Juliet

Chapter 7 #3

Now I feel some type of way about whatever woman got to run her hands across his bulging biceps, but I can’t put my finger on the feeling because I still can’t feel much of anything these days.

The only thing I do feel is the big “Bayou Boy” tattooed across his left forearm because he’s definitely that.

“So now you’re gonna tell me how you broke it, right?” I whisper, glancing at his jaw.

He chuckles. “You really wanna know?”

I nod.

“You really, really wanna know?”

I huff, rolling my eyes. “Yes, dang.”

He smiles and shrugs. “I found this pretty girl in my kitchen…”

His eyes follow a random bluebird soaring from a small shrub in his yard while I hang on to his every word and try to picture this mystery girl.

“She was about yea high.” He moves his hand above his taut stomach to demonstrate. “Brown skinned… curly hair… dimples…nosier than a motherfucka.”

He looks over at me. “I snuck up on her while she was digging in my cabinets and she clocked me right in my shit ‘cause she couldn’t stab me with a fork.”

He taps the side of his face with a balled fist and clicks his tongue. “A nigga ain’t been the same since. She fucked me all up.”

I choke out a low giggle, looking away from him again. “You’re really annoying.”

He really isn’t.

He’s just flirting despite complimenting my “engagement ring,” and Lord knows my body can’t take it. There’s even this weird heaviness that sneaks up on me as my middle pulsates again.

“So what about you?” he asks.

“What about me?” I glance down at my dangling legs.

“What happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who taught you to be so scared of—”

“Go show him!” somebody yells in the distance. “Go!”

The neighborhood dog rounds the corner of the house with a woman on its heels. His loud bark echoes through the quiet morning air.

Rich groans and lifts his body, and I want to groan too because he was about to ask another deliciously bold question.

The woman drags a boy behind her by his shirt’s collar, and the dog lets out another ear-piercing bark as they get closer, like he can sense the urgency of whatever’s going on.

“Here.” Rich hands me his smoothie, but keeps his blunt.

I frown and take it.

“Stay right here,” he mutters, sliding off the back of his truck and sauntering toward her and the bleeding boy.

Even if he wasn’t floating, I don’t think he would’ve walked any faster. He moves as if they always came spinning into his backyard like a tornado. As soon as he gets close to them, the woman squeals out a “See! I told you!” She tugs the boy in front of her wide hips and lets go of his collar.

She has the body I used to beg God for—wide hips, a huge ass, full breasts, and a nice bronzy caramel tone. She’s so curvy that she fills out every inch of the tight maxi dress she’s wearing. She has all the things AJ loves in his other woman. Terrica always swore women like her were his real type.

I can’t see Rich’s face, but I want to. I want to see how he looks at her so I can see if she’s his, even though it doesn’t matter. Me and him will never see each other again after today.

The woman cranes her neck to get a better look at me curled in the bed of his truck. She frowns as he nudges her back at the waist, and I get it.

This doesn’t look right.

What if she is his and here I am sitting in the back of his truck like some side chick while he’s half naked? What if that’s his kid?

Rich mutters something I can’t make out, and the woman stops mean-mugging me to shove the boy toward him. “I told you I want you to show him how to defend himself.”

The boy can’t be a day older than six or seven. He’s nothing but a baby, but apparently she doesn’t think so.

Rich squats in front of the boy and nudges his head back. He grabs his chin and studies his nose, twisting his head from left to right while she stares down at them.

“This is the second time this month they jumped on him on the bus, and the school won’t do anything about it!” Her voice floats across the backyard. “I’m so sick of this shit!”

I pull myself up on the side of the truck and rest my head against it, minding their business even though I should’ve been inside finding something to clean.

She rants about the school and the bus driver until Rich lazily flings his hand out, telling her to “stop”…and she actually does it.

“C’mere, Slim!” he calls out.

“I told him that wasn’t my name,” I mutter to myself, setting the smoothie down and sliding off the back of the truck.

I wanted to watch their drama from a distance, not stand right in the middle of it, so I take my time walking toward them. When I get there, I keep a foot of distance between me and Rich.

The woman is prettier up close in that plastic type of way, but maybe I’m just being judgmental.

Her lace wig is straight and perfect, and freckles dot her nose.

If I were with the Knights WAGS they’d compliment her on her plump lips, then gossip about the obvious filler in them as soon as she walked away because they were nasty like that.

It’s why I didn’t survive the first WAGs brunch of AJ’s rookie season.

Rich looks up at me with red, glassy, apologetic eyes, like she interrupted an intimate moment when we were really just trying to escape the humdrum of our lives—well, at least I was.

She pushes the boy again, and he flails into Rich’s chest. “I told you he said he wanna fight, so teach him how.”

Rich grabs him and holds him tight, and my stomach flutters for some silly reason. Those flutters get worse when he picks the boy up like the baby he is and turns to me.

“Take him in the house and clean his nose up for me,” he says, swiping a speck of blood from the boy’s cheek.

He doesn’t even introduce me to them. He just passes the boy to me as if he’s ours while giving me a fleeting look.

