Chapter 2 #3
I called once and got voicemail, so I called again and got the same shit.
I sat there for another ten minutes before trying one last time, knowing damn well I shouldn’t have.
She still ain’t answer. That shit hurt me in a way I wasn’t used to.
I loved Lace before I even understood what the fuck loving a woman meant, and I couldn’t get her to pick up the fucking phone.
I sent her one last text asking her just to tell me if she was done with a nigga.
When she didn’t answer that shit either, I was done calling.
I still loved her ass, but I wasn’t about to keep begging somebody to talk to me.
“Smoke?”
I looked over and found her watching me stand there staring like a nut. “What?”
“Uh… are you okay?”
I looked at the coffee in my hand before setting it down.
“I’m straight.” She kept looking at me because she knew damn well I wasn’t, but she didn’t press me.
Years ago, she would’ve stayed on my ass until I told her what was wrong.
She ain’t have that privilege no more. I grabbed my tape measure.
“Tell Loretta she can’t put them big-ass dessert cases where she got ’em on that drawin’. They blockin’ an outlet.”
“She’s not gonna like that.”
“Yo’ mama don’t like shit I tell her.”
“She likes you.” I glanced over, but Solace was looking at her laptop again. “She loves you like a son. She always did.”
I knew exactly what the fuck she was getting at, and I wasn’t going there with her. I measured the cabinet opening again while Shawn and Mike worked on the other side of the room. Darius had his speaker loud enough that they couldn’t hear shit we were saying anyway.
Lace closed her laptop with a sigh. “Smoke.”
“Nah. You ain’t gotta say shit.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
“Prolly sorry.” Her mouth closed, and I gave her a look. “Exactly.”
She stood and blew out a breath. “Would that be so bad?”
“Wouldn’t change shit.”
“I know.”
“Then we good.” I watched her come around the table and stop on the other side of it.
“Look, I don’t expect us to be friends,” she said. “I don’t expect anything from you, actually. But we’re gonna be around each other, and I don’t want every conversation to feel like we’re trying not to say what we actually mean.”
I stopped measuring and looked at her. She had my attention now, even though I already knew she probably wasn’t gon’ like what came with it. “What you actually mean?”
“Yes.” She held my eyes, but I caught the breath she took before answering.
“Aight.” I let the tape run back into the case, set it on the counter, then turned toward her. “I’m listenin’. What you mean, Lacey?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have to be a dick.”
“I ain’t bein’ a dick.”
“You absolutely are.”
“You the one walked over here talkin’ ’bout sayin’ what we really mean. I’m lettin’ you say that shit.”
“Not while you’re looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for me to say the wrong shit.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Lace, you already did the wrong shit. Ain’t much you can say now that’s gon’ top that.” I saw that shit hit her, and I almost felt bad about it until I remembered sitting in that grocery store parking lot calling her ass over and over while she ignored me.
Lace folded her arms. “You think I don’t know I handled things badly?”
“Badly?” I stared at her. “You ghosted a nigga after damn near fifteen years of bein’ in my fuckin’ life.”
Her face tightened. “We weren’t together for fifteen years.”
That shit irritated me immediately. I pushed away from the counter and stepped closer, rubbing my hand over my beard before I answered her.
“Don’t do that shit. Don’t stand here actin’ like me and you started when we started fuckin’.
You been my girl since we was kids, whether we was callin’ that shit a relationship back then or not. ”
Her eyes dropped away from mine, and that told me enough. Lace always did that shit when she didn’t want me seeing too much on her face. Apparently, I still knew her ass better than I wanted to. “I know,” she finally whispered.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Coulda fooled the fuck outta me.”
“I was twenty-two.”
“And?” I cocked my head to the side. “Twenty-two grown enough to know ignorin’ somebody for weeks was fucked up. I had real life shit goin’ on too, Lace. I ain’t get to disappear when shit got hard.”
“I know that, Smoke.”
