Page 61 of If I Gave You My Heart
Jolene stood next to her with a stone-cold glare. I picked up the next picture and saw that Nyoka was older, maybe about seventeen or so. She was smiling brightly beside my mother again. They wore the same chain. The same chain that I had stolen from her almost a year ago. I heard the front door open, and when it did, anger bubbled in my soul.
"Babeeeee, where are you? I gotta show you my nails. I think you're gone love to see this color wrapped around ya dick." Nyoka's tone was so cheerful.
I had to swallow hard because I felt like I was about to throw up. The back of my mouth was watery as hell.
"There you are…"
I looked up from the pictures and saw Nyoka standing in the doorway. Her nails were painted in a French manicure design. I knew she had gotten it for me because I told her how I loved that shit. That French tip combo would get the panties snatched off a bitch. Her hair was bone straight and to her shoulders, so I knew she had visited the salon inside of the spa as well. When she looked down at what was in my hand, her facial expression told me everything that I needed to know. She had been lying to me.
Nyoka
We stood there in silence for a while. I quickly looked around the closet and saw that Adonis had tended to what I had been complaining about damn near all week. When I looked back at him, there was a hurt in his eyes that I wish I had never put there. I bit my bottom lip as my eyes started to water. Without looking at the photos, I knew exactly what he had discovered. I wasn't big on taking pictures, but I kept the two in his hand because they were sentimental to me. One was a photo of me the first day I had gone to The Heart Mirage's boarding house and the second was the day of my graduation. In both photographs, Jolene was at my side.
"Are you like them?" Adonis had broken the silence. I knew he must have meant like his mother and Joy.
"Yes…"
He breathed deeply and then used his thumb and pointer finger to massage his eyeballs. I watched him go through the motions.
He dropped the pictures in his hand into the box and then started to walk in my direction. I held my breath because I couldn't get a read on him. It was evident he was hurt and angry, but to what extent?
"Watch out, bruh." He was trying to leave the room, but I was standing in the doorway still.
"Babe, no, can you talk to me?"
In that moment, I instantly regretted not taking Joy's advice to tell him while everything was still fresh. A piece of me wanted to leave that part of my life behind because that wasn't me anymore. Adonis had unknowingly changed me in so many ways.
He threw his head back in frustration before brushing past me.
"Can you waitttt?" I cried as I followed behind him.
Adonis was giving me the silent treatment, and I understood why. Before seeing his mother again, for months, he would vent about her absence in his life. Then the following weeks after we had left Ohio, I listened to him vent about how she wasn't shit for abandoning her children to fill her life with being a contracted murderer.
"Adonis waitttt…" I cried again as I pulled at the back of his white t-shirt as he started to head down the stairs.
"MOVE, BRUH!"
Adonis turned around and pushed me, which caused me to stumble back. We made eye contact for a moment, and when I couldn't detect any regret in his glare, it infuriated me. I knew I could kill him with ease, and now that my secret was out, he did as well.
"Just talk to me!" I pleaded again because I was in the wrong. I sounded weak as hell, but I didn't give a fuck. I had messed this up, and I'll be damned if I didn't try my hardest to fix it.
Although his mother and I had the same profession, I didn't want him to associate her heartless ways with me. I loved the fuck out of him. I grabbed Adonis' shirt again with both hands to try to stop him from leaving. This time, when he turned around, he pushed me with a force that put me on my ass. I had pushed my anger to the side with the first push, but with that second one, I just couldn't control myself. I quickly jumped to my feet and then lifted one and kicked him in the back as he was walking down the stairs.
Adonis' feet slid down the carpeted steps, but he caught his balance by grabbing hold of the banister. He looked over his shoulder and gave me a look like he wanted to kill me. I could see in his eyes that he was second-guessing it because who was the real killer here? He jogged down the rest of the steps, and by the time I ran behind him, he was already slipping his feet into his sneakers at the door. He grabbed his keys off the key rack hanging on the wall so hard that the entire thing had fallen to the ground.
I didn't even bother to grab anything to cover my freshly done hair from the rain as I followed him out.
"Adonis, please!"
He had started his car on his key fob. He always parked his car on the street because he would come and go as he pleased and never wanted to block me in. The rain poured down hard on the both of us as I ran behind him down the driveway.
"Leave me the fuck alone, Nyoka!"
He swung his car door open and hopped in, but I had the door in my hand.
"I will start fucking driving," he warned as he looked me up and down.
I just needed Adonis to hear me out. More than anything, I never wanted us to be mad at each other and not be able to talk it out. He wasn't telling me he needed space or anything. He was just leaving.
