Page 16 of Meet Me at the Altar

“Those were good times, Kalli.”

“They were. What happened to us, Drè? I’ve missed you so much.”

He sighed and pulled his fingers through his beard. “I never meant to stay gone for as long as I did. In the beginning, I did it because I was in my feelings about everything. It was hard to stay away at first, but after a while, it just got easier. I knew that you deserved better than where I was in life, but as the years passed, it became harder to return.”

“What were you in your feelings about?”

“My family. You.”

“I know it wasn’t over Remy’s ass.”

“What if I said it was?”

“I would say that I’m sorry, maybe we should have had a conversation. Because the kiss that happened, . . . I wasn’t expecting that.”

He reached out and touched my shoulder before he dragged his finger down my arm. “You should have.”

I rolled my eyes. “If I was so important to you, then why did you stop calling me not long after you got there?”

“I was locked up.”

My eyes widened, and I leaned forward. “What? Drè, why didn’t you tell me, and for what?”

“I was embarrassed, and I didn’t want you to think bad of me.”

“But why? What happened?”

“I got caught with a quarter of a pound of weed, and they locked my black ass up right away for a year.”

“Well, obviously, you turned things around.”

“I did, thanks to my boy Silas. He pushed me to enroll in school again, we both graduated and got our PMP certification, and then we started our business based on that.”

“Your business must be doing damn good to be able to afford this place,” I stated, looking around.

He chuckled. “The PMP business is doing good, but it’s the other business that has put me over the top.”

“What business?” I asked, wearing a frown.

“Gen U.”

I paused, and the blood rushed to my ears. “Wait. What? You invested in that business?”

“I founded it, Kalli. I’m the CEO, and Silas is the COO.”

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. The largest urban wear line in the country was created by you?”

“Damn, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

I shook my head and squinted my eyes. “No, no, it’s not that. It’s just that I knew you were always a sneakerhead, but I never saw you developing a clothing line. Growing up, you wanted to be an engineer.”

“Life changes, and you change with it. I could have allowed the trouble in my life to steamroll over me or turn it around and make some money moves. I chose the latter. It allowed me to become a motivational speaker, a mentor to teenaged boys, and give back to the communities I’m attached to.”

“Like Rosemont High.”

“Like Rosemont High,” he conceded with a nod.

The doorbell rang, and he got up to answer it. It was the restaurant, and he had the server come in and serve us. Once the server left, we prayed over our food, ate, and resumed conversation, but not the same one.