CHAPTER 20
VANILLA CREAM
Cash jobs only stretched so far, and with wiring money up from their real operation too risky to attempt without leaving a trail neither of them could afford, Varnell and Chucky J fell back on the only skill set that had ever reliably kept them fed — trapping small, careful amounts of whatever product they could source locally, moving just enough to keep themselves afloat without drawing the kind of attention that would undo everything they'd fled south to avoid.
It was modest work compared to what either of them had built up north, but it was steady, and steady mattered more than scale while they waited out whatever storm was still churning back home.
Big Stable Steve, watching their hustle develop with the same easy, assessing attention he brought to everything, eventually made an offer neither of them had anticipated.
"Y'all working hard," Steve said one evening, settling into a booth across from them at the bar that had become their regular spot.
"Man work hard, man deserve some comfort to go with it.
I got somebody could take good care of you both — keep the place tidy, keep you fed, keep you company.
Real bottom, loyal, know how to handle business. "
Varnell felt something tighten in his chest at the offer, understanding immediately the shape of what was being proposed, and shook his head before Steve had even fully finished laying it out. "Nah. Appreciate it, but that ain't for me."
Chucky J, beside him, hesitated only a moment before nodding. "I'll take that talk, though."
Steve grinned, unbothered by Varnell's refusal, already turning his attention toward closing the arrangement with Chucky J instead. "Smart man knows when to accept a good thing."
Varnell said nothing further, some discomfort sitting with him that he couldn't fully articulate in the moment, a wariness about the whole transaction that he chose not to press given how little standing he had yet in this city, in this arrangement, in a life that already felt precarious enough without picking fights over things that weren't directly his business.
? ? ?
She arrived a few days later, introduced simply as Vanilla Cream, quiet in a way that immediately set her apart from the loud, performative energy of most people orbiting Steve's world.
She kept to herself mostly, present around their apartment in the practical ways Steve had promised — meals prepared, space kept clean — but with an emotional distance that read, to Varnell, less like professional detachment and more like careful self-protection.
He found himself watching her sometimes without meaning to, noticing the way her eyes tracked exits in any room she entered, the way her laughter, when it came at all, never quite reached the rest of her face.
Something about the pattern felt uncomfortably familiar, some echo of watchfulness he recognized from his own years of learning which rooms were safe and which weren't.
Weeks passed with a kind of careful, unspoken truce between them — Varnell polite but distant, Vanilla equally careful, neither pushing past the boundaries Steve's arrangement had implicitly drawn.
It shifted one night when Chucky J was out late handling something Varnell hadn't asked details about, the apartment quiet except for the two of them, a bottle between them that had loosened something in both their guards.
Vanilla moved closer on the couch, hand resting on his knee, an offer in the gesture that needed no further words to clarify.
"You don't gotta," Varnell said quietly, gently moving her hand back, no judgment in the refusal, just certainty. "I ain't looking for that. Not like this."
She pulled back, something flickering across her face — embarrassment, maybe, or the particular vulnerability of an offer declined when the offer itself had felt more like obligation than desire. "Steve gonna ask if I did my job right."
"Tell him I said I wasn't feeling well. I'll back you up if he push it." Varnell studied her a long moment, something in her guardedness making him want to offer more than just a polite no. "Can we just talk instead? For real, I mean. Not performing nothing for nobody."
She hesitated, clearly unfamiliar with the offer, before settling back into the couch with something like cautious relief. "Talk about what?"
He wasn't sure himself at first, the words coming slow and uncertain, but once he started, more spilled out than he'd planned to share — not the operation, not the fire, not the specifics that still felt too dangerous to voice aloud, but the deeper weight underneath all of it.
The diagnosis. The years of borrowed time ticking down beneath every decision he'd made since he was twelve years old.
The particular loneliness of carrying a countdown nobody else could fully see or understand.
Vanilla listened without interrupting, something shifting in her posture the longer he talked, the careful distance she usually maintained softening into something closer to genuine presence.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, once he'd finally trailed off, unsure himself how much he'd actually revealed. "That's a lot to carry alone."
"Ain't fully alone. Just feel that way sometimes."
They sat together a while longer in a silence that felt, for the first time since New Orleans began, less lonely than it had any right to.
? ? ?
Later that night, once Vanilla had retreated to her own space, Varnell found himself dialing a number he hadn't used in weeks, Angellisa's voice on the other end carrying surprise and cautious relief both at once.
"Varnell?"
Hearing her voice undid something in him he hadn't realized was still holding so tight, and before he could stop himself, the exhaustion and grief and fear of the past weeks broke loose all at once, quiet, ragged crying he couldn't fully explain even as it happened.
"I'm sorry," he managed eventually, once the worst of it passed. "I'm sorry for pushing you away, for disappearing, for all of it."
"Where are you?" Her voice was gentle, careful, no anger in it despite every right she had to it. "Are you safe?"
"I don't know how to answer that right now. Just — I miss you. I needed you to know that, even if I can't explain everything yet."
"I miss you too," she said, and for a little while, they just stayed on the line together, saying little of substance, simply present with each other across whatever distance separated them, and it was, for Varnell, the closest thing to peace he'd felt in longer than he could remember.
? ? ?
The peace didn't last. Vanilla came back one afternoon days later with bruises blooming dark along her jaw and arms, movements careful and guarded in a way that made clear exactly how she'd gotten them, though she offered no explanation and Varnell knew better than to demand one outright.
Something in him went cold and sharp the moment he saw her, memory of every conversation they'd shared curdling instantly into fury.
"Who did this," he said, voice low and dangerous in a way that made Vanilla flinch instinctively.
"It's nothing. Business. Steve handle things his way sometimes, that's all."
"That ain't nothing." Varnell was already moving toward the door before Chucky J's hand closed hard around his arm, pulling him back.
"Varnell. Stop. Think, man, don't do nothing stupid right now."
"He put his hands on her, Chucky!"
"I know! I know, and it's foul, but we in his city, under his protection right now, and you go at him reckless, you put us both in danger we ain't positioned to survive.
" Chucky J's grip stayed firm, urgency plain in his voice.
"We handle this smart, not fast. I promise you we handle it. Just not like this, not tonight."
Varnell stood trembling with restrained fury, torn between the immediate instinct toward violence and the colder, more practical logic Chucky J was laying out, old lessons about discipline and control warring against something newer and rawer that Vanilla's bruised face had cracked open in him.
He didn't move for the door again, though the fury didn't leave him either, just settled deep and simmering beneath the surface, a debt he silently promised himself, whatever Chucky J's caution demanded in the moment, would eventually come due.