Chapter 7 #2
He swipes a bead of sweat off his scarred cheek, and I think I need him to touch me again. Maybe if he does, I’ll remember all the ways I used to brush off all the other guys from Worthing when they tried to get my attention.
“You clean up that mess you left in there?” he asks, nodding toward his house.
A faint thump rocks between my legs, and I thrust my hip to the side to quell it.
I nod because I have this odd inkling to play along, but I can’t give Rich any clever flirtatious banter to hold on to. It doesn’t matter to him, though. He’s satisfied with my lackluster nod.
“C’mon then.” He waves his hand, walking toward the back of his truck.
He pats the truck’s tailgate, then hops onto it. “Come take a break from cleaning up and explain to me why you was gon’ stab me up with my fork and take off with my shit.”
I hesitate, looking around his backyard instead of moving.
A part of me searches for AJ, but all I hear is Yesenia reminding me I don’t need permission from a man to do anything anymore. She’d say I can do whatever I want.
Rich doesn’t rush me to move. He doesn’t even side-eye the way I stare around his backyard.
Instead, he picks up the blunt he had waiting and pulls a lighter out of his pocket while I teeter back and forth like a loser.
He doesn’t even make any gruff smartass comments, so I ignore my tender side and pull myself up onto the truck, doing my best to ignore every sore muscle in my abdomen.
He side-eyes me when I let out a tiny gasp and grip the side of his truck before turning around and settling next to him.
As soon as I sit still, he pops open the smoothie’s lid and holds it toward me as smoke billows from the blunt between his fingers. “Faye feed you this morning?”
It’s another question that makes my treacherous middle throb.
“She did,” I mutter back.
He takes the cup back and puts it to his wet lips while I try not to stare at them.
Instead, I narrow my eyes at the aggressive way his Adam’s apple bounces as he swallows.
I even try concentrating on the yellowing leaf falling from the tree behind him, but my eyes still find their way back to his round lips.
He swipes his tongue against them and sets the cup down, taking another pull from the blunt.
Smoking is such a disgusting habit, but the tart, skunky scent makes me nostalgic for a time in my life that seems impossible to get back to, and his face reminds me of how far away I finally am from New York.
A heavy cloud of smoke flows from his nose as he eyes me again. “Why was you digging in my kitchen cabinets yesterday? I put up all the dishes before you came. There wasn’t nothing in there for you to clean.”
“I…I wasn’t digging,” I turn to look straight ahead. “I was looking for a cup.”
“For what?”
“To get something to drink. That’s what cups are for.”
When I don’t hear his deep voice belting out a comeback, I pull my eyes off the blade of grass and turn to glance back at him but he’s already staring at me—not at my face—but at the side of my abdomen where AJ’s bruise lives.
His fingers linger next to his mouth with the blunt dangling between them, like he stopped right as he was about to take a pull.
Finally, he blinks and moistens his already moist lips. “Don’t dig in my shit unless you want me to dig in yours. It seems like you found what you was looking for, right?”
I don’t think it’s a threat because threats don’t usually make my breasts feel heavy. I almost utter out a faint “right” just to hear what he’ll say back, but a pathetic “sorry” falls out of my mouth instead.
“You good.” He puts the blunt back to his lips and wrinkles his eyebrows as if he has more things he needs to scold me about, but he keeps it all buried inside his head with everything else he refuses to say out loud.
“If Kenny finds out you’re doing all that, he’ll make you regret it at your next workout,” I blurt, forcing myself to glance down at my dangling legs. “Smoking isn’t part of his diet plan.”
“Kenny find out you snuck over here to see me and he’ll make us regret it.”
Another thump rocks my middle and makes me shuffle closer toward the side of his truck.
“My, how cocky we are?” I roll my eyes. “I didn’t sneak to see you. I can go wherever I want. And you said I left your house a mess, so I came to fix it. Which, by the way, was a lie. You just wanted to get your point across to me. I got it. I won’t dig in your stuff.”
“Good. So we on the same page now.”
“Yea—”
“I ain’t asking you. I’m telling you we are.”
He grows quiet again, and I glance at him. He has his lips back around the cup’s rim and a little smirk dances across his face while he slurps and stares at me.
“So you woke up this morning and told Kenny and Faye you was coming back over to Joliet and Pine to re-clean my house? Straight like that, Lovie?”
My face heats.
I’ll never get used to him saying my name.
How did he make it sound so sexy instead of silly?
Ugh.
I’ve gotta stop thinking that way.
