10. Invitations ♔︎

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| King of Hearts |

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By: Janae Destiny

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All Kiara wanted to do was go home and take a long relaxing bath after the news her mother just dropped on them, but instead, she was currently sitting outside of Luna's apartment complex on the phone with Chantal, her club's manager.

"Chantal, me and Luna gonna be sort of MIA for a few days. We got some family shit we need to deal with."

"Y'all okay?" She sounded worried. "What's going on?"

"We're fine. It's just some- we just got some stuff to sort out right now. But are you gonna be good running the club without me for the weekend?"

"Girl, I'll be fine. Just go ahead and handle whatever it is y'all got going on. And remember, I'm here if you needa talk, okay?"

"I know," Kiara nodded her head as if Chantal could see her. "And I'll tell you about it later, but right now I just... I'm just tryna process this shit myself."

"Okay boo. Well, I know you had a rough ass night with all them damn shots you was taking. So make sure you drink a lot of fluids and get enough rest for me."

"I will, thank you. But I'll hit you up later, okay?"

"Yeah, talk to you later Kiara," Chantal made a kissing sound into the phone before she hung up.

Kiara stayed in her car for quite a while after the call ended. She sat there for nearly 45 minutes in complete silence before deciding to finally get out of the car to go check on Luna and Cameron like she said she would.

"Is mom okay?" Was the first thing Luna asked when she opened the door.

The second Luna left their parents' house, she immediately started feeling bad about what she'd said to Chloe. She regretted saying what she did so bad, but once the words left her lips, she couldn't take it back.

That's a terrible habit of hers, saying things out of anger- and that's one of the main reasons her and Kiara fight as much as they do. Luna might not necessarily be wrong in a lot of what she says, but the delivery is almost always less than desirable.

"She was crying a whole lot after y'all left," Kiara walked into the apartment. "But she'll be fine... I hope. At least I got her to calm down a little before I left."

"Is she mad at me?"

"I don't think so, at least she didn't say she was. I think she's more upset with herself, to be honest. But still, you ain't have to call her a whore. That was hella outta pocket."

"I didn't mean to say it," Luna whispered. "I was just-"

"Ain't no excuse. You can be mad, shit you can even be pissed the hell off with her. And sure, what she did is upsetting, but she's still our mother at the end of the day, and you was wild disrespectful to her back there. You do realize that, right?"

"Yeah," she mumbled. "I know."

"And you know what that means?"

"That I gotta apologize to her."

"Exactly," Kiara nodded her head. "She's wrong as hell for lying to all of us this whole time, but she ain't never disrespect us in her life, so she ain't deserve that energy you gave her."

"You're right," Luna sighed. "I'ma call her later. And I been tryna reach daddy to talk to him too, but he ain't answering none of my damn calls or text messages."

"Yeah, he not answering my calls either. I don't know what the hell is going on with him. But where's Cameron? Cause that's who I really wanna talk to right now."

"He's in my room. Watching tv."

"You feed him yet?"

"He's fourteen. He'd tell me if he was hungry."

"Well, I'm gonna take him to get something to eat. You wanna come?"

"No thank you. I'm not really in the mood to eat anything anymore."

"Aight-"

"Wait, Kiara. You promised me we would talk. We still doing that?"

"I'm sorry sis, but I'm more concerned about Cameron at the moment. You can come with us though. If not, we'll talk later," she answered as she walked off towards Luna's room.

Kiara found Cameron sitting on the middle of the fluffy rug in front of the bed, watching some action movie on Luna's smart tv.

"Hi Kiara," he looked up at her when she walked in.

"Hey baby," she pouted because his aura didn't seem as upbeat and energetic as it usually does. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You just found out some crazy ass news," she went and sat down beside him. "You're definitely not fine. What are you thinking right now?"

"I don't even know what to think right now," he responded in his very thick accent. "I'm just... in shock."

"Are you hungry? Because I don't know about you, but eating always makes me feel better."

"I'm always hungry," he let out a slight laugh. "Nothing will ever upset me enough to not want to eat."

"Then you're just like me," she got back up and held her hand out to the boy to pull him up off the floor. "Come on. I have somewhere I want to take you."

"Where?"

"It's a Jamaican restaurant. And don't tell your mom, but they food is even better than Aunty's back home."

"Mi wah see yuh say dat to har face," he laughed. "She woulda cuss you."

