Chapter Twenty-Four
The Girls
Ella
The soulful voice of Brandy sings about being brokenhearted through my Bluetooth speakers.
It’s been two days. Two of the longest days of my life.
My sons haven’t spoken to me. They aren’t even replying to my texts.
I called Mitch. I had no right, but I just needed to hear his voice.
My call went to voicemail. The only person I’ve heard from in the last two days is Andrew.
He keeps telling me to give the boys time.
I’m not sure how much more time I can give them.
I’ve spent the last few days lying in bed, listening to breakup songs and crying. I swear this feels worse than the months after the divorce announcement. At least then I had Mitch in my corner.
The moment I think of him, the tears come anew.
I reach behind me, looking for my phone to call him again.
Without turning my head, I patted the space behind me blindly.
Suddenly, the music cut out. I roll over onto my back to find my mama standing on the other side of my bed with my cellphone in her hand.
“Mama, what are you doing here?”
Her gaze rakes over my wrinkled nightshirt, my wild hair that hadn’t been tied down in days, and my puffy, bloodshot eyes.
Her features soften. “A little birdie told me my baby needed me.”
“Cameron called you?” I try not to let the pain settle in my chest of knowing my son would call his grandma, but not me.
“I won’t reveal my sources,” she says pulling the covers up so that she can sit on the comforter and not the fitted sheets.
“But what I will say is my sources were very confused on a certain relationship you might be having with a certain neighbor.” She takes a seat on my bed, one knee bent with the other foot on the floor. “Ella Marie, what’s going on?”
The moment the question comes out, the tears fall. Everything that I have been holding in flows out of me like a broken dam.
“Mama, I love him,” I sob as I lay my head in her lap.
“Oh, baby.” She rubbed my matted hair. My entire body shakes with my sobs. “Go ahead and cry. Get it all out.”
My mother didn’t ask me questions. She didn’t want me to explain anything or try to give advice. Instead, she allowed me to cry as she calmly rubbed my scalp and hummed a tune. I don’t know how long I cried, but eventually I dozed off to sleep.
When I awoke, the smell of fried food had my stomach growling. Being sad and depressed doesn’t really make way for an appetite. In the last few days, I’ve survived off tears and a pack of crackers.
Climbing out of bed, I headed into the bathroom.
After showering, washing my face, and brushing my teeth, I quickly get dressed and follow my nose.
The moment I come around the corner into my living room, I’m stunned into silence.
Sitting in my living room are Jada, Pamela, Destiny, Kyra, little Ari, and Meagan.
The ladies are talking amongst themselves and have yet to see me.
Mama walks out of the kitchen with her apron on and a pan of fried chicken.
“Oh, look who’s up?”
All the girls turn to face me before jumping up and coming to hug me. One by one, the ladies wrap their arms around me, offering me comfort and strength.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“I called them,” Mama says, placing the pan of chicken down on the table. I notice that already on the table is a pan of baked macaroni, cornbread, candied yams, fried cabbage, green beans, and baked chicken.
“Nothing fixes a heartbreak more than good company and good food.” Mama winks at me before turning and heading back into the kitchen.
“Mama Faye called and told us you needed us,” Jada says, leading me over to the table. “We came right away.”
I take a seat, and immediately my mouth waters looking at the spread of food. I watch as all the ladies take their seats. Even baby Ari is in a highchair that I’m sure Kyra brought with her.
Taking a deep breath, I look at all the faces around the table. These women have been so crucial in my life. Our friendship is new compared to normal standards. I’ve only known them for about a year and a half. But I swear I wouldn’t know what to do without them.
“I have to tell ya’ll something.” I wait until I have all their attention on me. Once I have their full attention, I take a deep breath and share my truth. “The mystery man was Mitch.”
The room is silent. Mama walks in and places a pitcher of her tea on the table. She too seems to stare at me.
“Can someone pass me the green beans?” Meagan says, unbothered.
Pamela grabs the tray of beans in front of me and hands it down.
“Wait,” I shake my head. “That’s it? No one has anything to say?”
They all laugh.
“Girl, we already knew.”
This has my jaw dropping open. What do they mean they already knew? Mitch and I were so careful.
“What? When? For how long?”
Kyra pours herself some tea and takes a sip. “Since the day you called and told us about the mystery man. We all figured it out."
“I even won twenty dollars,” Jada brags filling her plate with macaroni.
