Chapter 5
S O L A C E
“You’ve changed your shirt three times.”
I glanced at my phone propped against the mirror while I pulled the cropped knitted cream sweater over my head. “No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have,” Cindy laughed. “The black one, the orange one, and now that one.”
“I didn’t like the other two.”
“Mhm.”
I rolled my eyes and turned toward the mirror to look at myself. I had already decided on brown leggings and chestnut Uggs, but apparently choosing a shirt to go see a movie required more thought than getting dressed for work ever did.
Cindy laughed through the phone. “You know what’s funny? You keep saying this isn’t a date, but you’ve been getting ready like it is one since you called me.”
“It’s just a movie.”
“With Smoke.”
“Yep.”
She stared at me through the screen while I reached for my earrings. “Something happened.”
I kept my attention on the mirror. “Why does something have to happen?”
“Because the other day you were confused as hell over finding out this man owns businesses while you weren’t around, and today you’re putting on perfume to go to the movies with him.”
I sighed and picked up the Marc Jacobs bottle anyway.
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you fuck him?” I sprayed perfume along my neck. “Oh, shit. You did!”
I put the bottle down. “Can you relax?”
“You fucked Smoke!”
“Could you stop fucking yelling?”
“I’m in my own damn house. Who am I lowering my voice for?”
“My mother might hear you through the phone and two walls away, with my luck.”
She started laughing, and I grabbed my lip gloss from the dresser before she could see me smiling too. “I cannot believe you slept with that man and waited until now to tell me.”
“I didn’t exactly have time to call you with a post sex report.”
“So there was enough happening to require a report?”
“I gotta go.”
“No, you don’t. Now tell me what happened.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t need positions, bitch. I need to know how you went from barely being able to sit across from this man to sleeping with his ass.”
That wiped some of the smile from my face.
We talked… about everything.” I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the lip gloss in my hand.
“We talked about why I left and why I stopped answering him.
We talked about what staying in Bellhaven had actually been like for him and how different the life I had imagined for him was from the one he had actually built.
“And then you had sex.”
“Yes, and everything fucked with my head, girl. I thought if we ever actually crossed that line again, it would feel like sleeping with somebody I used to know.” I ran my thumb along the side of the lip gloss tube. “It didn’t.”
Understanding slowly crossed her face. She stared at me. “You really went home and lost your damn mind.”
A laugh escaped me. “Apparently.”
A knock sounded against the bedroom door before Mama pushed it open far enough to stick her head inside. “That Cindy?”
I immediately reached for my phone and held it up. Cindy grinned extra hard. “Hey, Mama Loretta.”
“Hey, baby. You alright out there without this one?”
Cindy burst out laughing through the speaker. “Of course. It’s gonna be a lot to catch up on when she gets back.”
“Okay. I’ll call you later.” I ended the FaceTime before either of them could join forces against me and stood to grab my purse.
My mother looked me over slowly. “Where are you going?”
“Just out for a little while.”
“With who?”
My phone buzzed with the notification that my Uber was outside, and I had never been happier to see one. “My ride is here.”
My mother followed me into the hallway. “Solace.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Is it Smoke?”
“Goodnight, Mama.”
“That means yes.”
“It means my Uber is outside.”
I grabbed my coat from downstairs and slipped it on while she stood near the bottom of the stairs watching me with entirely too much amusement on her face.
I closed the door behind me and headed toward the waiting Uber before she could come up with another damn question.
It pulled away from the house, and I settled against the seat before checking my email.
Bellhaven Drive-In & Theatre sat on the other side of town, and I barely recognized it when we pulled in.
The place had been fully renovated, with a new entrance, a freshly paved lot, a modern concession building, and an updated outdoor screen.
It still felt like the drive-in I remembered, just newer and a hell of a lot nicer.
Smoke was already waiting near the entrance when my Uber pulled in.
He leaned against the driver’s side of his black truck, smoking a blunt, dressed in a black hoodie, black jeans, and sneakers instead of the dusty clothes and work boots I had seen him in earlier.
A thick gold Cuban link rested around his neck, and the watch on his wrist caught the streetlight when he lifted the blunt to his mouth.
