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In February of 1996, Adonis and I drove out to a piece of property we'd bought in Virginia Beach. It was a beautiful piece of land, with a creek bordering one side and a hill that seemed to be the perfect place for us to build a house for the family we were planning. We loved driving out there at sunset and imagining our future together. Adonis always told me that he wanted five kids, which made me laugh, seeing that it was a whole lot easier for him to say than for me to actually do.
"Let's try having one baby first." I'd tell him. "Then I'll get back at'cha."
This particular evening, Adonis and I sat on top of our hill watching the wide Virginia sky turn every color from pale blue to bright peach to inky purple.
"Aye, baby, check it." Adonis said, catching my attention. "I wanna turn all this into a ranch. I wanna raise our kids around a bunch of animals, you know what I'm saying? Every kind of animal there is!" He said excitedly.
I looked at him crazy.
"You can't do that. You can't put all kinds of animals together," I teased. "If you do that, you'll come outside one morning and find nothing but a mound of feathers where your chickens should be." I explained to him, insinuating that all those different animals would surely eat each other up.
He grinned over at me before wrapping his arm around my neck and pulling me into him where my head lay on his shoulder.
"I know, baby. But just think, Sel. This is where our badass kids gon' be running around and playing someday soon. Can you believe that?"
I could, I told him. We continued to sit there until dark, even though what I really wanted to do was jump up and start clearing the property right away. I wanted to make sure there weren't any coyotes or rattlesnakes around to bite our kids. I wanted to protect my family.
Things didn't turn out that way, of course.
After many years of being told that Adonis and I's story was inspiring and that I should open up about everything: here it is, the story of my life with Adonis. The real man who loved the ordinary everyday things, like walking barefoot in the evening to feel the warmth of the sidewalk on his skin.
Adonis loved hard, and everyone loved him in return—his family, his friends, his fans, and me, his wife, who felt like the luckiest girl alive every time Adonis said my name. This is for him.
