~~~Chapter 30~~~ #2
“Malice, are you getting your hair retwisted, since you’re here?” Riah questioned, while placing a wig cap on her client’s head.
Over the last few months, he’d been getting his hair tightened up there at the salon.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I can.”
“Well, Shondra can probably take you now. One of her clients cancelled.”
Malice hesitated, looking like he wanted to decline, because if Shondra was in the next room doing his hair, then he couldn’t sit there and babysit me. “Bet.” He eventually nodded, before standing up.
I sat watching him step out of the room, before me, my sister, Kema, and their clients snickered a bit.
“If that nigga aint acting like Sin J, right about now,” Riah grumbled, while bucking her eyes.
Right then, I knew that my sister really wanted to vent, because she rarely talked about her man around clients.
“So, he hasn’t been letting you breathe, neither?” I queried.
“Nope.” She popped her lips. “Ever since fight night, and I was saying that I’d leave—”
My eyes ballooned. “You wasn’t serious, were you?”
She sighed. “Probably not. I was mad. Anyway, now, he’s been following me every damn where.”
I smirked. “Well, at least he didn’t come here.”
“Tuh,” Kema sputtered. “That nigga is in the back, taking a nap.”
“No-uh,” I tittered. “These niggas are a fucking mess.”
“Yes, indeed. They say y’all Braxton girls aint nothing to play with,” Kema claimed. “Personally, Ion want nothing that’ll make me act like either or those niggas.”
“Right?” Riah snickered, before her cell rang. She then stepped back, and grabbed it. “Yes, Keyasia?” She answered. “No, why?”
Riah’s eyes traveled to me.
“What?” I questioned with a frown.
Still staring at me, she briefly paused.
“Here.” She extended her phone to me. “I’ma let her tell you.”
Sitting up, I leaned in to grab the phone. “Hello?” I said, after placing the phone to my ear.
“Jaylah, I was scrolling on IG, and stumbled across a post from Zae’s cousin,” Keyasia wasted no time.
“Okay.” I gulped.
“It was pictures of him, and the caption said R.I.P.”
“What?” My voice cracked.
“I looked at his mama’s Facebook page. He’s gone, Jaylah.”
“Oh, God,” I sobbed.
Racing around her client, my sister wrapped her arms around me, as I bawled my eyes out.
“It’s okay,” Riah whispered, while squeezing me tightly.
Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to be this vulnerable about Zae’s death, once I got home, my body quaked. Hell, I probably couldn’t do it beyond the parking lot, if Malice had anything to do with it.
Even with knowing that it had boiled down to either him or Malice didn’t make Zae’s death hurt any less. If only he hadn’t been sitting behind me…
I probably cried for like five minutes straight. Then when I looked up, I realized that everybody’s eyes were misty.
Riah finally released me, when I was noticeably calmer. “If you want, you can come back tomorrow. Cause I know the last thing you wanna do is sit here and let me play in your head.”
I shook my head. “Nah.” I dried my tears. “I’m good.”
She arched a brow. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Okay.” She stepped back behind her client.
I’m sure that there was plenty more my sister wanted to say, but we were in mixed company.
So, she resumed doing hair, while people were blowing my phone up.
At this point, I figured that they were calling after getting the news about Zae.
Right then, I didn’t feel like talking, as I wondered if my man was the reason that Zae’s mama was going to make funeral arrangements.
And if he was…I had to accept that he was everything he’d warned me about, and then some.
***
By the time Riah was done with my hair, my lashes were damp from all the tears I’d silently shed. Then even though I’d dried my eyes, Malice paused the moment he stepped back into the room and saw my face.
“What’s wrong?” He wanted to know, as I stood to leave.
“Nothing.” I sniffed.
He didn’t ask another question, as he grabbed my hand. “’Preciate you, Riah.”
“Okay, see y’all. Jaylah, call me when you make it home, please,” Riah requested.
I nodded, before I was tugged out of the room. Together we traveled through the salon, hand in hand, until his cell rang.
“Hold up.” He halted, forcing me to do the same. “Yeah?” He answered the call, before his eyes trained on me. “Alright.” He ended the call, before forcing me to do an about-face.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, as we were headed to the back of the shop, before gunfire exploded outside.
Pandemonium erupted, as all the girls in the front of the shop scampered to the back. By then, Malice had ushered me into my sister’s private suite, while we could all hear a barrage of shots still being fired. Naturally, Riah and everybody else was on the floor, scared for their lives.
Me and Malice sat on the floor as well, while I fearfully clung to him. Meanwhile, he was remarkably calm. My chest was heaving up and down, as I stared at him and whispered. “What the fuck is going on?”
He leaned in to speak directly in my ear.
“We’ve been having a few cars that are with us at all times,” he let me know for the first fucking time.
“It’s been like that since we came back from ya pop’s island.
And just now, they called me from outside to let me know that a van was parked behind my truck, blocking us in.
And once they figured out who and what it was, they handled it. ”
My jaw dropped, as I was rendered fucking speechless.