I paused for a second. “For being real friends. Y’all just don’t know how much I needed a group like this.”
Deja pulled me closer to her. “Islah, you was the missing piece to our group for real; we love you.”
We went to the bathroom as a group, ordering some drinks and food before we went. In the bathroom, we checked our hair and touched up our makeup. When we walked back out, arms locked together, we saw a man standing behind our table, looking over the side.
“Who the fuck is that?” Kenya asked.
We all shrugged and headed over. At the same time we got to our table, the waitress was bringing our refills over. The nigga still didn’t move.
We all picked up our glasses, letting Kenya handle the nigga that was not budging.
“Umm… excuse me brah, I’ma need you to move away from us.”
The nigga turned around and had a smirk on his face. I dropped my glass.
“Gio?” I said low. “Why are you here?”
The glass hit the ground hard. Everybody turned and looked. My girl stood close to me.
Gio didn’t rush to answer me. His eyes dragged up and down my body slow.
“Why do you look so surprised, baby girl?” he asked, his voice low, calm… like the shit he was doing was normal.
My chest tightened, but I kept my face straight. “Because you’re not supposed to be here.”
Kenya stepped in front of me a lil’ bit. “You need to leave from here. Islah don’t want to see you.”
Gio looked Kenya up and down. “Bitch, I wasn’t talking to you.”
His eyes shot back to me. He didn’t look like the nigga I was in love with for seven years.
“Gio, are you okay?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nah, boo, I’m not. I need you; I miss you. I told you I’m sorry for fuckin’ up, but you need to come home.”
I exhaled loudly, trying to keep my voice low and calm. “Gio, I’m home, and I told you we are over.”
Gio shook his head with a grin on his face. “Islah, you don’t get it. It wasn’t a question… You are coming back to Cali with me.”
Some of the staff came over to see if they could control what was going on because people were starting to stare. I looked back and forth at the girls. We were trying to come up with a plan while a manager offered Gio a drink, food, anything for him to leave, but he wasn’t goin’ for it.
“Our phones are in the car,” Renee said.
“You were right, Islah,” Deja added. “This nigga is crazy.”
We tried to back out slowly while the servers and the managers had him cornered, but he caught me and rushed over.
“Where the fuck do you think you going?!” he asked, grabbing my wrist.
The manager yelled out about callin’ the police.
“You coming with me!”
I tried to pull away from him, my girls tried to pull me away from him, but his grip was too tight. For some reason, I stopped struggling with him, letting my girls pull me, but I wasn’t putting up a fight.
I pulled my hand free from my girls and slapped him across the face, making the whole rooftop gasp as he grabbed his face.
“You must have forgotten what we had,” Gio stated.