Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
LOVIE
“You were there for a layover?”
“Nope,” I mutter.
My Uber driver, Christophe, hasn’t shut up since I told him I’d been to his country for just twenty-four hours once.
“What do you mean you were only there for twenty-four hours then?” he asks in a heavy German accent with the stoic mannerisms to go with it.
“It was a pit stop on my way to Paris. I’d never been so my fian—my ex decided we’d have the pilot stop there so I could see Cologne Cathedral and shop in Düsseldorf.”
I let the word “ex” marinate in my mouth for the first time. It tastes bittersweet.
“Holy hell—what a once in a lifetime pit stop.”
I press my face against his back passenger window and stare at the buildings whipping by instead of indulging in the sad memories of another one of AJ’s carefully curated “I’m sorry” trips.
It’s been over eight-hundred days since I’ve been home.
Things are the same, but different. Aunt Faye didn’t tell me they built a row of townhouses where the Auto Depot used to be or that Ason Williams’ son was on damn near every billboard that lead from 59 to 610 because he finally brought some notoriety back to the city’s basketball team.
He’d gone from swaggering around Lockwood and having a low-key love affair with his girlfriend to gracing the iconic steps at the Met Gala in custom Dior with her under his arm.
AJ’s insufferable agent, Blake, loved to brag about how Harvey and Lee Sports almost had The Kid on their roster.
“You from this place?” Christophe asks as he exits off the freeway.
I pull my eyes from the window just as he points his pale, skinny finger to his car’s floor as if Bayou Crest is nothing—as if my neighborhood isn’t the heart and soul of the city.
I roll my eyes back to the window when he passes Uncle Kenny’s gym. “Yeah, I live here.”
“Oh. You don’t look it.”
I widen my eyes as if it’ll help me see Uncle Kenny meandering outside of Worthing Gym, but the doors are rolled down with the padlocks dangling from the bottom.
Somebody even stuck a “MELO BARNES FOR DISTRICT D” campaign sign on the chain-link fence that wraps around the building, and Aunt Faye didn’t tell me they let alleged drug dealers run for city council now either.
“You mind if I crack the window?” I ask.
“I can turn the air off—”
I roll the window down and stick my nose outside, inhaling the sharp wind while my brain and spirit tug at each other for control.
The city’s air gushes inside the car as I open my mouth to taste it.
It’s that weird time of year that me and Aunt Faye love where summer flirts with fall.
Some days are filled with that scorching leftover summer heat while others are draped in a nice cool breeze.
I know I look crazy with my head hanging outside the window, staring at the bright orange sun setting, but I don’t care. I’m sure Christophe understands what it’s like to be away from home for so long. He says he’s been away from Germany for ten years.
“My cousin got robbed there last Christmas while delivering food.” He points to the Oak Garden apartments where my best friend Terrica’s cousin, Meechie, lived before her mama got remarried.
“Oh, yeah?” I turn my head to catch one last glimpse of the dull brick buildings that make up the apartment complex. “Did they ever catch who did it?”
“Nope.”
“That’s a shame,” I mutter back disinterestedly. “Same thing happened to my cousin in River Oaks—except they caught the guy. He kind of looked like you—ice blonde hair, blue eyes. Crazy how things like that can happen anywhere, right?”
His cheeks grow flushed as he hits his brakes at the green light on Bayou Bend. He toots his horn at a lady strutting into the intersection with an empty styrofoam cup and a blonde wig on her head that had seen better days.
I sit forward to get a better look at her familiar face.
Now I’m definitely home.
“Goddamn it,” Christophe hisses, tossing his hands up.
She stares at us with crusty red eyes, and I reach to open Yesenia’s purse to grab a few dollars to give her like Aunt Faye used to do, but there’s nothing inside the purse except the phone Yesenia gave me, my ID, and my crumpled boarding pass from the airport.
I pull my hand out as he swerves around her and turns at the next light onto my street.
Chantilly Lane leads into one of the oldest parts of Bayou Crest where the same craftsman and expansive ranch-style houses have been since Aunt Faye was a little girl.
It runs right in front of Lockwood. Aunt Faye always said our side of Bayou Crest was the “working-class side.” It’s where the doctors, business owners, and Lockwood professors have always lived.
Well, except for our neighbor, Old Man Hester.
He’s just an alcoholic who inherited his mama’s fourplex.
