. Now that he had a baby and soon to be wife, I had to take into consideration how my actions would affect his life. He’d left the underworld, but Kahlil would always be attached to me because of blood.
I started to wake Kahlil up to fill him in on my meeting with Ahmad, but he looked to be getting some much-needed sleep, so I cut the TV on a low volume just to create a sound barrier around myself. I didn’t really watch TV much, just sports and a few movies here and there, but I didn’t like being in silence too much. It let my thoughts wander more than I would have liked for them too, and that was the last thing I needed right now. While I was confident Ahmad wouldn’t be a threat, I didn’t know what he would do, if anything, to try and make me come back.
What he’d said was true—I knew a lot of his secrets. A lot of the dirt and illegal things he wanted done, I did. If I was to get locked down, I could easily snitch on him to have my sentence reduced or avoid jail time altogether, but I wasn’t that kind of man. I’d never snitch just to avoid accepting responsibility for my actions. The fact that Ahmad thought that was even a possibility let me know he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did—even with me almost marrying his daughter.
While I waited for Kahlil to wake up, I decided to read the answers to the discussion questions I had my students to answer on our online forum. Instead of giving them homework to take home every night of the week, I devoted two class days to being spent in the computer lab so they could catch up on any work they may have been behind on. It wasn’t lost on me that some of them didn’t have internet access let alone the time, quiet environment, help, or peace to complete homework assignments. My students were set up to succeed, so if they failed, it was truly because they had no desire to. So far, I only had one with that failure mentality. That hopelessness that made them believe life, or education for that matter, had no value.
There were also a few knuckleheads that thought it was cool to joke around and appear to not be interested or involved in schoolwork, but I learned quickly half of them were actually the smartest in the class and weren’t being challenged enough while the others were underdeveloped and needed a bit more help and private attention.
At the sound of Kahlil groaning and clearing his throat, I looked up and chuckled. He looked around the room as if he didn’t even know where he was.
“I was sleep?” he asked, wiping his eyes.
“Yeah, man,” I replied through my chuckle.
“I came down here to get my charger. I don’t know how long I was even down here.”
That would explain why my call went straight to voicemail when I called to let him know I was outside.
“Well, you obviously sat down and fell asleep before you even put the phone on the charger because it’s dead.”
“Damn,” he grumbled as he stood and shook his head, looking around the room with red eyes.
“You know you and Honey can take a break anytime, and I’ll watch Kay Kay, right? Mama will too. Hell, everyone will.”
Kahlil nodded as he walked over to the bar area he had customized and plugged his charger up. “I know, and I appreciate that. It’s hard to leave her though.” He smiled as he connected his phone to the charger. “The trip before the wedding and the honeymoon will be the first time we’ve been away from her. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m going to miss my baby like crazy.”
“That’s understandable, but you still need to take that time to yourself, with your wife, and with your niggas. Balance, brother. If you drain yourself, you won’t be any good for Kay Kay or anyone else.”