She looked at me again, and I could already tell she was getting ready to explain herself. I didn’t want to hear that shit right there with work to do and my people close enough to know we were arguing even if they couldn’t hear what we were saying. I grabbed my tape measure off the counter.
“I got shit to do.”
Her face hardened. “Fine.”
“Cool.” She turned and walked back toward her laptop, and my eyes dropped to her ass before I could stop them. I licked my lips and made myself look somewhere the fuck else.
The back door opened before either of us said anything else. “Smoke!” Loretta yelled from the kitchen.
I dragged my hand over my beard. “What?”
“Come here. I changed my mind.”
“’Bout what?”
“The booths.”
“Hell nah.”
“You don’t even know what I was about to say.”
“Don’t give a fuck. Whatever you changed yo’ mind to, change that shit back.”
Lace laughed behind me, and I looked over at her before Loretta yelled again. “Sherrod!”
“I heard you.” I grabbed my tape measure and headed toward the kitchen. “This woman done changed these damn booths three fuckin’ times.”
“Twice,” Loretta corrected when I got back there.
“Three. You changed the fabric, then the color, then Tuesday you decided you wanted the backs higher.”
“That was not changing the booths. Those were adjustments.” She looked me dead in my face. “Now, what I was saying is I think we should take one out and put two little tables over there instead.”
“Loretta.”
“What?”
“We already ordered the fuckin’ booths.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Then stop changin’ shit!”
“Boy, I said watch that goddamn filthy mouth of yours! I’m paying you, ain’t I?”
“Not enough for this shit.”
She sucked her teeth and walked away from me, and Lace started laughing again in the other room.
I knew that laugh too damn well. Eight years hadn’t changed that shit at all.
By five, the crew was packing up. Darius and Mike left first, then Shawn took the van back to the construction warehouse on Maple Lane.
I stayed behind to make sure everything was covered before the diner got locked up.
By the time I came through the opening, most of the place had cleared out.
Loretta had already gone home, so I wasn’t expecting to see Lace still sitting at one of the tables by the window.
Her laptop was closed, and she was staring outside hard enough that she didn’t even notice me.
I should’ve kept my ass moving, but I stopped anyway.
Something about her sitting there reminded me of when we were younger, when she’d sit in my passenger seat eating all my fucking fries after swearing she didn’t want none.
Then she turned her head and caught me looking.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
She smiled a little. “Now who’s doing it?”
I shook my head. “Have a good night, Lace.” I damn near made it to the door before she called my name. When I looked back, she hesitated before speaking.
“Ant and Keyana… how are they?”
“They good.”
I’d already had to text both their asses and tell them not to come busting up in Loretta’s just because they heard Lace was back.
Keyana immediately started asking when she could see her, and Anthony wasn’t much better even though his grown ass tried to play it cool.
I already knew I wasn’t holding either one of them off for long.
“Bro twenty-one now. Workin’ in tech, got his own spot, and swear he don’t need me for shit no more.” I smiled thinking about his ass. “Still call me soon as somethin’ go wrong, though.”
Her face softened. “Twenty-one. Wow.” She shook her head. “And Keyana?”
“Seventeen. Senior at Bellhaven.”
“Seventeen?”
I laughed at the look on her face. “Yeah. That lil’ girl you remember ain’t lil’ no more.”
“She was nine the last time I saw her.” Lace looked down before bringing her eyes back to me. “She used to follow us everywhere.”
“Still nosy as hell too. Some shit don’t change.”
She laughed for real that time, and a smile got out of me before I could stop the shit. “Does she still talk your ear off about everything?”
“Hell yeah. That girl ain’t never learned how to shut the fuck up.”
“She used to tell me all your business too.”
I frowned. “What business?”
Lace laughed. “Everything. If you pissed her off, I knew about it before you did.”
“See, that’s exactly why her lil’ ass was always gettin’ put out the room.”
Lace laughed and shook her head. “I can’t believe they’re that grown now.”
“Time ain’t stop ’cause you left.”