Page 15 of I'm So Mega
“Alright, ladies. Let’s get out here and show them how beautiful you are.” Shan, Mama Goldie, and I led the way. When I got to the den, it was a full house. Ned, Mega, Samuel, and my dad were there with stoned faces.Where did my dad come from?
He must have read my mind. “You thought I wasn’t going to be here to see my grandbabies off with some knucklehead niggas? Don’t play with me, Ruth.” Nedrick Senior did not play about his grandchildren. We’d grown so close over the years. It was crazy that I didn’t find out about him being my father until I was a grown woman, but he had the capability to love on the little girl in me that was never loved properly.
Shanti drove the boys here. Nicole texted and felt it was best that Ryne Sr. not come, so Shanti would bring her son. The boys looked very nice in their black suits. Our girls’ dresses complemented the suits perfectly.Lisa, eat your heart out, bish!I wasn’t sure who she was, but it seemed like my daughter didn’t care for her, so that meant that I didn’t either.God is always working on me.
Shanae stepped out of the hallway. “Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you two beauties.” She extended her hand in a presenting manner. “Magdalene Manfield and Kellie Summerson.”
Maggie and Kellie walked out of the hallway in all their beauty. Time stood still as everyone took them in. My eyesscanned the room until they landed on Mega and Ned who had matching tight jaws.
Mega’s eyes connected with mine. “Ruth, you got me fucked up.”
Ah hell!
A Short Time Earlier. . .
“It’s not, Mega. We’ll be back in town by five, which is enough time for them to get ready. The next morning, we are going back for the brunch,” Ruth told me.
With a smile, I responded. “Sounds like a jam-packed weekend. That’s what’s up. I’m about to go handle some business. Boys, y’all want to roll wit’ me?”
I knew they would because they loved to hang with me. Also, they knew what it meant when I asked them to roll with me to handle business. Like I knew they would, they jumped up, turned the game off, and were ready to go.
I saw Ruth’s side-eye because she thought I was up to something, and she would be right. All the women in my houseright now had me messed up. I moved over to my daughter and niece to kiss their foreheads. Next, I moved to my love, wrapped an arm around her to pull her into me. “I’m gonna take the boys to dinner for some Daddy-Son time. Give me a kiss.”
Her lips touched mine. The groans from the kids made Ruth and me chuckle with our lips still locked. When I let her go, I gawked at my kids. “How y’all think y’all got here.”
Maggie smacked her hands over her ears. “Daddy! Please leave.”
I chortled as I walked out of the den with my sons on my heels. We jumped into my big boy. I watched them through the rearview mirror as they put on their seat belts. Sometimes I was in awe of them. Two individuals with the same face but they were night and day. “Where y’all want to go to dinner?”
They both looked at each other. They didn’t say anything to each other before they looked at me. In unison, they said, “Hustle, Crust & Bake!”
That was that twin telepathy. Hustle, Crust & Bake was a New York style pizza restaurant here in Coreland that was opened two years ago. My sons loved pizza and always complained that there was no good pizza in Coreland. Well, we couldn’t have that. I opened the business, then sourced a family in New York who owned a pizzeria. They were mildly successful, but there was a pizzeria on every other corner in New York.
The business belonged to the father and mother, but they had a son who helped heavily. He wanted to get out of New York with his family, so I offered him the job as the restaurant manager, and he would also own 20 percent of the restaurant. He jumped at the opportunity. Hell, he owned 20 percent of the business and still received a salary.
The restaurant was met with wild success immediately. It was a hot spot in Coreland and put the other national chainslocated here to shame. My sons loved it and always wanted it. “Cool, I’m going to tell Uncle Ned to meet us there.”
Their smiles were wide. They loved their uncles and cousins. When Corleone was around, they spent a lot of time with him. The restaurant was only fifteen minutes from our house. Ned was already there when we got there. “What’s up, Bubba?” I greeted.
“Ain’t shit. What’s up, lil homies.” He dapped me before he moved to show my boys some love.
They both responded to him with their usual, ‘ain’t nothing, Unc.’ We all walked into the restaurant where Sashelle, the manager, Benny’s daughter, was at the hostess stand. “Hey, y’all. Mega, you want y’all usual table?”
After I confirmed, she walked us to our table. The waitress came over immediately to get our usual order. Ned and I ordered a separate pizza from the boys. I never met eight-year-olds that loved anchovies until Matthew and Joseph. I wasn’t messing with that.
Once the waitress left the table, I got down to the business that needed to be handled. “Ned, the boys said that our girls were talking in their language. What’s up, boys?”
Matthew leaned on the table. “Kellie asked Maggie if she was going to kiss that boy. She told Maggie if she did, then so would she.”
Ned shuffled in his seat. His face reddened. See, my sons were just as fluent in pig latin as everyone in my house. The only difference was that I trained them not to let anyone know about it. Sometimes you had to keep things to the vest. They were my lil covert operatives when it came to our damn daughters. Little girls were slick as hell.
Christianson Enterprises taught its assets to hold certain information about ourselves to the vest until it was necessary to reveal it, if that time ever came. I spoke multiple languages asdid many people in the enterprise, Ned included. The day that Ruth discovered I spoke other languages, she was floored.
Almost Fifteen Years Earlier. . .
“I can’t believe I’m in Rio de Janeiro. In my wildest dream, I would never have imagined this for me. Thank you so much, baby.” Appreciation dripped from every one of Ruth’s words.
We were on our jet-set shit before I put a baby in her.This was the third country that we’d been to.I picked the first, which was the Maldives. We agreed to alternate who picked the locations. The last trip was to the Dominican Republic. That shit frustrated me because out of all the countries in the world, she wanted to go to the DR? She could have gone there with her homegirls, but what my baby wanted, she got.
