Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KAIZLEIGH
"You're staring."
I looked up from my laptop.
Billion was sitting on the other end of the couch with one ankle resting across his knee.
"At what?"
"The screen."
"That's usually what people do when they're on a laptop."
"You ain't scrolled in five minutes."
I looked back down.
The same woman's surrogate profile had been sitting on my screen since I opened it.
"I was thinking."
"About?"
"Her."
Billion leaned closer.
"What about her?"
"I don't know."
He sighed.
"Here we go."
"What?"
"You've looked at damn near thirty women and every single one gets the same answer."
"Because none of them feel right."
"What does right feel like?"
"I don't know."
"Kaizleigh."
"I DON'T KNOW, Billion."
He laughed.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Because you getting mad at me like I'm the one rejecting everybody."
"I'm not rejecting them."
"What you call it?"
"Looking."
"You've been looking for almost a week."
"That's not long."
"I didn't say it was."
I closed the laptop halfway.
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying maybe you need to stop looking at it like you're shopping."
My eyebrows went up.
"Excuse me?"
"That came out wrong."
"It definitely did."
He reached over and opened the laptop again.
"What I'm saying is you're reading these profiles trying to find some perfect woman."
"I am not."
"You are."
"No, I'm trying to find somebody I trust."
"How you supposed to trust somebody from three paragraphs and a picture?"
I opened my mouth and closed it.
Billion smiled.
"Exactly."
"I hate when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Make sense when I'm trying to argue."
He laughed.
I leaned back against the couch.
"I met somebody today."
His expression changed.
"Where?"
"At the hotel."
"Who?"
"Nyrobi."
He stared at me.
"Who the hell is Nyrobi?"
"The girl from the hospital."
Still nothing.
"The vending machine."
He frowned.
"Baby, I was at the hospital for you. I wasn't keeping track of everybody in the cafeteria."
I rolled my eyes.
"The girl I was talking to when you came back."
"Oh."
"She works at the hotel."
"For us?"
"For Walker."
He nodded.
"New girl?"
"Yeah."
"Brown skin? Ponytail?"
I looked at him.
"So you do remember her."
"I remember seeing a new employee during the walkthrough."
"That was her."
He sat back.
"Small world."
"That's exactly what I said."
I opened the laptop again.
"Her mama got discharged too."
"That's good."
"It is."
I clicked out of the profile.
Billion looked at me.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You got that look."
"What look?"
"The one you get before you start thinking too damn hard."
"I'm literally sitting here."
"Thinking too damn hard."
I ignored him. Seeing Nyrobi again had been weird. Not bad weird it was just unexpected.
When I met her at the hospital, neither one of us knew anything about the other. She didn't know who I was, and I didn't know anything about her besides the fact that her mama was sick and she was struggling.
There was something refreshing about that. People acted different when they knew your last name. Nyrobi hadn't. She had talked to me like I was just Kaizleigh.
Because to her, I was.
"Why you smiling?" Billion asked.
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I was thinking about the hospital."
"What about it?"
"She didn't know who we were."
"Most people don't."
I looked at him.
"Billion."
"What?"
"Most people in Orlando know who you are."
"That's not true."
"It absolutely is."
He shrugged.
"Either way, she knows now."
"Yeah."
I looked back at the laptop.
Another profile waited on the screen. I read the first few lines. Then closed it.
"I'm done for tonight."
"Thank God."
I slapped his leg.
"Shut up."
He laughed and took the laptop from me.
"Come here."
I moved closer and rested my legs across his lap.
He started rubbing my feet.
"See, this why I keep you."
"Eight years and that's all I'm good for?"
"Pretty much."
"Bet."
He stopped rubbing.
I immediately kicked him.
"Keep going."
"That's what I thought."
I smiled and laid my head against the couch.
"Maybe you're right."
"About?"
"Trying to pick somebody off a screen."
He looked at me.
"I didn't say don't use the agency."
"I know."
"I'm just saying meet people before you decide they ain't right."
"I know."
He went back to rubbing my foot.
I stared toward the television without really watching it.
Nyrobi crossed my mind again. I didn't know why.
Maybe because I'd just seen her. Maybe because she was the first person I'd met in a long time who didn't know anything about me before talking to me.
Either way, I wasn't about to turn that into something it wasn't. I barely knew the girl.