Having this conversation when she was inebriated probably wasn’t the best route to take, but I didn’t want to leave it until morning. “How are you feeling inside about it all, Jose? What’s going through your mind?”
She was silent so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “Well, you have a crack on your ceiling in the shape of a penis. I’m wondering if you were bouncing on the bed and whacked it on there to make that shape.” Looking up at where she was pointing, I saw a thin crack, but not a penis shaped one. “I’m also curious what he has to say. I mean, he didn’t know I existed, but he could have met Tabby. I have questions, but I keep forgetting them, and that sucks!”
“Then we’ll write them down in the morning,” I suggested. “We’ll sit down, think about everything and what you want to know, write them all down, and then you can decide what you want to do.”
Turning to face me, she raised a hand and almost poked me in the eye when she went to run it down my cheek. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” she murmured sleepily. “I love you.”
Leaning in, I gave her a soft kiss and whispered, “Love you, too, baby.”
I was just pulling back when she whispered back, “I’m going to marry you one day.”
Just this morning, that had been my only focus. I had day-to-day life figured out, my girls under my roof, my woman in my bed, and I’d wanted my ring on her finger. That was it, simple right? Now we had this to navigate, and I was going to get her through every second. Hearing her say this, though, I knew I wasn’t going to put my proposal to the side, I was still going to do it.
“Yeah, you are.”
She fell asleep with a smile on her face, something I wasn’t sure earlier that I’d see for a long time. I just hoped it lasted.Chapter 17Jose
I’d woken up this morning feeling much better than I had yesterday, and the weight of the direction that my life had taken wasn’t as heavy as it had been either. Yes, I was still mixed up over it all, but it didn’t feel like an impossible thing to get through today. It was really very simple – we hear him out, or we don’t, and I think both of us had decided to go with the former option last night. In fact, I knew for sure we’d messaged him back before we left the bar with something like:
Yo, it’s us. We wants to here it. That was it, spelling mistakes and all. Thankfully, we’d decided not to send the message where we described our hair colors, the fact we had two feet and wondered if he had the same, and if he liked pickles. Thank God for small mercies.
Wylda had tried calling me three more times, but I wasn’t answering anymore of her phone calls. I had enough shit going on in my own life to deal with, and I was content regardless of the shit storm that had hit. Talking to her again would affect me mentally and emotionally, and I didn’t need that right now. She might have given birth to me, but she proved yesterday that she wasn’t my mother, so I’d shut that door. I didn’t wish for anything bad to happen to her, I just didn’t want to talk to her and hear her tales of woe for the hundredth time. I’d be even more content if Ellis would stop looking at me over his cup of coffee like I was going to explode.
“You know, you don’t have to watch me like that.”
Raising his eyebrows, he took another sip, and then gently placed it back down onto the table. “I’m just wondering how someone so beautiful can sing so badly.”
Feeding Liv another spoonful of lumpy mashed banana with stewed apple chunks that Rissa had made, I turned my head slowly and leveled him with a glare. “I don’t sing badly. In fact, I don’t sing at all.”
The huge smile that appeared on his face made him look sexy as hell, even though I knew that it meant bad shit for me, and it was seriously distracting trying to be pissed at him while he was doing it. “Oh, you sang all right. Horribly.”
Call it childish, call it hungover, even call it hormones if you want – which it wasn’t – but it was immensely satisfying sending the next spoonful of Liv’s breakfast flying across the table at him. It was almost hedonistic when it hit him on the forehead and started to slowly drip down as he stared at me in shock, too.
It was also shit scary because I didn’t know what he was going to do back.