Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Well, I hate to be made fun of. Everybody all up in my business, coming down on me like I was a little kid. Shoot, I’m a grown-ass woman!
Anyway, it got worse before it got better.
“ My Eric?” Geneva said, pressing her palm into her chest. “My son , Eric?” she said, unbelieving.
Crystal just stood there with her mouth open and her face as red as a beet.
“What’d you do, Miss Girl?” Noah asked Crystal, his eyelids flapping anxiously.
“I—I” was all Crystal could manage.
“Yes, your Eric,” I said, feeling nothing but mean.
“Shut up, Chevy,” Noah tossed at me.
“Well,” Geneva said and took a step toward Crystal. She was seething, and I could see Crystal’s eyes looking around for something to protect herself with. I guess Noah saw it too, because he moved between them and placed his hands on Geneva’s shoulders.
“Calm down, Mama Bear,” he cooed and tried to push her a few paces backward. But that Geneva is a big ole girl, and Noah is a petite thing. His little nudge didn’t even budge her.
Geneva shrugged his hands off her shoulders. “What did you do to Eric?” she barked.
Crystal still hadn’t found her tongue, so I helped her out. “She smacked the taste out of his mouth, that’s what she did!”
“Chevy!” Crystal and Noah screamed at me in disbelief.
“But she did!” I whined.
With one shove Geneva sent Noah flying into the table, and in no time she was up in Crystal’s face, huffing and puffing and turning all sorts of red. “Is that true, Crystal? You slapped my son?”
Crystal did something with her mouth but she didn’t cower; in fact, she seemed to stand a bit taller.
“Yes, I did, Geneva,” she said with an even voice. “He was disrespecting you and I wasn’t having it. I know you didn’t raise him that way, and so I did what I knew you’d do and I slapped the shit out of him.”
Oh, God, she was using the “it takes a village” bullshit.
Well, all Noah and I could do was brace ourselves for the slap that Geneva would lay across Crystal’s face, taking her head clean off her neck, but it didn’t happen.
Geneva, who had just a second ago been all puffed up like a fighting cock, was suddenly slowly deflating. The anger in her eyes was evaporating and her face softened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“I had every intention to, but Chevy beat me to it,” Crystal said, and now the spotlight was back on me again.
I just can’t seem to win.