Christophe is the quietest he’s been since I got in his backseat as we pass Terrica’s granny’s house and pull up to our driveway. Our old house still looks the same as it did before I left except the one new thing Aunt Faye did bother telling me about: Uncle Kenny’s old punching bag.
Uncle Kenny had hung his punching bag back on the shade tree that separates our backyard from Old Man Hester’s since the fence collapsed during Hurricane Harvey. He hasn’t touched that old thing since his last boxing “project” failed before I left for New York.
“Oh, we’ve been busy, Lovebug. Kenny’s still tryna raise money for that new AC unit for the gym…we’ve got Family Fun Day at the park coming up…and Kenny put that old punching bag back up.” Aunt Faye hummed on the phone while washing the dishes. “So you know how that goes.”
I did, and she sounded unusually chipper about the wasted time and money that came with another one of Uncle Kenny’s “projects.”
Christophe pulls into our driveway behind Aunt Faye’s Camry. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror, and he cracks a gentle smile while running his fingers through his tousled hair.
I wrap my hand around the door handle, but I don’t pull it.
AJ’s probably looking for me now since I left my Chanel and its AirTag with Yesenia.
No—I know he’s looking for me just like he did on New Year’s Eve.
He’s probably called Blake and his daddy to our apartment and they’re pacing back and forth in the kitchen where I left my full mug because my stomach rumbled too much to even take a sip of coffee this morning.
“Uh… Yesenia?” Christophe calls out, turning to face me in the backseat.
I blink up at his sallow eyes while his phone dings from its mount on the front windshield.
“I have another ride.”
“Oh,” I mutter, glancing at my trembling hand. “Yeah…thanks.”
I push out of the car, stumbling forward in my heels. As soon as I shut the door, Christophe zooms off.
The comforting scent of fried food wafts through the screen on the open front window of our house as I stand on the cracked sidewalk that leads to our porch. The smell intermingles with the nice pre-fall breeze while my ribs throb.
I know AJ’s daddy, Dr. Boyd, is asking a million questions—like why would Lovie get up and leave when she just said we’d all fly to Nice to look at wedding venues once the season wrapped?
“That’s so unlike her,” he’d say in his pompous accent. “Lovie would never leave without saying anything.”
I gulp as if I’m watching him grip the edge of the island in our kitchen.
Did he even know me well enough to know what was like me and what wasn’t?
“Lovie?” Uncle Kenny croaks out from somewhere. “What you out here dancing around like that for?”
I stop moving, and my head spins.
I don’t even realize I’m running until I’m up on the porch and burying my face in his tattered Worthing Boxing shirt. His musky scent overpowers the perfume I spritzed on this morning in a daze, but I don’t mind it, and his round, hard stomach pokes my chest.
“Faye!” he yells, peeling me from him and patting me on the back like a long-lost friend. “Lovie out here on the porch! Why you ain’t tell me she was coming home?”
Uncle Kenny looks at me over the I NYC mug I mailed him last Christmas. It’s not a look of suspicion, but one that makes him tilt his head like he wants to ask me a question.
I shift in my seat and glance down at the pork chop and mashed potatoes Aunt Faye put in front of me as soon as I sat at the table. I took a bite out of the pork chop, but I had to chug a mouthful of sweet tea to get it down my throat.
“I wish you would’ve told us you were coming. I would’ve had your room ready.” Aunt Faye turns around and leans against the kitchen sink.
She looks different outside of FaceTime. Her skin is deeper, and her short curls seem grayer, and she’s looking more like Grandma and less like Mama. She’s even getting dark moles around her eyes, like Grandma had.
“How long you gonna stay for?” she asks.
“A few days…a…a week? I don’t know,” I stammer back, scanning our kitchen for my absence that I convinced myself would be here after being gone for so long.
The doorbell camera I bought them is still in its box on top of the refrigerator, and my school pictures are still tacked on its front with me frowning in my Rhodes uniform and smiling in my Lockwood cap and gown.
Even my bedroom is the same—all of my fabric is piled in the corner, my dusty sewing machine is still sitting next to the window, and my clothes are still hanging in the closet.
The engagement pictures me and AJ took at the Eiffel Tower on that last “I’m sorry” trip are still on the old chipped console table in the living room too.
I’m still here.
I twist my engagement ring back and forth under the table.