"You gonna see just how right I am when we get there. Now come on cause it's almost seven and they be acting like ain't no food in the back after a certain time."

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"You been real quiet," Kiara glanced over at Cameron as she drove, heading downtown to the Jamaican restaurant she said she was taking him to. "Talk to me. What's on your mind?"

"I'm just thinking about how crazy this shit is," was his immediate response. "That's what's been on my mind."

Kiara has never heard Cameron cuss before, but she understood it was coming from a place of frustration, so she didn't say anything to him about it. She just listened to him as he aired out everything that's been on his mind since finding out Chloe is his actual mother.

"Like... one day my life is normal. And then the next I find out my mom is actually my aunt and my aunt is actually my mom. Mi nuh know wah fih think bout nun ah dis."

"You upset?" Kiara asked him. "Cause it's okay to be mad, I get it. I'd be angry too."

"I was angry at first," he admitted. "Now mi just... confused. Mi just wah know why she lied. It mek mi feel like seh she never did want me. Like she was ashamed to have me. Like... mi nuh even supposed to be here if she neva did find out so late."

"I don't think that's what it is. I can't speak for her, but I think she was just scared. I think she was scared of what other people would think or say about her having a child with a man who's not her husband. It's just very unfortunate that you had to be affected by her not owning up to what she did. It's unfortunate she chose to lie to everyone over just being straight up about it. And I can only imagine the identity crisis you're going through right now."

"Kiara, crisis isn't even a descriptive enough word. I feel like I don't know who the fuck I am anymore. My father, who isn't even really my father, passed when I was a baby. And now I don't know who my real one is. They've been lying to me my whole life. And now because of whatever reason, Aunty Chloe chooses now to take me away from my life and my family back home to come live with her? There's no word to truly explain it, but angry and confused are definitely high up on the list of words I'd use to describe how I feel right now."

"I... really don't know what to say, Cameron. And I wish I did. I wish I knew what to say to make you feel better, but I'm just as shocked as you. Did you even wanna come up here? Do you even want to live with my mom?"

"No. Mi nah wah live wit har yuh know. But dem nah really give me a choice. Dem never did ask me, just tell mi seh ah here mi gah live now."

"You don't have to live with her if you don't want to. You know that right?"

"Where else am I supposed to go? I'm a kid, dem nah listen to shit mi seh."

"You can stay with me," Kiara offered. "I would say or Luna, but... I think it would be better you just stay with me."

"Aunty Chloe might not let me. The whole time she was telling me the truth about everything, she kept crying and saying how she regrets the fourteen years she missed not being my mother and wants to be there for me now."

"Nah, fuck that," Kiara huffed. "She made her choice back then, so she doesn't get to swoop in and pretend to be mother of the year after Aunty already did all the foundation work with raising you. If you don't want to live with her, you don't have to. And she can't force you to either."

"Mi just wish these last few weeks of mi life neva did happen," he rested his head against the window. "Because mi muma being so quick to send me up here mek mi feel like seh she was ready to get ridda me this whole time. Like she only did raise me because of the money Aunty Chloe was secretly sending to take care of me. And den mi feel like seh Chloe only want me now to mend har own guilty conscience."

"Huhh," Kiara just let out a deep breath, because she truly didn't know what to say to any of that.

Chloe all of a sudden wanting to be a mother to a child she had no problem pretending wasn't hers for the last fourteen years did in fact feel like she's doing it because she feels guilty about lying this whole time. But that's no reason to uproot Cameron from his life back home. And then his mother sending him to Florida without so much as a fight to try and keep him even after she's been raising him this whole time did make it seem like she was only doing it for the money Chloe would send her. And Kiara couldn't decide which one was worse.

"It's gonna be okay sweetie," Kiara reached for Cameron's hand, trying to comfort him the best way she knew how to. "I know this is all confusing for you right now, but it's gonna be okay," she reassured him. "I promise."

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"What does this say?" Monie pointed to the first sentence in the picture book Ava picked out for her reading practice that evening.

"Uhmm... kitten!"

The word definitely was not kitten and she only said that based on the pictures on the page.

"Avangelina, you're playing around right now, cause I know you know that word. So what does it really say?"

"C-A-T," she spelled it out first. "That spells cat."

"Okay good. So read the whole sentence then."

"There is a very fat cat."

"Good job baby. Can you read the next two sentences for me?"

