Romance in Kitalo City Book 3
He would give anything to repair the damage he inflicted on her heart the last time she gave it to him, but the years he let slip by have driven a deep wedge between them.
She's not as welcoming as she was the last time...
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Two months later...
"Ketura, you're up." Nella said, sounding a bit irritated as she gathered the toys Furaha and Bonbon had been playing with on our mom's living room floor. I grabbed my phone and sat on the chair in front of the makeup artist while she scrolled through her phone for the information I'd sent her about my foundation and concealer shades.
It was the morning of Aisha's wedding festivities and we would soon be tackling the traditional portion of the long program that awaited us. Apart from Aisha, who was sound asleep in her room upstairs, the rest of us had been up for hours, doing all the things African women did the night before a traditional wedding ceremony. I figured the lack of sleep was getting to Nella, so after asking about her mood a couple of times, I just stopped completely, worried that I might irritate her more with the constant nagging.
As the makeup artist got started with my face, the sudden, loud sound of glass shattering in a corner of the living room made one of Namiko's twins burst into tears. Her loud crying must have been the straw that broke the camel's back because Nella snapped in a way I hadn't heard in years.
"Furaha!" she bellowed. "Look what you've done! What did I say about running around inside the house?! All that space in the backyard and you want to run around in here with a dog! Tiye, Get out!"
Namiko raised her perfectly filled-in eyebrows in shock as she soothed Ifedayo's cries. Furaha broke down and ran into her brother's arms outside. Nella was shaking from rage, her hands trembling as she scooped the broken pieces of a flower vase that I was pretty sure was older than me into a dustpan.
After comforting Furaha and leaving the five year old with Koffi and Bonbon, Hasani walked in, squatting in front of Nella and quietly asking her what had just happened.
"None of this would have happened if you'd just listened to me and watched her like I asked. I'm in here making sure everything goes smoothly while you're out there laughing with Koffi and Akim instead of helping me out with this one small thing." she said angrily.
The whole room was quiet as we watched Nella talk to Hasani in a way we'd never seen before. I was frozen in shock. The makeup artist was repeating the same step over and over, probably so surprised by all the unexpected drama that she was moving slower than she had with Namiko and my mom's makeup.
"Okay, you need to calm down." Hasani said gently. "Why don't you step out and breathe? I'll clean up th—"
"Zisiye, Hasani!" Nella said coldly, slapping his hand off the piece of glass he was about to throw into the trash bag she'd brought with her. "I'm almost done anyway. Just go."
Heavy silence filled the room as my sister and her husband stared each other down. Nella's glare was deadly, poisonous. One wrong word and she'd be ready to attack. Hasani looked like he had so much to say, but was holding himself back. He was frustrated and irritated too, evidenced in the tight set of his jaw and the hardness of his eyes. The tension between them was as strange and unfamiliar as the idea of snow in Kitalo.
