Page 53 of Just Like Summer

Kamilla held up two fingers.

“You know I figured it would be him riding around Husten if you ran away from him because he’s crazy like that. But now I see that it’s both of y’all locked in like this so quick.”

Kamilla slightly frowned at Dania’s statement. “Do think this is too much too soon?”

Dania shook her head. “No. I think in this life they live, and we live by proxy, everything has to be this way because we never know when the death knock is coming. For instance, my parents thought they had time to get it right. And now he’s locked away for the rest of his life and my mother, as bitter as she is, has to start over on her own.”

A sigh pushed from Kamilla’s lips. “I’m all too familiar with that death knock.”

“So you know that love is here one second and gone the next,” Dania commented.

“I do. I just – I just don’t want to end up like my mother,” Kamilla finally admitted. “After my dad was murdered, she just stopped. Between the times they were off and on, there was glimpses that her world revolved around him in ways I couldn’t understand but when he was gone, she left too. Not physically but mentally. I don’t want to be that person.”

“K, if you make the choice not to be, you won’t. Don’t let whatever it was that your parents experienced be yours. This is your journey.”

Kamilla huffed. “I know… I know but Cairo and my dad. They so similar. Azul, music, insane as hell.”

Dania stopped wiping down a set of chairs to look over at Kamilla. “Who’s your dad?”

“Don’t blurt it… please,” Kamilla warned, pausing to get Dania’s nod of agreeance. “AyeZee.”

She squinted and then let her mouth drop. With snap of her fingers, she bobbed her head. “You look just like him. Your daddy is a hood legend, why are you not cashing out on that?”

“Because I don’t want my journey through life webbed into being the hood legend’s daughter. Plus, his life here and his life with us were two different things. Whatever they experienced here, they kept it from me,” Kamilla shared. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Does Cairo know?” Dania asked.

“Yeah, I told him,” Kamilla answered.

Dania buzzed, knowing that no immediate follow-up meant that Cairo didn’t tell her why the two were so eerily similar. That wasn’t Dania’s business to tell. Out of respect for Cairo and the hell he’d suffered since AyeZee’s untimely death, she wouldn’t utter a word. She also trusted that Cairo would tell Kamilla they were grieving AyeZee in different ways.

She huffed. “Well, now I know why you like him so much. Those two men got the same type of crazy.”

“It’s not so much the crazy as it’s the care. I loved my mother – I love my mother. Don’t get me wrong, but my heart longed for the love my dad gave. That just hit different. And when you condition yourself to know that the only one who is sound enough to care for you is you, you hold on to those pieces.”

“Your mom…how bad was her depression?” Dania asked, genuinely wanting to know.

Kamilla pulled in a sharp breath. “Bad enough that the only one who could find her in it was my dad. And maybe that’s why her world revolved around him the way it had. Maybe why he moved us out of here. I don’t know. What I know is I always want to be able to find myself in loving someone else.”

“I hear you. I one hundred percent agree. Don’t psych yourself out of what you feel. I can attest for him, he doesn’t let anyone in as close as he’s let you. You cracked something in him that no one else could. Just be as good to him as he is to you,” Dania requested.

“I promise I will.”

“And don’t worry, I’ll bust his head open behind you,” Dania added. “Let’s finish up so I can get a nap before the club tonight.”

The newly-founded friends fell into a comfortable silence as they cleaned the lounge. Toward the final mop of the floor, Fredo appeared with an envelope and smirk on his face.

“Tell me how I told that man of yours to have you clean the studio and instead, you watched him do all the work?” Fredo questioned.

“He told me not to work for free,” Kamilla sassed, with a smirk of her own.

Fredo observed her, finding the lightheartedness her father held. “Sounds like he got a good head on his shoulders.”

“You would know that more than me right?” Kamilla mused.

Fredo let out a rumble of laughter. “I would and I do. Crazy kid but solid. Had a million dollars’ worth of game imparted on him and he kept every drop. Anyway, let me make you whole. Don’t spend all in one place.”

Kamilla took the envelope. “Yeah, like on tuition?”