The Realest Ever - By Keith Thomas Walker Page 0,1

you ever installed awnings?

“Yes, I have,” Kyra typed, although she wasn’t totally sure what an awning was.

Are you willing to work in extreme cold or hot temperatures?

This one gave her a moment’s hesitation, because Kyra didn’t like hot environments at all. But as her daughter Katavia (better known as Kat) snuggled against her bosom and resigned herself to sleep, Kyra said “Yes” to the refrigerated warehouse job.

She couldn’t think of too many things she wouldn’t do to put food in her babies’ bellies – especially after the hell she put them through over the past year and a half. Kyra’s throat tightened and her eyes moistened at the mere thought of it. She quickly pushed the depressing thoughts from her mind.

She stood to check on her son Quinell. After a quick scan of the library, she spotted him at a table by himself. Quinell was staring at the pages of a large picture book. Kyra wanted to chastise him for not picking a book with more words than pictures, but Quinell was too far away, and she didn’t want to shout.

Before she could sit back down, Kyra was surprised to see a young man approach and pull her chair away.

“Excuse me,” she told him.

“Oh, you not through?” the boy asked her.

“No,” Kyra said. “I still have thirty minutes.”

“Oh, my bad.” The youngster looked Kyra up and down and decided to try his luck. “You come here a lot?”

Kyra took her chair and returned to the computer. “A little,” she said, her eyes on the monitor.

“I’m Quinton,” her new friend said.

Kyra turned and looked him in the eyes. He appeared to be nineteen, no older than twenty-one. Kyra was thirty-one, and she had enough on her plate already. She didn’t need attention from some boy who probably still lived with his mama.

“That’s a nice name,” she told him. “I have a son named Quinell. He’s eight. This is my daughter, Kat. She’s two.”

Quinton didn’t need to hear all of that. He thought Kyra had a nice ass, but she squared the deal with all of that talk about kids. What did she want, for him to buy her some diapers? “She cute,” he said and turned and walked away.

Kyra chuckled to herself when he was gone. Suddenly, the chorus of Erykah Badu’s Bag Lady filled her head. Kyra had baggage for days. She doubted if she’d ever find a man strong enough to bear the load. But she recently fled Arkansas to get away from a man, so they weren’t that high of a priority anyway.

Kyra backed out of her career builder site and checked her email. She created the Yahoo account six days ago and was surprised to see three new messages. They were all from another website that was new to her called Facebook. One message was a friend request from someone she recognized as a distant cousin.

The second message indicated her oldest brother left a comment on her Facebook page: “Miss you already, girl. Sad to see you go, but I hope you get better.”

Kyra’s last email notified her that her cousin’s fiancé posted a comment on one of the pictures she uploaded: “Damn you fine.”

Kyra frowned and clicked the message from her cousin’s shifty boyfriend. After logging into Facebook, she saw the picture she posted and the comment Darryl left. Kyra only had three pictures on her profile. She took them all last week at her aunt’s house. She was wearing the same outfit in all three photos; a tee shirt and jeans with her hair pulled back in a pony tail.

Two of her pics were close-ups. The one Darryl liked was a long shot from her knees up. Kyra had her daughter in her arms, and she offered the camera a big, beautiful smile. Her shirt wasn’t tucked-in, and her jeans weren’t tight. Kyra was fine, but she didn’t think the photo showed off her curves. More likely it was her smooth, brown skin, her large eyes and full lips that caught Darryl’s attention. Or maybe it was her 36 C’s. Yeah, those babies were an anomaly. Most girls with a good amount of junk in their trunk had two bee stings up top. But Kyra had the best of both worlds.

She deleted Darryl’s comment. A moment later Kyra wished she’d sent her cousin a message, telling her to come check her man. Instead she went back to her home page and deleted her brother’s post as well. She then went to his profile and sent