Page 4 of If I Gave You My Heart
"Now, you don't have to tell me what you did, but I know you're sorry. God knows your heart, and he knows you're sorry, too."
"Joy, I don't think God messes with a nigga no more."
My tears hit the top of her forehead, and I know she must have felt it because she hugged me tighter.
"Don't let anybody take you back to a place you prayed yourself out of, baby."
Joy always had a way with words that would make a nigga rethink their entire life.
"Y'all niggas down here having a gay ass moment."
I heard Javier, my little brother's voice behind me. I never turned around. I just kept hugging Joy, and she kept hugging me.
"What happened?" he asked.
I could see him in my peripheral, but I just kept on looking straight at the blinds to the window.
"Javier, turn that TV up!"
Joy had an urgency in her voice that made me stop hugging her and turn around toward the television.
"Weren't you just there?"
I didn't even give Joy a response because my eyes were glued to the screen. Police and a shitload of people were at the reservoir. They look like they had the divers out as well.Fuck! Somebody had to have seen me. Shit!My mind was running a mile a minute.
"Baby, weren't you just there?"
Joy called me Baby, although I was the oldest boy. I was her baby, and her muthafucking baby was breaking her heart. I heard it in her tone. Her voice cracked, and I stood frozen when she asked me for the second time. One thing I wasn't about to do was go back to jail. Joy and I both knew that shit.
"Baby, pack your shit. I'ma make a call. We gone be alright."
Joy never cursed, but I knew she was panicking like me.
"Man, bruh, what's going on?"
I ignored Javier. I had to.
"Baby move!"
Joy's frail arm pushed me, and when it did, it gave me the strength I needed to carry my body upstairs and into my room. I didn't have much shit to pack because I had lent out a lot of my shit to help out the gang in between my ex keeping a lot of my shit since we wore the same size. I looked out for my homeboys a lot, although most of the time, the shit wasn't reciprocated.
∞∞∞
It took me less than an hour to get my things packed up. When I made it back downstairs, my siblings were scattered about. My older sister was over with my niece and two nephews. Their asses were bad. They were the reason I had held off on having my own. Little kids who don't listen scare me, and my niece and nephew terrified me to death.
"Baby, what happened?" Adira, my older sister, asked me. She rushed over to hug me, and I held onto her. "I told you 'bout this temper, Baby," she added.
I just knew Joy must have filled her in while I was packing.
"I know…" I lowly voiced as I let her cry on my chest.
"Alright now, enough of this."
Joy pushed in between us. She always had to when we were kids. Adira and I were the only kids Joy adopted from the same family. We were a year apart, so everybody called us twins. It was so bad that I remember when we were kids, Joy put us in separate timeouts, and we ended up holding onto the same post outside. Man, Joy was running around chasing us in the yard, trying to separate us like how Mister was inThe Color Purplewith Ceilie and Nettie. I lightly chuckled at the distant memory.
"Here, Baby, go here. It's almost ten hours away, but you'll be safe there."
Joy's voice brought me back from memory lane. Man, I would kill to go back to that remembrance right now. It's so much shit I would do differently in life.