He looked up when the Uber stopped, and his eyes were on me before I even closed the door. He took one last pull from the blunt and tossed the roach before blowing the smoke out. Smoke pulled a piece of gum from his pocket and popped it into his mouth before looking me over again.
“You look good.” He pushed away from the Range Rover and opened the passenger door for me. I glanced over the shiny black SUV as I walked toward him. It was a hell of an upgrade from the work truck I’d seen him driving earlier.
“Thank you. You too.” I climbed inside, and he shut the door before walking around the front of the truck. The inside smelled clean but also like weed and cologne. For some reason, sitting inside his truck made this feel more like a date than getting dressed for it had.
Smoke got behind the wheel and started the truck. “Yo’ mama give you shit?”
I looked at him. “Why would you assume that?”
“‘Cause you damn near jumped out my office window when I said I was pickin’ you up from her crib.”
“I did not.”
He laughed as he drove toward the entrance. “She know you wit’ me?”
“She has suspicions.”
“She know.”
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“Aight.” The smile on his face told me he didn’t believe that for a second, but thankfully, he left it alone.
Smoke found us a spot far enough back that we could see the screen without too many cars surrounding us.
Families and couples were scattered throughout the lot, with some people sitting outside their vehicles while kids ran around closer to the concession building.
For the first time since I had been back, Smoke and I were together because we had actually chosen to be.
We got out and headed toward one of the outdoor concession stands after I told him I was hungry.
We barely made it halfway there before somebody called his name.
He stopped to shake hands with a man I vaguely remembered from school, spoke to two more people near another truck, and nodded at somebody else across the lot.
One of the women he spoke to looked at me a little longer than necessary, and I kept walking until Smoke caught up beside me.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, Sherrod.”
“You makin’ that face.”
“I’m not making a face. I’m wondering if there’s anybody in this town you don’t know.”
“It ain’t that many mahfuckas here.”
I laughed and shook my head as we went inside. We came back out with popcorn, drinks, loaded nachos, and enough candy to make my claim that I was only a little hungry look ridiculous. By the time we settled back into the truck, the movie had started.
Smoke tuned the radio to the station playing the movie audio and lowered the windows enough to let in some cool air.
I pulled my coat around myself and reached for the popcorn between us while he stretched one arm across the back of my seat.
We watched for a few minutes before something stupid happened on-screen and Smoke leaned toward me.
“You still hate scary movies?”
“I never hated scary movies.”
“You used to watch half the shit through yo’ fingers wit’ yo’ scary ass.”
“I was a teenager.” I grabbed another handful of popcorn and looked at him. “Why do you even remember that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I turned my attention back to the screen. Smoke remembered things about us that I hadn’t thought about in years, and every time he brought one up, another piece of the life I had packed away came back with it.
We didn’t pay much attention to the movie after that.
The conversation moved easily once we stopped trying so hard to watch it.
Smoke told me about Anthony finishing college early once he finally figured out what he wanted to do.
I told him about getting stranded overnight at an airport after a work trip and refusing to spend almost four hundred dollars on a hotel room.
He laughed entirely too hard when I admitted I slept with my purse wrapped around my arm.
I learned he had finally traveled outside the country after spending years telling me he didn’t care about going anywhere.
He had gone to Jamaica with Anthony and some of his boys for his twenty-first birthday, and even though he admitted he had a good time, he still didn’t understand why people voluntarily spent hours on airplanes when they had perfectly good houses at home.
He learned I actually liked cooking now, although my mother would probably call me a liar if he ever told her. Smoke still hated tomatoes, and he still watched basketball like somebody was paying him to coach from the couch. None of it was important, but somehow, all of it felt important.
I already knew what Smoke looked like naked and I knew how his mouth felt between my thighs. Sitting beside him and learning stupid little things about the man he had become somehow felt more intimate.
I picked through the popcorn for a piece with enough butter on it and glanced at him. “Can I ask you something?”
Smoke kept his eyes on the screen. “You usually do, whether I say yeah or not.”
“Were you ever in a serious relationship after me?”
He looked at me, then slowly reached for his drink. “Yeah.”