Page 41 of If I Gave You My Heart
The nerves in my stomach started to bubble once Siri gave us our end destination. Adonis had told me to cut off the GPS about two hours back, but I wanted to keep it on so that I could see exactly where we were going. I loved him, but I was still a guarded person.
It was seven in the morning, and I suggested going straight to the hotel, but Adonis said he had wanted to go see his family first. I could tell he had missed his family over these months and was excited to see them.
I was glad that we were actually taking this trip and getting away because we had fallen into a terrible, repetitive schedule in the months after Christmas and moving in with one another. Adonis would spend his days out tending to yards and later added a roofing service to his business. While he was out handling his business, I would spend my days finding a room to decorate inside the house, and when that became too boring, Talia would drag me with her to stage some houses. With every house she closed on, she would slide me some money for helping her decorate. Some nights, Adonis would come in too tired to pay me any attention. I was big on keeping the peace under our roof. I had noticed that he had started paying less attention to me and more to his phone, but I wouldn't do more than make little side remarks here and there. Adonis would assure me that I was good with him. It's funny how he would give the reassurance that I needed, but it wasn't in the most romantic way that I would have preferred but it was done, nonetheless.
He pulled my Jeep over the gravel-filled driveway and tossed it in park.
"Are you ready to meet my family, babe?"
Adonis was smiling, and that alone caused me to smile. He was excited as fuck, and I was nervous.
"Yup…"
Hand in hand, we walked toward the front door. He pulled it open. Seeing it was unlocked, I figured he must have told someone to keep the door open for us.
"Baby, is that you?" I knew Joy's voice from the numerous FaceTime calls the two shared.
Adonis walked us through the living room, dining room, and straight into the kitchen. I could see him holding a short, slim chestnut-colored woman. Her arms wrapped around him, and then she looked over his body and made eye contact with me.
"Hey, pretty girl, come get in on this hug," she instructed me.
I walked over and then joined in on the love.
"It's nice to meet you," she added at the end of our hug.
"Where the rest of the niggas in this house, Joy?" Adonis asked as he looked around the kitchen.
"Your sister will be over a little later, and Javier is upstairs in his room with that girl." Joy rolled the shit out of her eyes with her statement.
"As he should be. Fix ya face, old lady."
"I will not. Y'all be trying to turn my home into a whore house so bad."
Adonis laughed, and I chuckled a bit, but then my little hehe moment left when I realized he used to live under this roof, too.
"That's what you were on, huh, babe?" I asked with a laugh.
"Yeah, was… the girls in this city know you getting cracked if you pull up over here."
"Just nasty," Joy chimed in as she threw the kitchen towel over her shoulder at him.
It was nice that Adonis could talk freely around the woman who had raised him. I thought that because he didn't use curse words around the woman, he would have had more of a reserved demeanor around her, but nope, he was still himself. That's something that I loved about him. He wasn't going to change who he was around anybody, not around my family or his.
By the time his little brother had woken up Joy had finished breakfast. We spent the early afternoon in the living room, laughing and engaging in conversation. Adonis and I had sat next to each other on the sofa. Every once in a while, he would check his phone and place it face down on the arm of the chair.
I took my phone off my lap and then placed it on top of his, hoping that he would get the hint to leave his phone alone because the time that we were having was solely for family. However, when the arm of the chair vibrated again, Adonis moved my phone out of the way to get to his. I decided to leave what was bothering me alone because I was having a good time overall. His sister came over with her kids, which made the house even more lively.
"You can't remember some stuff like that. You were just a little kid," Adira said as Javier went on about a memory of theirs.
"On Joy, I remember that… Aye, Joy, you don't remember when Adonis got suspended for throwing that hot honey bun at the science teacher?"
I laughed as I looked at Adonis. I needed the explanation behind it.
"She was a Virgo. I don't like them for real," Adonis commented with a shrug.
Joy was too engaged with her phone to pay us any mind. She stood up from the chair she was sitting in and then went to the front porch. She was so focused on the phone in her hand that she almost bumped into my leg on the way out.
She seemed bothered, and a piece of me wanted to follow her out on the porch to see if she was okay, but I wanted to give her the privacy she must have left the room to get.
