Free Adore You by Nicole Falls

Where’s his place? I’ll roll up; hit him with The Stevie. Here’s your fade, baby. Signed, sealed, delivered—it’s yours! Or The Oprah if he got a new ho in there. You get a fade, you get a fade, everybody gets a fade.”
     
    Celena pulled back from my embrace, laughing hysterically.
     
    “Why are you so foolish?”
     
    “There we go. I accomplished my mission. I got you to laugh. Fuck him, Cel. I know you’re hurting. I know you want answers, but you deserve better than this mess he’s pulling.”
     
    “I just wish I knew what was even going on in his head.”
     
    We finished the bottle of wine, while I caught Celena up on the happenings between Ellis and I over the past few days. I was hesitant to even bring it up, but Cel asked and refused to let it go until I caught her up. She knew about the fight at his house, so I brought her up to speed about the apology and subsequent relationship declaration and oath. She teased me mercilessly about denying my destiny, citing that trite ass “if you love someone let them go; if they come back they’re yours” saying. I brushed her off, but was really amazed. Her love life had just been blown to smithereens and instead of languishing in the misery; she was over here encouraging me to go all in with Ellis. I’d never been the hopeless romantic type chick, but that was Celena to the core. I hope she got the answers she sought from this shitbacle with Jake and eventually would be able to find someone who deserved all the love she had to give.

 
    “Don’t you think it’s about time you settled down, Scoot?” my mother asked as we sat around the table, eating. I nearly dropped the platter containing the oven-fried chicken that I was passing to Everett. I steadied my grip and passed the plate to my left to a smirking Everett. That smirk let me know that his wife obviously clued him into whatever intel she had on me and Bee.
     
    “Aw, ma, don’t start.”
     
    “Aw ma, hell. I’m sick of it. These two,” she said, gesturing to Everett and Cassidy, “refuse to gimme anymore grandchildren. I love my SophieBug, but it would be nice to have more than one set of photos to pass around when I get together with the girls.”
     
    “Mama, you the only one with photos to pass around at this point. Auntie Berta only got sonograms,” Everett chimed in.
     
    “And Imogene has none,” my father piped up.
     
    “And none of that has anything to do with why this boy thinks he’s the black George Clooney. You gonna wait until you’re fifty to get married too, Scooter?”
     
    I just shook my head and let her keep talking. It did no good for me to even try to reason with her when she got on a roll. Not only had she regressed to calling me my childhood nickname, but she also had a bug up her butt about some damn grandkids. She’d spend the next twenty minutes outlining all of the reasons that I needed to get my life together, find a girl to marry and pop out some kids in the next six to eight months. This became the topic of conversation about every three weeks at our weekly family dinners. It was so cyclical it was a wonder that she didn’t get tired of hassling me about my dating life.
     
    “Ma. I’m only thirty-four, calm down.”
    “Boy do you know where we were at thirty-four? We’d been married for twelve years and both of you knuckleheads were in elementary school by then. To my estimation, you and your brother are slow.”
     
    “Hey! At least Cass and I have a kid already,” Everett laughed.
     
    “Speaking of, where is Cass? She never misses a chance to eat some of mama’s cooking.”
     
    “She’s with Devorah today. But nice try to change the subject though…”
     
    “Thanks, bro.” I said, rolling my eyes.
     
    I knew exactly where Cassidy was. Bee was hosting some sort of ladies brunch thing with her friends today. I was hoping Everett would see the comment for the oop it was and slam down that subject change. As usual, my little brother