“Yep.” I pop my lips. “I…I sure did.”
He raises his eyebrow. “You know, one time I heard a preacher say lying is a sin.”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure illicit drug use is too.” I roll my eyes.
“‘Illicit drug use,’” he says in his best dorky impression, laughing. “Yeah, Faye said you was a motherfuckin nerd.”
“Excuse me?” I yelp. “She said what?”
“She said you went to Rhodes.”
“And that doesn’t equate to being a nerd.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a nerd.” He shrugs. “I always been a Myra Monkhouse type of nigga.”
“A who?”
He chuckles. “Oh Lord. You ain’t shit but a baby, huh?”
“I’m not, and let’s make one thing clear: not everybody who goes to private school is a nerd. Sometimes it’s just decided for them.”
“That’s what happened with you?”
“My mama wanted me to go there.” I shrug, looking off into his backyard.
“When her and Faye were little, they used to pass it all the time on their way to the washateria off Lafitte. She’d see all the different kids getting dropped off by their parents in Lexuses and BMWs.
She said whenever she had a baby, that’s where she’d send it.
So that’s where I went when I got old enough, and then when I graduated I went to Lockwood despite my school counselor telling me it was a bad idea… ”
My voice drifts off into a low murmur because “Mama” had finally left my lips after two years.
He scoffs. “A bad idea? Lockwood is the mecca around here.”
“You know white people view HBCUs as lesser than. She said with my grades I could’ve easily gone to UT or Baylor.”
“So why’d you go to Lockwood if you could’ve got into those other schools?”
“It’s where my best friend Terrica was going.
She only stayed a semester, though.” I smack my lips with a chuckle.
“But as soon as I got there, I fell in love with the campus and felt comfort in seeing people from around the neighborhood whose houses I grew up cleaning and playing at. I felt at home. So I stayed even after she dropped out.”
His lips turn down, and he nods.
“What about you? You went to Wesley?” I ask.
“Yeah…something like that,” he murmurs, bringing the blunt back to his lips and sucking in a hit while I admire the way his chiseled cheeks sink in.
“What do you mean ‘something like that’?”
He ashes his blunt on the side of his truck, then looks back over at me through squinted eyes. “It means exactly what it means. Sometimes I went and sometimes I didn’t.”
“Well, did you graduate?”
We cut our eyes at each other at the same time.
Carter Wesley High is the neighborhood high school.
It was one of those drab buildings Christophe turned his nose up at on my Uber ride from the airport.
Terrica and most of the guys from Worthing went to high school there.
It’s not exactly a place you brag about being an alum of, but folks did anyways.
It goes along with that whole Bayou Crest pride thing.
“You a nosy lil’ something, ain’t you?” He snorts, shaking his head.
“It’s called being curious. It’s how you have a decent reciprocal conversation and learn about other people.” I smack my lips. “And let’s not pretend that you’re so indifferent yourself—you’re just as nosy.”
He roars out a laugh this time, flashing his perfect white teeth encased between bruised gums that unintentionally make me smile.
“So how’d you break your jaw?” I ask, tilting my head.
“Who told you I broke my jaw?”
“Your messy friend, Faye.”
He chuckles, sitting back on his elbows and looking up at the sky. “Don’t do that. Me and Faye go wayyy back.”
My eyes drag across his naked torso. “Oh yeah, how far?”
“Far enough that she trusted me with you today.” He smirks.
“Yeah, that’s not exactly what happened, but sure.”
He doesn’t look over at me, and I’m thankful for it.
I don’t think I can stomach any more of his looks when he says stuff like that…
and he’s right. The old Aunt Faye would never let me do what I’m doing now with any of the guys from Worthing, and now I understand why Terrica might’ve been a little obsessed with guys from the Bottoms. Listening to Rich and all of his little quips is kind of addictive.
“The doctor said it broke right at my joint. I could feel the bones rattling when I talked,” he mumbles, twisting his plump lips to the side. “He did surgery on it and then wired it shut for a few weeks. They gave me Oxy for the pain, but I sold them hoes to my neighbor and kept it pushin…”
He waves his taped hand out as if to say c’est la vie, and I nod as if I can relate.
“So the weed is for natural pain management?”
He shrugs. “If that’s what you wanna call it.”
He’s floating now. It’s in the red of his eyes as he stares up at the Texas blue sky I forgot I missed. A thin white cloud sails by. His eyes follow it as he lies back against the bed of his truck and tosses his bulky arm behind his head.