"The cat likes to eat a lot of food. After he eats, the cat likes to take long naps on the mat."

"Mmhm," Monie nodded her head as she flipped the page. "You're doing good. Keep going."

"The cat liked to play with his ball of..." she hesitated because she wasn't very confident about the last word and usually looks at the pictures for context clues.

"Do you know what this is?" Monie pointed to a ball of yarn on the page with her long fingernail.

"String?" Ava stated it as a question.

"It can be called string, but in this case, no. The first letter of the word is Y. Does Y make the S sound?"

"No," the five-year-old shook her head. "It makes a 'yuh' sound."

"Okay good, so let's try sounding the word out together then-"

Monie suddenly stopped when she heard knocking at the front door.

"Hold on baby, I'll be right back," she got up from the table and headed towards the entrance of the condo.

Marco said he was going to the gym downstairs to work out, so Monie already knew it was him knocking because he'd forgotten his key.

"Eew," she looked at her brother with a disgusted face upon opening the door.

Marco was standing there drenched in sweat from whatever workout he was doing down in the gym.

"I should hug your ass," he stepped past her.

"Do it and I'll slap you," she warned him because there's nothing she hates more than bodily fluids like sweat, blood, and spit.

"What are y'all doing up here?" He asked, not even acknowledging what she just said.

"We're practicing reading," Ava answered. "I'm reading a book about a cat."

"Monie, why you have her doing the most and she ain't even start kindergarten yet? She gonna be hella board when she starts school in August cause she already ahead of everybody."

"I don't have her doing anything. She's the one who asked me to help her read it."

"Yeah. I like reading," Ava said with a little attitude in her voice. "Maybe you should try it sometimes."

"Oooh," Marco laughed quite dramatically. "You got jokes, Ava?"

"Lots of them," she crossed her arms over her chest and smirked up at him.

"I can't with y'all," Monie just shook her head. "Can we talk about something important? Like what y'all want for dinner? Cause I'm hungry."

"I don't know," they both answered at the same time.

"Y'all want me to cook-?"

"No thank you, mommy," Ava quickly answered before Monie even got the chance to really finish her question.

"Well dang."

"Monie, you know yo ass can't cook," Marco said very seriously. "So I don't know why you playing right now. Mess around and give us food poisoning."

"See, now you're doing too much," she glared at him. "Just cause you're a Julia Child wanna be don't mean I can't cook."

"Mommy..." Ava said in a very small voice. "I'm sorry, but your food is not that good."

"You know what, fine. I'm not about to defend my cooking to y'all."

"Ain't nothing to defend," Marco said under his breath.

"So what y'all want then?" Monie ignored his snide remark. "You want me to order something?"

"I want burgers," Ava offered a suggestion.

"Nah," Marco shook his head. "I don't want no burgers."

"So what you want then?" Monie asked yet again. "Make a suggestion."

"I don't know. But I want real food, not no damn burgers."

"Oh, I know a place. It's this spot downtown Kiara told me about the other day."

"As long as it ain't no burgers, I don't care. But right now, I'm bout to go shower and get changed."

The three of them ended up at a Jamaican restaurant in downtown Miami- a place near the mall that Kiara pointed out to them and said was really good the first day they all hung out together.

It was a pretty small restaurant, and they had a few tables set up so you could eat inside if you wanted to. They weren't though, but both Marco and Ava wanted to join Monie on the ride, so they tagged along anyway.

"What do you want to eat?" Monie asked Ava, who was chilling in Marco's arms with her head resting against his shoulder.

And no matter how big she gets, and how much Monie tells him to stop carrying her around and babying her, he doesn't ever listen. She is definitely spoiled, and it's Marco's fault.

"I wantttt..." she hummed.

"Stew chicken and rice?" Monie offered because she was taking too long to decide and they were nearing the front of the line.

"Mm mm," she shook her head. "I want a beef patty. With the bread please."

"The cocoa bread?"

"Yes thank you."

"That's it?" Monie asked her. "You don't want no real food?"

"No, that's it. Thank you."

"Okay, fine," she didn't even argue with her because Ava would just eat some of whatever she gets anyway. "Marco, what you getting?"

"I want jerk chicken with rice and peas. Oh, and extra plantain instead of the cabbage."

When they made it to the counter, Monie put in their order, plus three tropical rhythm drinks, and paid for everything before they went to go sit down at one of the tables to wait on their food.

