Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 109178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“Aneurysm. It was sudden. No one knew she had it. She didn’t suffer with high blood pressure that we were aware of.” He shrugged, blinked his tears away, then ran his thumb along her palm, deep in thought for a few moments. “To this day, we’re not a hundred percent sure of how this happened, but it did, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”
“Can I see a picture of her? You got it on you?”
He nodded, grabbed his cellphone, and scrolled through his camera roll. She saw flashes of pictures of cars, exercise equipment, some screenshots of what appeared to be typical X-rated materials such as a close-up of some titties, and some silly memes.
After a minute or two, he handed her his phone. “Here’s a few of her. You can look through them.”
She gently took the phone from his grasp, then began sliding her finger along the screen. One after the other, she saw many pictures of a gorgeous woman with long dark hair, bright greenish gray eyes that she obviously passed down to her son, and a lovely smile. In some of the photos she was in what appeared to be their home garden—gloves on her hands and a sunhat. In other photos, she may have been on vacation. Airports. Monuments, shrines, and statues. In another photo, she was in her doctor attire, seemingly at work. One picture made her pause. Lennox’s mother was with who she presumed was his father, who was tall, thin, and handsome, smiling proudly as he stood beside her. There were also two children: Lennox at perhaps age eleven or twelve, and a little girl with big light brown eyes and thick dark hair, who she surmised was his little sister.
“Y’all look happy.”
“We were.” He reached over and abruptly took the phone from her. That was the end of an era.
They sat in silence, looking at the same stain on her rug. She regretted not turning on any music. All she could hear was his breathing, and her heartbeat that throbbed in her ears. Perhaps he could hear her heartbeat, too.
“I understand now,” she finally said, running her palm along her upper thigh. “You lost your best friend.”
He nodded, another sullen smile across his beautiful face. “She liked you.”
She turned to him curiously. “She liked me? I never met your mother.”
“I had a dream. This is going to sound ridiculous. Strange. Nevermind. I don’t want to scare you or freak you out.”
“No, go ahead. I’m listening.”
“In the dream, my mother was still alive when you and I were workin’ together. It was so realistic. Anyway, one day, my car was actin’ up, so she came up to the restaurant to drive me home. That happened in real life a few times, you know, my car acting up, so it made sense in the dream, too. Well, in the dream, you were still inside The Red Rooster. She sat there in the parking lot and watched us interacting as I clocked out apparently. That was kind of, what’s the word?”
“Symbolic?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Symbolic, because it’s like a mom looking over her kid. Anyway, I got in the car, and she said, ‘You like that Black girl.’ Then, she’d start driving. That’s exactly somethin’ my mother would say. So, in the dream, I remember I said yeah, you were my friend. She said, ‘No, you like her more than just a friend.’” I didn’t deny it in the dream, and if she were to stand in front of me at that time, I would not have denied it to her, either. She told me you seemed like a real nice young lady, and she felt like we’d be good together. She said, as she was driving, that she’d heard us talking on the phone when I was home sometimes, too.”
“That’s symbolic, too. Like she can hear you without seeing you.”
“…Yeah. You’re right. Is this bothering you? Making you uncomfortable? I’ll stop talking about it if it is. I know some people don’t believe in stuff like this, and that’s fine.” His watery, sad, beautiful eyes captured her soul as he looked deeply at her.
“Nope. Not even a little bit. I like hearing it.”
“Okay…Like I said, it was just so damn realistic. My mom and I would talk like that when she was still alive. I could tell her anything. It was like… like she was sending me a message in that dream. This dream was old though, not recent. I had it before you even moved back into town, but I never forgot it.”
The shock of this discovery hit her full force. Her spirit fluttered and heated within her core at his words. Lennox was many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them…
“It’s like she was tellin’ me you were the one.” He sniffed, dabbed at his eyes. “I forgot about the dream until recently. My mother didn’t like most of my ex-girlfriends, but I think even in heaven, she knew I loved you before I even did.” He pursed his lips, as if quelling emotion. “I miss my mama.” Another tear fell from his eye as his voice cracked. “She was too good for this world. God took her away. Think about her every day…Mothers know our hearts, Nadia. They always know.”