“Shea, what’s up with you?” I said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to be cute with it.
“You told me you were going out of town when I asked you to watch the kids, so I asked you what you were doing here. Clearly, you didn’t go out of town, because you wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“I told you I was going out of town because I didn’t feel like watching your kids,” she replied.
Okay. I didn’t know what had happened to my friend, but this bitch standing here, talking shit, wasn’t the best friend that I’d known all my life. I needed her to leave, because if she was over here on some bullshit, or if she was upset about something I had done but didn’t want to tell me and wanted to continue to throw shade . . . Well, I was serious. She could leave. I was not ready for it tonight. The past twenty-four hours had been hell, and I just wanted to be stress free, without all the added bullshit.
“Look, Shea, I don’t know what’s up with you, but I have been to hell and back. You really don’t know, so if you don’t want to tell me what the problem is, I’m going to have to ask you to catch me on another day.”
“Well, if you want to know what my problem is, then you need to ask Rellz,” she told me.
“Why do I need to ask Rellz? I’m asking you.”
“And I’m telling you to ask Rellz,” she said.
I walked over to the bar, sat on a bar stool, and proceeded to fix myself a drink. “Now all I have to say is somebody better tell me something before I start assuming, and if I start assuming, this isn’t going to end on a good note,” I said, then sipped my drink.
Rellz walked over to the bar with guilt written all over his face. “Tash, the night I broke off the wedding, I was downstairs at the bar. I was on, like, my fifth drink, so when Shea came on to me, I wasn’t thinking straight, and I slept with her,” he said.
“So the night you called off the wedding and broke up with me for sleeping with someone else, you turned around and did the same thing. Is that what you’re telling me?” I snapped.
“Tash, it’s not how you’re making it sound,” Rellz said.
I shook my head. “So, Shea, my best friend of how many years? You weren’t woman enough to tell me you slept with Rellz and caught feelings? Instead, you come over here and give me attitude, like I fucked you.”
Shea shrugged. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to tell you that I fell in love with your baby’s father.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” I told her. “You didn’t fall in love with my baby’s daddy, as you called him. You fell in love with the dick. There’s a difference. So that tells me that dick was more important to you than our friendship. As long as you’ve known me, you should have known that I know shit happens, and had you just kept it real with me, it would have been all good. He wasn’t my man at the time, so what he did, and who he blessed with the dick, is his business, but you’re supposed to be my best friend. I thought we were better than this. I guess our friendship meant absolutely nothing to you, so I say this to you, and I mean every word that I’m about to say. I loved you as my sister, and I never thought that you would do me like this. I’m not even mad at you, but I have to revoke this friendship, because what do I always say, Shea?”
“You always say, ‘When loyalty dies, so does love,’” she said as I lifted my hand up from behind the bar.
With tears in my eyes, I pulled the trigger and shot her right between the eyes.
“Turk, I’m going to need you to call in the cleanup crew and utilize their services, and please have it done before my kids get up in the morning,” I stated.
I got up from the bar and proceeded up the stairs, letting the tears fall for all that I had endured in my lifetime. I didn’t know what the future held for me and Rellz, but I did know that the heart that belonged to him, and only him, was bleeding again from the open wound that he had caused to burst again. I had no idea if he would be able to stop the bleeding this time.
* * *
THE END
When Loyalty Dies, So Does Love Page 21
