Page 11 of If I Gave You My Heart
I knew I could be vulnerable in the privacy of just her and me. I missed who was supposed to be my person. Now, although I was ready to take him off the map to protect myself, it was something about him being taken from me that made me emotional. I think it was something about Edward's brown eyes that had me reeled in from the beginning. He had this charismatic aura to him that I had never experienced before in my life.
I really thought that I would have taken this more lightly, but I just couldn't. Since I had left New York, his mother and two sisters had tried reaching out to me about what had happened to him, so I had no choice but to ditch my old phone. The same day I went to purchase my new vehicle, I also changed my number. Whenever I had time to myself, I wondered how Edward's funeral was. I hadn't told Talia, but I was even having difficulty sleeping in my room because I had been sleeping next to someone for the past two years. The right side of any bed that I slept in was reserved for Edward. I sighed deeply as I fought back tears because all this shit was completely overwhelming.
"Are you alright?" Talia asked when I turned her way with watery eyes.
"I miss him…"
"Aw, cuz," she hugged me, and I laid my head on her shoulder as I still looked out into the water.
I let my tears freely flow because I didn't think it was in the cards for me as badly as I wanted to be loved and love someone. For two years, romantically, I was in bliss, and just three weeks before my wedding, the very person who had unknowingly shown me how to love was taken from me.
"I know, hunny bunny. Mourning isn't linear. It's progressive. It's gonna take some time, and some days may not be as good as others, but that's okay."
I smiled at the advice given because Talia was the kind of girl who believed that to get over one man, you had to get under another. I had only been with three men in my entire life, and Edward was one of them. I was selective with whom I spent my time and even more selective with whom I gave my body to. I had my mother to thank for that. Emotionally, she had fucked me up, and I knew in my adult life, it fucked up all the relationships that I had gotten into. Every single last one of them except Edward and me.
"I thought ya ass would say get me another nigga and get over it," I confessed as I wiped the tears off my pudgy cheeks.
"Well, that too, but this is different. It ain't like the man just up and left you and ran off with another woman. What I will say is dating is one hell of a distraction. Now, let's go and do a little retail therapy before we go out tonight."
Talia stopped hugging me, stood from the sand with her hands, and reached out to help me up. Once we got on our feet, I decided to have a childish moment.
"Tag!" I blurted before tapping her on the shoulder and then taking off running down the sand. I looked back and started laughing once I saw her chase behind me.
"Bitch, you know I used to run track!" she yelled as she picked up her pace to catch up with me.
Talia tapped me on the shoulder and then quickly ran around me. I stopped running and placed my hands on my knees as I cried out in laughter. Her damn titties were flapping out of the sides of her bikini top.
"Talia, roll those big ass titties back in your top, mama!" I yelled out in between laughs.
"Aw shit." She stopped running to fix herself. "And what the fuck are you looking at? You wanna put one in ya mouth?" Talia turned her attention to a white man who was seated on a beach towel nearby. He turned red in the face at her remark.
I couldn't stop laughing as I slowly walked to catch up with her. Letting my guard down and allowing myself to live was starting to feel good as hell. This little vacation was probably exactly what I needed to get back to me.
Adonis
"Muthafucka, you are taking dresses too?"
Dom was standing in the doorway of one of these big ass rooms, just looking at me as I snatched everything out of the closet and then started loading it into garbage bags. I didn't give a fuck that they were still on the hangers. I didn't have hangers back the crib, no way.
"You damn right," I quickly responded.
I didn't know who these bitches were, but they were designer-dripping.
"I'm gone start calling your ass Jody fromBaby Boy. My nigga gone be out here selling dresses out the trunk," he joked.
"And muthafuckas better not argue with me about my prices, either. I don't wanna hear shit about no fortyyyy dollarssss."
Dom laughed when I mimicked ol' boy from the movie.
When I say that we cleaned out, we cleaned that muthafucka out. As we took numerous trips to and from the moving truck, I smiled, knowing I was about to be back on top. I had helped Dom wrap this seventy-inch television in some blankets and then move it onto the truck. I'm glad we both had experience with moving people because the way we packed the back of that truck was some professional shit.
"Put the damn air fryer back, dude."
"Aight… aight," I put the air fryer back on the counter as I laughed.
I walked back up the stairs and opened the closed door that was first on the right of me. I was in charge of cleaning out the left side of the crib and Dom the right, but his ass was too preoccupied with cleaning out the lower level first.
The décor in the room held smooth, earthy tones, and I wondered what shade of green was on the walls because I wanted that shit as an accent color in my room back at the crib. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and then took a picture of the wall so that I could try to match the color when I took a trip to Home Depot later in the week. I started opening drawers to see if I could find some jewelry. There were a couple of pieces in the long dresser, along with some designer shades. I was careful to place them in the bag in my hand. I didn't need anything scratched or damaged to devalue the amount that I could resell them for. When I went over to the nightstand, this necklace on the surface caught my eye.