“You won by two months,” Destiny says, biting into her chicken leg. She blows the hot chicken while it was still in her mouth. “If you’d slept with him a few months earlier, I would’ve won.”
I chuckle as I realize what they bet on.
“You guys had a bet that I would hook up with Mitch?”
They all laugh.
“Honey, the first day we met him, I thought you two were already screwing,” Jada jokes. “The chemistry between you two was off the wall.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t understand why you two didn’t see it,” Kyra adds, stuffing her mouth with cabbage.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, I won’t pretend as if I didn’t have a crush on Mitch, but I thought I was doing a great job at hiding it. And until the night he and I actually slept together, I wasn’t sure he felt the same way I felt.
“I saw it too,” Mama says, handing me the plate she’d fixed for me.
“Oh no,” I tease. “You’re the one who said I was spending too much time with him and that he couldn’t be trusted.”
Mama shakes her head. “Because I saw the way he looked at you. Hell, your daddy saw it when you were in high school.”
For the second time, my jaw hit the ground. Daddy never mentioned anything to me about this.
“What?”
Mama laughs. “Yeah. It was junior prom. Remember all of ya’ll came over to the house to take pictures?
Well, your daddy said Mitch’s eyes did not leave you all night.
I told him he was being ridiculous, but he told me to mark his words.
He said, one day that boy is going to have Ella.
” She shakes her and laughs as if she’s reminiscing.
My face warms at those words because God knows that man damn sure had me.
“Even if we didn’t know, the birthday party would have been a dead giveaway,” Pamela says, and the others agree. “When he came into that room to check on you after Andrew arrived, girl, you could cut that tension with a spoon. The way that man’s eyes undressed you had me needing a cold shower.”
“Girl, yes!” Meagan laughs, and she and Pamela clapped hands.
“And then ya’ll disappeared,” Jada hums.
I gasp and cover my face, remembering what we disappeared to do.
“Oh, don’t act shamed now,” my mother jokingly chides.
“I know that’s right,” Jada teases. “Girl, you walked back into that party looking like you’d just been put through it.”
I can’t help but laugh cause Jada wasn’t wrong. Baby, Mitch turned me every way but loose in that family restroom.
“What we are trying to say,” my mother says, leaning against the doorway separating the kitchen and the dining room.
“….is that you had a glow. For the first time since you were young, I saw my baby happy. The kind of happiness a woman has when she is being loved properly. The type of happiness you had long lost in your marriage.”
I think over her words. There is no mistaking how happy Mitch made me.
It wasn’t just in him loving me. It was the confidence he helped me build back up.
The way he allowed me to be myself. I could be goofy, talk about books, swing on swings, and say the wrong things.
Mitch never cared. He never acted embarrassed about my silliness.
There was no correcting me or trying to refine and change me.
He taught me I was good enough just the way I was.
Looking down at my untouched food, my gaze gets blurry as tears threaten to fall.
“He bought me a bakery.”
“What?” the word comes from multiple places around the table.
Wiping my eyes, I looked up at my mother. Her mouth is open and her hand is on her chest. She’s known my dream since I was a little girl. She even knew why it never came to fruition.
“I told him about my dream with Nanny. How I've always wanted to open a bakery. I explained that over the years I had let the dream go. He found a building and worked out a leasing plan with the owner. He invested in my dreams.”
“Oh, Ella.” Mama comes over to me and wraps me up in a hug. When she finally lets me go, I notice that she’s crying.
“Okay, so if he’s buying you a business, got you glowing and dicking you down like a pro....no offense, mama Faye,” Jada says, holding up a hand. My mother waves her off. “Then why are we having a breakup dinner?” Jada points to the food on her plate.
“I mean, I’m not mad at it,” Destiny mumbles with a mouth full of food. “But Jada has a good point.”
I quickly fill the ladies in on the details. Briefly, I go over how Mitch and I started after the dentist date. I go through the entire four months of us dating, all the way up to the couch incident and how AJ stormed out on me.
“Hold on.” Jada smirks, holding up her hand. “Andrew walked in on ya’ll?”
I cover my face with my hand and groan. “Yes, he and AJ both. Thankfully, we were still fully clothed.”
Jada tosses her head back and laughs. “Damn, I would’ve loved to have seen that.”
“I bet his heart was in his throat,” Pam chuckles.