You're the One I Want by Shane Allison Read Free Book Online Page B

do you know how he acts? You’ve been gone for three years.”
    â€œJesus, not you, too.”
    â€œIt was not your call, boy, to tell Kashawn nothin’.”
    â€œCome on, Ma, you were never going to tell him. You should have—”
    Before another word came out of my mouth, Ma slapped me across the face.
    â€œDon’t you ever…ever tell me what I should and should not do in my own house, boy. You understand me?”
    â€œJust like old times.”
    â€œIf that’s an apology, you can get out of my face right now.”
    I looked at Uncle Ray-Ray who didn’t say a word like Ma slapping me was what I deserved. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come backhere to start anything, but you know how Kashawn is always pushing buttons. I came back here because I missed my family, like I said.”
    â€œWell, this is one hell of a homecoming.”
    There was nothing else I could say. Ma was pissed. I thought about going to Kashawn to apologize, but fuck that. I thought about it, realizing that I had nothing to feel sorry for. The truth was finally out. No matter how it came out or who told it, it was out. If it’s one thing I have learned, a lie can never last. He started that shit. I was sick of Bree playing Barbie to his phony-ass Ken. He was a bigger fool than I have always thought him to be if he thought he could please a woman like Bree. I stormed out of the door.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Ma asked.
    â€œI need to get some air if that’s okay with you.”

8
UNCLE RAY-RAY
    K ashawn and Deanthony reminded me so much of me and Edrick. We were always fighting about something. Toys, cars, girls. If it was there to fight over, we fought over it. I couldn’t help but look at them and think of my daughter, Joelle. She would be a few years younger than them if she had lived. Twenty-six years old to be exact. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t think about her and Danita. I can only hope they’re looking down from heaven, proud of the man their daddy and husband has become.
    â€œGet some help, Ray, or I’m taking Joelle and going back to Atlanta,” was the last thing Danita had said to me a week before I lost her and my baby.
    I had spoken to her the night of the accident, telling her that I had decided to seek help for my drinking. I’d told her, “I don’t want to lose you and Joelle. You two are my whole world and I’m willing to do anything within my power to get clean, and be the man, the husband and the father to our baby, that you want me to be.”
    The truth was, she, along with the rest of my family, had heard it all before, my tossing around promises as if they were poker chips. Edrick and Danita were the only two in my life who hadn’t turned their backs on me while everyone else got sick and tired of cleaning up my messes, which I didn’t blame them for, considering I had doused gasoline on the bridges I’d built with them and set them aflame.
    Knowing what booze did to Daddy, I swore to myself that I would never end up a drunk like him, but a drunk is exactly what I became when I got laid off my job at Tallahassee Transit three years after Joelle’s third birthday. Frustrated that I could no longer provide for her and Danita, I couldn’t deal with Danita being the only provider for our family. It got so that I was drinking rubbing alcohol, anything that would numb the inadequacy of not feeling like a man who could provide for his wife and daughter. After two interventions and two rehabs to follow, I would come out, only to end up falling on my ass from stumbling off the proverbial wagon no matter what I did, and how much Danita and Edrick sought to get help for me.
    On the day I told Danita that I was going to get straight, I prepared a special dinner for us. Fed up with my drinking, she took Joelle and moved in with her sister, Lavondra. Danita had reservations about having dinner, but after