"King!" The man behind the counter exclaimed, causing Monie to immediately turn around to see Kiara and a boy she's never seen before walking inside.

The boy was tall and slender, very similar to the rest of the King family. And Monie thought he resembled Kiara's mother from pictures she's seen of her online. He even had the same medium brown complexion as her, so she automatically assumed he was related to them somehow. Maybe a cousin, since she knows Kiara's only sibling is Luna.

"Where yuh been hiding out, King?" The man taking orders asked her. "Long time mi nuh see yuh enuh."

"Aww, babes," Kiara pretended to blush. "Yuh miss see mi pretty face?"

"Hi Kiara!" Ava said very loudly, bringing her attention to the three of them now.

"Oh," she was shocked to see them there. Because what are the odds they end up at the same restaurant at the same exact time. "Hi Ava. Hi Marco. And... hi Monie."

"Hello, King," she nodded in her general direction.

"Ah who dis?" Cameron whispered to Kiara.

"Uhh... a friend," she settled on because she wasn't sure what else to describe Monie as. "This my friend, Monie. Her daughter, Ava. And her brother, Marco."

"Hello. It's nice to meet you all," the boy waved. "Mi name is Cameron. I'm Kiara's... cousin."

"Hi Cameron, I'm Ava," she smiled.

"It's nice to meet you, Cameron," Monie waved back.

"Wah gwaan-?" Marco did a very poor attempt at copying Cameron's accent.

"Marco," Monie hit him on the arm. "What is your problem? Can you be normal for like two seconds?"

"You ain't have to hit me so hard though," he rubbed his arm.

"Shoulda hit your ass harder. Cause why would you say that?"

"It's fine," Cameron wasn't really offended because he's used to his accent being mocked or copied every time he visits the states.

"So, Monie," Kiara cleared her throat. "How you been?" She asked like they hadn't seen each other just the previous night.

"I just been chilling," she shrugged. "I was actually gonna stay in tonight and do a movie night or sumn with the kids."

Monie wasn't planning on going into the club that night, for no other reason than she was trying to avoid Kiara after that not-so-drunken kiss they shared. She was pretty confident about it at the moment, but now that she had time to reflect on what she'd actually done, she realized how much of a bad idea it was.

"You should come," Ava invited Kiara as if she had any merit to be orchestrating plans. "Me and Marco and gonna make chocolate chip cookies later and we're gonna have popcorn."

"Oh that's so sweet Ava, but I don't wanna impose on y'all night," Kiara shook her head. "Plus, my cousin just got here and I want to spend time with him."

"So bring him with you-"

"Avangelina," Monie whispered her name, trying to get her to stop. "Kiara and Cameron don't wanna come. I'm sure they have their own things to do tonight."

"It's not that I don't wanna come," Kiara corrected her. "I just ain't get the invite from the right person."

"I mean... do you wanna come-?" Monie started.

"Heart!" The man behind the counter called out Monie's last name before Kiara even had a chance to answer the question.

Marco excused himself from the table and got up to go get their food.

"Do you actually want me to come over?" Kiara asked. "Or you just being nice cause I said something?"

"I'm being nice because I want you to come," she admitted.

Because as much as she kept telling herself she shouldn't be getting involved with Kiara, that doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy spending time with her. Those two days they spent hanging out were the two most stress-free and enjoyable days she's had in a while. A very long while.

"Cameron, do you wanna just chill at my house? Or you wanna go over to my friend's house for a movie night."

"Yuh know mi nuh care where mi go as long as food is there," he shrugged. "Plus mi need something to distract mi mind right now. So yeah, mi nuh mind going to yuh friend house."

"Okay then," Kiara turned back to Monie. "We'll be there then. What time?"

"Come at like nine," Marco said once he was back at the table with their bag of food in his hands.

"Then I'll see you at nine," Kiara was looking directly at Monie when she said it.

"Yeah... I'll see you at nine," Monie nodded her head, barely able to take her eyes off of Kiara, even as she walked away. Monie kept her eyes on her as she and Cameron made their way to the counter to order their food.

"Bruh," Marco waved a hand in front of his sister's face. "Let's go. I'm tryna get back so I can eat. I'm bout to fuck this jerk chicken up."

"Sorry," she shook her head. "I was just... thinking about something."

"Mmhm," he hummed, pretending to believe her. He mumbled the next part under his breath so she wouldn't hear him. "More like thinking about someone."

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