Page 70 of Made to Love Ya

“How old was she?” Jaylen asked.

“Twenty,” my pops answered.

“Damn, she was too old for you,” Jaylen replied.

My pops snickered.

“And jailbait for your old ass,” he told my Pops.

“Still can’t believe you cheated on my moms,” Rashad stated.

I knew he wouldn’t get over it as easily. I was pissed, too, but I couldn’t hold something over his head that happened twenty-one years ago.

“Why didn’t we ever know this?” I asked.

“Like I said, your mama was a good woman. She didn’t bash me in front of y’all or anything. She simply told me to get my shit and get out. I did what she asked, and by the end of the summer, she had rented out the other house where y’all moved to.”

“Yeah, and you moved back into the old house. Why?”

“When she cooled down, she let me know that she didn’t want to stay in that house full of my lies and betrayal. The most important part was that she didn’t want you boys to have to get used to two new houses. Then she said she didn’t know where all Carney and I had been fooling around at, and she didn’t want to sit somewhere…Well, you get the picture,” he stated when my eyes bucked, and Rashad looked like he threw up in his mouth.

The doorbell rang, and I got up to answer it. I checked the security camera on my watch as I jogged upstairs and saw Tahj on the front porch. I turned off the camera on my watch and headed to the front door.

“The fuck you do to my sister?”

This nigga snapped the minute that I answered the door.

“What the fuck you talking ’bout, nigga?” I opened the door wider for him to step inside.

“What the fuck did you do to make Chè cry?”

I closed the door and turned to face him with my arms crossed over my chest.

“You mean the same way you did not too long ago and didn’t even wanna speak to her? I ain’t got no problems clearing things up with Talia if she’d take my phone call.”

I’d known yesterday when I stepped around the corner atBBBGmagazine and saw her that my ass was in trouble. The longer I withheld the truth, the harder it had become to tell her. And just as Cee-Cee predicted, she found out another way and had been understandably upset.

“Nigga, I told yo’ bitch ass a long time ago don’t fuck with my sister. In fact, I told all my niggas that. You thought I was playing. Just because you the homie don’t mean you get no fucking pass, Izael! Now, you done fucked around and got her all fucked up and wondering if she should head back up the road to Atlanta! You fucked around and caused her to back out of her dream job! What kinda fuck shit is that?”

“Wait. Did she tell you that?”

“Nah, she was at my mama’s house crying today. She told her about that shit, and I walked in and heard what happened. You know how hard she worked for this shit! Yo’ ass on some serious bullshit, bitch ass nigga!” Tahj stepped closer to me.

“Nigga, I ain’t gonna be another bitch ass nigga up in this muthafucka. I’on give a fuck how you feeling about ya sister and me. Ya punk ass ain’t about to run up in my shit disrespecting the fuck out of me,” I shouted as I took a step closer. “You got one more time to let that shit fly out your mouth, Tahj, and we ’bout to bring this muthafucka down! On God, I’ll tear it down and build a parking lot.”

“The fuck yo’ bi?—”

“Tahj! Izael!”

That was Pops’ voice behind us. We looked toward the stairwell where he stood in the doorway, and Rashad and Jaylen peered out the doorway from behind Pops.

“I ain’t having that shit out of the two of you. Y’all grew up like brothers, and you’re better men than this. As black men, we’ve got the whole muthafuckin’ country with targets on our black asses already. The last thing we gonna do is turn on each other too. Not on my muthafuckin’ watch. Before I let y’all go out like this, I’m gonna put a cap in ya asses. You hear me?”

When we didn’t say anything, my pops put that bass in his voice and yelled, “You muthafuckas hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Tahj and I both mumbled with our hands crossed in front of us and our heads bowed, looking like those badass little boys we used to be whenever we got in trouble.

Tahj used to go to my pops’ house with Rashad and me some weekends when we visited him.

---