Love Me 3

Diamond Johnson

Sujets

• Urban Books

Informations

• Publié par: Sullivan Group Publishing, LLC
• Date de parution: 17 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781648540172
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2018
Published by Leo Sullivan Presents
www.leolsullivan.com


All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.
Contents



1. Takari Evans

2. Journey Evans

3. Raheem Wallace

4. Valentina Garcia

5. Takari Evans

6. Za’Kai “Bully” Kemp

7. Journey Evans

8. Sonya Evans

9. Za’Kai “Bully” Kemp

10. Raheem Wallace

11. Rashonda “Pinky” Monroe

12. Journey Evans

13. Sonya Evans

14. Marco Brown

15. Takari Evans

16. Za’Kai Kemp

17. Journey Evans

Epilogue


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1

Takari Evans



M y daughter was out at her eighth-grade prom, and because I was a mom who constantly worried about the dangers of this crazy world, I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until she was inside the house, and her head touched her pillow. I received a text message from her about ten minutes ago letting me know that she and her date, Milton, were back in the limo, and she was on her way back home. The twins were in their bedrooms sleeping, so when the message came through, I headed downstairs to wait for my daughter in the living room. I wanted to know all about her eighth-grade prom.
Growing up, we didn’t have an eighth-grade prom. There was one prom, which was the senior prom, and I attended that. My night was amazing. I laughed to myself as I thought about our next door neighbor at the time, whose name was Ms. Brenda. Ms. Brenda held a lot of titles in the hood that I grew up in. She ranged from being just about everyone’s fake grandmother, the candy lady, the nurse, and she was even a seamstress.
At the time, my mom was a single mom, trying to take care of two girls, and she was barely making ends meet, so she couldn’t afford to buy me a prom dress. Ms. Brenda ended up making my prom dress for me, and she only charged my mom thirty dollars for it. I hated to laugh but thinking about the bright yellow dress that she’d made for me that had feathers on it as I requested it was hilarious. Like a lot of teenagers at the time, I was into magazines, so I showed Ms. Brenda a picture in a women’s fashion magazine, so she could see the dress that I wanted.
I remember the dress from that magazine like the back of my hand. Jennifer Lopez had worn the dress, and I fell in love with it. Ms. Brenda swore up and down that she could make that dress with her eyes closed, so my trust was in her. A few days before prom, my mom and I had gone next door to pick up the dress, and I could have died when I saw what she’d made for me. It wasn’t even the same bright yellow dress that I’d requested. Instead, it was almost like a neon looking dress. She went overboard with the feathers, and because Ms. Brenda was an old fashioned lady, she went didn’t even put the slit on the right side of the dress that was supposed to expose a little bit of my thigh. She said that she felt like that was too mature for me at the time.
My mom claimed to have liked the dress, and because she’d spent her hard earned thirty dollars on it, I had no choice but to wear it to prom. Prom night, my mom ended up straightening my long hair for me, and she even applied a little bit of make-up on me. That night, feathers were dropping off my dress like flies. It was embarrassing as hell, but years later, I sit back and die of laughter. No matter how many times I go back and think about my senior year prom night, it will always be like my first time telling it because it gets funnier and funnier.
I think about that night, and I can’t help but compare it to the events that took place today with my daughter. Journey had it made, especially for this to just be her eighth-grade prom. Last weekend, I’d taken her to a prom store in the mall where her prom dress came up to one thousand dollars. And, because my daughter wasn’t like most girls her age who could get a little flat from JC Penny or maybe even Macy’s, I had to take her little butt to Christian Louboutin, where I made her get the lowest heel inside the damn store.
Her auntie Sky did professional make-up, so Journey’s make-up didn’t look clownish the way mine did for my senior prom. I’d even hired a chef to cook food while we sat and watched Journey get ready. Not to mention the party decorator that I hired to decorate the front of the house, with balloons filling the door so we could have the perfect backdrop for her pictures. A photographer was hired along with her own personal driver for the night since she thought that it would be lame if I were to drop her off.
Times have definitely changed. People may think that I’m doing too much when it comes to my children, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I just wanted to be the mother who could provide things to them that my mother wasn’t able to provide for me growing up. Plus, I was doing this shit on my own. Jerrod wasn’t in the kids’ lives by choice, and because I wouldn’t allow him to see them. At least, not anytime soon. My twins, especially Jada still has nightmares from the night that he beat me right in front of them.
Days after it happened, when I was brought home, the twins got in the bed with me. They were both crying and begging me not to ever take them back over to their dad’s. It wasn’t my wish nor my goal to keep the kids away from their father, but I swear to God if it came to it, I would do it without hesitation. I did not trust his actions nor his mother. If that bitch could be spiteful and bring another bitch to her birthday dinner in an attempt to make me jealous or whatever the fuck she was trying to do in front of my children, there was no telling what the hell she would do with just them and not me in the picture.
Everyone knows that I will go to hell and back for my children, and because I wasn’t trying to go to jail, I felt it was safer to keep the kids away from them. At least until shit calmed down a little bit.
I had soft music playing in the background from my Alexa, when all of a sudden, my phone started ringing. A smile lit up my face when I saw that it was Za’Kai calling me. I had talked to him through text message at least thirty minutes ago, and he told me that he was getting ready to leave his grandma’s house and that he would call me as soon as he got in the car.
It didn’t take a whole damn thirty minutes to walk out of his grandmother’s house and to get inside his car, so I knew his ass had fallen into temptation, and he was out there gambling. I knew my man; therefore, I knew that it was so easy for him to fall into a dice game. You could take the man out the hood, have him go legit and open his own company, but if he was in the hood and a dice game was going on, he would jump right on it.
“Hi, baby,” I cooed into the phone while I sat on the couch with my feet tucked under me and criticized myself about my need for a pedicure.
I heard noise in his background along with the night wind, which proved my point about him shooting dice.
“I just took all these niggas’ money out here. I think I got enough money to get you a ring,” he said, and then he laughed.
His laugh was so damn contagious that it made me laugh. I loved hearing Za’Kai laugh because he was so damn mean that laughing was something that he hardly ever did. He thought he had to be so hard all the damn time, but when I came around, or his kids, he turned into Goofy due to all the smiles and laughs that we would bring out of him.
“Yeah, right,” I said and rolled my eyes.
I mean, I knew Za’Kai loved me, and I knew that I loved him, but we hadn’t really talked about marriage yet. I tell him all the time, whether we’re just having a casual talk or in the middle of sex, that I love him and that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, but we’d never discussed that big M word. Honestly, I was scared as hell to marry again.
Look at the way Jerrod and I turned out. He and I used to be the best of friends. Even when we were just in a relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, things were still going well between us. The moment we jumped that broom and tied the knot, that’s when the bullshit came. I loved Za’Kai too much for us to go out the same way that Jerrod and I went out. I hated that nigga so much that I didn’t even like for his name to come out of my mouth. Like, I wanted to erase everything about him but keep my children in the process. I wanted to forget that his ass even existed. That’s what marrying him had reduced my feelings to. I ate, slept, and breathed Za’Kai, and I didn’t want anything to damage what we had.
“Fuck you mean, yeah right, like buying a ring and marrying you isn’t part of the plan. I was only bullshitting about using the money to buy you a ring. I only came up on two Gs, and this is nowhere near enough money to get you that pretty motha fucka that I saw the other day in Jared’s. You don’t think a nigga would want to marry you, Shrimp?” he asked me.
His background was quiet, so he must have gotten into his car.