For Lovers Only by Alex Hairston Read Free Book Online Page B

God-fearing man, a quality Joel undoubtedly inherited from him.
    Joel came from a strict Christian family. His mother, Mary, was a homemaker and a dedicated Sunday school teacher. She was old-fashioned in every sense. Everybody knew that Mrs. Mary Davis wouldn’t be caught dead or alive wearing pants or makeup. She mostly wore her hair in a bun. Skirts, dresses and her natural effortless beauty were the norm for his mother. She recognized and respected her husband as head of their household. It was hard to find anyone as easygoing or as proud as Mrs. Davis. Most of her time was spent cooking, cleaning and making sure that Joel and Shawn stayed on the right path. Mrs. Davis taught her boys to have the utmost respect for women. She even found time to teach her boys about the birds and the bees, constantly reminding them that premarital sex was a sin. She was the only person Joel knew who could recite the Ten Commandments word for word and in order.
    Although Joel had both parents at home, he gave his mother most of the credit for molding him. She tried her best to raise Joel and Shawn to be well-mannered and respectable men. Their father taught them right from wrong at an early age. Once he laid down the law that was it. If they did wrong their mother would instantly report it to their dad. When their father got home from work he’d wake them up in the middle of the night if he chose to, and would whip them from head to toe with a belt—and sometimes the buckle, depending on what they had done.
    No matter how hard parents try to guide their kids and keep them on the right path, they should never forget that their kids have minds of their own. Shawn knew the consequences for disobeying his parents, but he did what he wanted to do anyway. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd during his senior year of high school. Within the first few weeks of school he was doing stuff like smoking and selling marijuana. Peer pressure can be vicious. At the time, Joel was a junior at the same high school and was too involved in wrestling and playing on the varsity basketball team to consider doing anything related to drugs. Joel was strong, quick, agile, and had plenty of stamina. A local trainer noticed how athletic he was and introduced him to boxing.
    While Joel was busy with sports, Shawn was busy getting into drugs. He actually brought weed into their house. Shawn was living fast and going out of his mind trying to impress people, mostly girls, by being a fake thug. Joel and Shawn lived in the hood and all, but the only thing they knew about the streets was what they heard from classmates or saw on television. Eventually Shawn learned the streets for real.
    On the other hand, Joel wanted to be different. He knew that every poor young black man from the ghetto didn’t have to be a thug or drug dealer. There were a few straight-up good kids in the hood and Joel was one of them. Nobody bothered him. Guys approached him occasionally, trying to recruit him to sell drugs. No words from Joel were ever necessary. He would give them a certain look, and then shake his head. The fearlessness, or a degree of hardness in his stare, made them leave him alone. From that point on everybody knew that Joel was focused on making something positive out of himself. He carried himself with respect and received plenty of it in return.
    One afternoon, Joel was in his parents’ basement working out when he smelled something strange. He followed the scent and found Shawn sitting near their washer and dryer blowing smoke out of a tiny vent.
    Joel said, “Yo, what you doing? Why you bringing that stuff in here? You better do something with that before Momma gets back from the supermarket.”
    Shawn was so high that all he could think to say was, “Boy, if I ever see you smoking this shit I’m gonna kick your little ass.”
    Joel thought that was Shawn’s way of telling him not to smoke weed, but in reality that was his way