AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A maddening quietness thumped around us. Both Ezekiel and Summer were staring at me as if I lost my mind, and I had. I lost my mind. These were the truths that filled the pages of my diary. I was beautiful on the outside but ugly as shit on the inside, and now the man I loved and my last living best friend knew my secrets.
“I…” My throat burned and my head throbbed. “I-I don’t know why I’m like this. Why do I think this way about my sister? The same sister who dropped everything and probably spent her last to be here with me, even after knowing I wouldn’t do the same for her.” I covered my mouth, trying to control the sob, wanting to break through.
“While I want to say that I’m surprised that you have these feelings towards your sister. I’m not.” Summer’s dull response and vacant eyes made my anxiety kick up several notches. I started to become afraid that she was about to leave me and stop being my friend. “Before you worry, I’m not going anywhere, but I do want you to get some therapy to sort out your feelings and even have an honest conversation with Aleyah. How you feel about her is definitely a different contrast than I have of her, and that’s because I talk to her. Actually care about her life and the amazing things she does. I really don’t understand how you’ve created this false image of her in your head. She’s the furthest thing from a bad person.”
Her reaction to everything I said was proof of my feelings being valid about the way everyone felt about Aleyah versus me. “I never said she was a bad person.” Annoyed, I snapped.
“Oh, forgive me.” She rolled her eyes, snorting. “You said she didn’t need you and until she did, you were going to gloat about your success while she wallowed in hers. Am I right?” More tears and no words. “I love you, Sunnie Mae Austin. I love you so much, you hear me? Look at me. Look at me, dammit.” I gave her my red, tearful eyes. “Heal that little girl inside of you wanting the attention of her mother. Heal her and forgive yourself. Okay?”
“Okay.” I hiccuped.
“Ezekiel, take care of my girl. I will call you in a few days. Love you.” She hung up before I could say it back and I knew it was because she was over my melodramatic drama. Sick to her stomach of the vile things planted in my heart.
“Please don’t judge me, Zeek.” I couldn’t look at him. The thought of seeing anything other than the usual love and adoration he had for me, that would break me.
Reaching across the table, he wanted my hand. “I’m the last motherfucker to judge anyone, Sunnie Mae.” He kissed my hand and my soul felt at ease. “Am I shocked about your true feelings and motives regarding your sister? That shit is foul.” He pulled his hand from mine and I wanted to throw a whole tantrum. “I’ve known your sister for years. Longer than I’ve known you and read all of her books. Have you?” I shook my head and he snorted, looking down at his vibrating phone. “I figured. If she was a bitch that deserved to be treated that way, hey, do what you do. But she doesn’t, Sunnie. I’m more disgusted at the fact that you came here and have yet to step your black ass in Chicago to see what she needed help with.” He seethed, eyes dark.
“It hasn’t been a full two weeks since you found your best friend hanging from her closet door. Did you forget that?” His voice got louder, eyes angrier. “What if that was Aleyah? Could you honestly say that you wouldn’t have shed a tear or been sad that she died? Or would regret begin to plague you so hard that you’d be an uncontrollable crying mess? Begging God for one more chance to see your sister and make it right? Now I know I’m the last person to tell anybody anything, considering you saw me with a gun to my head. But, Sunnie, everything you said. That ain’t right, baby. Ain’t right at all.”
I knew it wasn’t right but what else did he expect me to do or say?
While Aleyah stayed with me those short few days I felt the most peaceful in my life. She didn’t do anything special. She didn’t say anything monumental. All she did was exist. She wrote Hillary’s entire obituary. Wrote the most beautiful poem in the back. Sung her heart out. Everything I asked of her she gave, never once putting her hand out for a return payment.
She loved me as a sister and I treated her like a stranger.
Breaking the uncomfortable silence, he cleared his throat and changed directions for his questions. “Where were you going when you called me?”
Why in the hell does it matter now?
He was just doing what everybody has always done - gloat about one sister and down the other.
Dropping my head back to rest between my shoulder blades, I exhaled, staring up at the ceiling. Why must we have all these deep conversations in one day, in one sitting?
“To the see you actually.” I chuckled, sitting up and folding my legs under me. The handsome man across from me had the cutest bushed brows when he was in deep thought or confused about something. “I needed a break, a change of scenery, and wanted to be spoiled by you, so I thought us spending time together would do me some good. My plan was to surprise you. It wasn’t until I walked through TSA that it dawned on me that I should make sure you were in town to begin with. That’s when I called you.” Caressing the chills on my arms, the heaviness of that day still haunted me.
What if I hadn’t called him?
What if I hadn’t listened to the impending nudging on my heart to reach out?
What if Aleyah had called me for the same reason?
Shaking the ugly feeling away, I watched him hang his head. Seeing him on the phone with a gun in his hand, the flashbacks were gruesome. I lost it in the middle of the airport. Screaming frantically. Rushing off to find a quiet spot in LAX airport to pray since I wasn’t there with him physically. I wasn’t able to be there for my Hillary, but I could still be there for Ezekiel. So, I called on the one person who was always there. The one person who had more power than me and could do what I couldn’t. I called on God and cast every devil down and declared victory and healing over him.
All I ever wanted to do was to save him.
As he mentioned prior, the month had just begun, and I had an overwhelmingly bad case of PTSD.
Constantly up into the early morning asking God why so many people thought suicide was the answer. I remember asking Aleyah the same question not too long ago and she said that sometimes all the troubled people need is an intercessor to step in the gap between their darkness and pray heaven down.
I vowed to do that for Ezekiel. I made a promise to his mom I would.
“That night…” He rested his arms on the table. “Jeremiah called and asked me to come over to make the arrangements for mom.” The downcast of his eyes broke my heart. It’s so hard to see such a larger-than-life man look defeated. “I never made it further than the doorsteps. He called the police on me, Sunnie Mae.” He chuckled like it was funny, but his red eyes and quickness to wipe his face said otherwise. “He doesn’t want me at my mom’s funeral. Says he wishes it was me that died. That he hates me and hearing that right after kissing my mom for the last time. Life didn’t feel worth living.”
God, how did we get here?
On the outside looking in, we had it all; we were it all, yet we were drowning in despair.
“Aleyah always tells me to be cautious of soul ties.” The irony of learning some of our most valuable lessons from her. Just like him, her teachings always popped up in the hours of need. “Like now. How sometimes the demons we’re fighting aren’t even our battles. Once we’ve had physical and spiritual exchanges with one another, their shit becomes our shit. Their demons and spirits become my shit. It’s a continued cycle of this woman’s shit and this woman’s shit. It never ends if I don’t stop it.” Reaching for my hand across the table, he waited until I took it.
