Mama shakes her head. “Because I saw the way he looked at you. Hell, your daddy saw it when you were in high school.”
For the second time, my jaw hit the ground. Daddy never mentioned anything to me about this.
“What?”
Mama laughs. “Yeah. It was junior prom. Remember all of ya’ll came over to the house to take pictures? Well, your daddy said Mitch’s eyes did not leave you all night. I told him he was being ridiculous, but he told me to mark his words. He said, one day that boy is going to have Ella.” She shakes her and laughs as if she’s reminiscing.
My face warms at those words because God knows that man damn sure had me.
“Even if we didn’t know, the birthday party would have been a dead giveaway,” Pamela says, and the others agree. “When he came into that room to check on you after Andrew arrived, girl, you could cut that tension with a spoon. The way that man’s eyes undressed you had me needing a cold shower.”
“Girl, yes!” Meagan laughs, and she and Pamela clapped hands.
“And then ya’ll disappeared,” Jada hums.
I gasp and cover my face, remembering what we disappeared to do.
“Oh, don’t act shamed now,” my mother jokingly chides.
“I know that’s right,” Jada teases. “Girl, you walked back into that party looking like you’d just been put through it.”
I can’t help but laugh cause Jada wasn’t wrong. Baby, Mitch turned me every way but loose in that family restroom.
“What we are trying to say,” my mother says, leaning against the doorway separating the kitchen and the dining room. “….is that you had a glow. For the first time since you were young, I saw my baby happy. The kind of happiness a woman has when she is being loved properly. The type of happiness you had long lost in your marriage.”
I think over her words. There is no mistaking how happy Mitch made me. It wasn’t just in him loving me. It was the confidence he helped me build back up. The way he allowed me to be myself. I could be goofy, talk about books, swing on swings, and say the wrong things. Mitch never cared. He never acted embarrassed about my silliness. There was no correcting me or trying to refine and change me. He taught me I was good enough just the way I was.
Looking down at my untouched food, my gaze gets blurry as tears threaten to fall.
“He bought me a bakery.”
“What?” the word comes from multiple places around the table.
Wiping my eyes, I looked up at my mother. Her mouth is open and her hand is on her chest. She’s known my dream since I was a little girl. She even knew why it never came to fruition.
“I told him about my dream with Nanny. How I've always wanted to open a bakery. I explained that over the years I had let the dream go. He found a building and worked out a leasing plan with the owner. He invested in my dreams.”
“Oh, Ella.” Mama comes over to me and wraps me up in a hug. When she finally lets me go, I notice that she’s crying.
“Okay, so if he’s buying you a business, got you glowing and dicking you down like a pro....no offense, mama Faye,” Jada says, holding up a hand. My mother waves her off. “Then why are we having a breakup dinner?” Jada points to the food on her plate.
“I mean, I’m not mad at it,” Destiny mumbles with a mouth full of food. “But Jada has a good point.”
I quickly fill the ladies in on the details. Briefly, I go over how Mitch and I started after the dentist date. I go through the entire four months of us dating, all the way up to the couch incident and how AJ stormed out on me.
“Hold on.” Jada smirks, holding up her hand. “Andrew walked in on ya’ll?”
I cover my face with my hand and groan. “Yes, he and AJ both. Thankfully, we were still fully clothed.”
Jada tosses her head back and laughs. “Damn, I would’ve loved to have seen that.”
“I bet his heart was in his throat,” Pam chuckles.
“His face was so red, I thought it was going to burst.” I grin as I add that little detail. “It only got worse when Mitch kicked his ass for calling me a whore.”
“He called you what?” Mama shouts.
I wave her down. “He had a few choice words, but Mitch reminded him to be respectful.”
