Page 63 of Made to Love Ya

He chuckled when I lifted our clasped hands and gestured across the parking lot at Tahj and Dalia walking toward us. Dalia wore a big grin and Tahj looked like he wanted to kick someone’s ass.

“Yo! That nigga showed up for real,” Jaylen declared as he and his wife Renee walked toward us from their truck parked two spots over.

“Who invited his ornery ass?” Izael asked as Tahj stepped up to him and dapped him up.

My heart was so full. I was thankful that someone had invited my brother, and he had accepted the invitation. We were speaking again, but I needed to see that he and Izael were close again too.

“Nigga, you can’t stop me from being where the hell I wanna be,” Tahj declared as Dalia and I hugged.

“So long as you ain’t got no beef with me loving on my woman,” Izael asserted and kissed my lips.

“See that’s the shit that gets niggas knocked out right there,” Tahj grumbled and pulled me away. It felt good when my big brother wrapped me in a bear hug. “Love you, girl,” he muttered in my ear.

“I love you, too, Tahj. Thanks for coming, boo.”

“Always, baby,” he whispered back.

“Baby, everyone deserves to be loved,” Dalia interjected.

“That’s my sister,” Tahj replied and released me.

“And I’m someone’s sister too. Does that mean because she’s your sister she doesn’t deserve to be loved?”

Tahj looked at his fiancée with soft eyes before he turned and mugged Izael. Shaking his head, he turned to Jaylen and dapped him up. “Nigga, you didn’t tell me they were gonna be here.”

“Yo! You wildin’ boy. You knew he was gonna be here,” Jaylen countered.

“Can we please go inside? Eve and Andrew are already in there waiting for us,” I declared.

The six of us headed inside of the large warehouse to do an escape room event. Izael and Tahj walked up to the reception desk to get the instructions from the host, and I headed directly to Eve, where she stood with her date, Andrew, in the lobby.

“Oooh, don’t you look fine, boo,” Eve greeted me.

I wore a pair of ripped, distressed, high waist blue jeans and paired them with a red plaid shirt that I tied off underneath my breasts, and some red, high-top Chuck Taylors.

“Thank you, baby. You look good too.”

She wore a pair of wide-legged boyfriend jeans with a hot pink crop top and white Nikes.

“I see you got your man back, boo. Glad to see that you didn’t fuck up a good thing.”

I giggled. “Almost did. But we had a heart to heart. Like I told you on the phone last week, we’ve been focusing on building something solid.”

“That’s good. You deserve the best, boo. Shocked to see that Tahj came through. Him and Ms. D.” My best friend sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes.

“Girl, please. Get over that. Besides, you got a fine ass man over there.”

I bobbed my head at Andrew. He was an older guy with a gray patch on one side of his beard, but everything else was black. He was very handsome and enamored with my best friend.

“I do, and he loves my nasty draws.” Eve giggled and pressed her hand against her mouth. Andrew was eleven years older than Eve, and she said he was freaky as hell. I didn’t want to know half of what my best friend did with that man based on some of the stuff she’d already shared.

“Everyone ready?” Izael asked.

We all chimed in that we were and followed the greeter to the room we would be locked in. Tahj and Izael pulled up the rear as they talked in low voices amongst themselves. I guessed they were putting aside their differences once and for all because they hugged and dapped again just as the greeter finished issuing instructions on what we could expect and what we were to do.

A large-screen TV featured a scary clown who spoke to us and told us what our mission would be and where our first clue was. He released a creepy laugh at the end of the video and told us that the clock was counting down.

“I don’t like clowns,” Dalia mumbled as she looked around the room.

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