The boy shuffles into my arms without question. He’s light and warm and looks at me while I stare at Rich because what the fuck?

The woman’s nostrils flare. “I don’t know that bitc—”

“But I bet you know better than to call her out her name, though,” Rich cuts her off, and she crosses her arms, looking away from us.

The correction was just as soft and stern as the playful thump he gave me for digging in his stuff.

He nods his head toward the house, and I really don’t want to be as acquiescent to his commands as she is, but he makes it kind of easy. I guess it’s the perk of being a good-looking man.

I turn away and carry the boy toward the house, ear hustling all the way until I get to the back door and open it. The woman’s mouth is so big that I can still hear her even after I close us inside the house and carry him into the kitchen.

“What’s your name, little man?” I ask, sitting him on the counter.

“Ky,” he rasps.

“I’m Lovie,” I whisper back to him and wait for him to giggle like other kids did when they heard my name, but he just smiles back at me with a trail of blood trickling from his nose.

He looks like the phantom baby I convinced myself I was supposed to give AJ and that heaviness creeps into my conscience again.

I clear my throat, turning away from him. “Let me find something to clean you up.”

I leave him to fumble around and open and close drawers until I find the dishrags. They’re all mismatched and folded into neat squares. I grab one and walk back over to Ky, tilting his head back just like Rich did.

A fresh line of blood trickles out of his right nostril. I swipe it away with the rag, then wipe the rest of the dried blood crusted around his nose.

He has the same low eyes as Rich, but that’s all they have in common. Ky’s irises are a hypnotizing hazel, while Rich’s are a calm brown, and Ky has a toasty cinnamon complexion, while Rich’s is a smooth, velvety chocolate. I can only see Ky’s mama in him.

“Did you get into a fight?” I ask.

“No. They jumped me.”

I let out a low hum. “Oh yeah? Why’d they do that?”

He shrugs and looks off into the living room while his mama yells outside.

“Did they get into trouble at least?”

He looks back at me, shrugging again.

“Hm…you’re quiet like your daddy,” I blurt absentmindedly.

His eyes perk up. “You know where my daddy is?”

“Wait, Rich isn’t your…” I wrinkle my eyebrows.

“Rich?” He wrinkles his eyebrows too.

I point behind me toward the backyard as Rich’s deep voice slithers under the back door.

“Oh, you talking about Pup.” He lets out a babyish giggle that makes me want to hold him to my chest like Rich did. “Nah, Pup ain’t my daddy, but my mama said he was supposed to be.”

Pup?

I snort out a chuckle at the nickname while ignoring the weird pang in my stomach. He grows quiet while I study him for any other injuries I might’ve missed.

“Jeremy Evans says I’m a faggot ‘cause I won’t hit him back,” he finally says, kicking his legs back and forth.

My body goes still. “And where did he learn that from?”

“His daddy.”

“Does Rich know all of this?”

He nods.

“And what does he have to say about it?”

“He say ‘Fuck Jeremy and his punk-ass daddy.’”

I let out a yelp and Ky laughs at the horror that’s probably on my face.

“Slim!” Rich yells from the backyard. “C’mon!”

Ky sucks his teeth. “Mama out there gettin on his nerves. I told her she can’t be doing that, or he ain’t gon’ wanna hang out with us no more.”

I shake my head and swath his nose with the rag like I used to do to mine. “Squeeze your nose and keep your head back.”

He rushes to hold the rag to his nose with both hands, and I scoop him back up because somehow I recognize that tone Rich used. It’s the same one Uncle Kenny uses on Aunt Faye when he’s heard enough of her complaining.

When I open the back door, she’s talking about me while Rich ashes his blunt out on the side of the house.

“So, who is that?” She frowns, folding her arms.

“Man, that’s Kenny and Faye Fairchild’s lil’ niece.”

“They know she be curled up in the back of your truck like that?”

Rich lets her question linger while he brings the blunt back to his lips. He puffs his cheeks out and blows out another cloud of smoke.

“You think I got the balls to fuck Kenny and Faye’s married niece with what I got going on with Kenny?” he asks.

His answer makes me pull Ky closer into my chest and head their way.

“I don’t put anything past you. You got the balls to fuck—” She stops as soon as she notices me and Ky walking up on them.

I try to hand Ky to her, but she recoils as if he doesn’t deserve to be touched so delicately. Rich grabs him instead and presses his mouth to his cheek until Ky lets out another raspy laugh as if he’s forgotten all about Jeremy’s silly little insult.

Rich plops him back down next to his mama and stoops to his level. “What you gon’ do when you go back to school, lil’ man?”

Ky looks at him with wide eyes as if he’s looking at a real-life superhero. “Walk with my head up.”

“That’s right.” Rich swipes the top of his head.

That anecdote doesn’t satisfy his mama. She smacks her lips and balls her mouth up.

She wants revenge on little Jeremy, and I think I do too, but I don’t think Rich would have that because he’s a man and men don’t internalize all the innocuous little crap that women do.

She narrows her eyes at Rich. “So you’re gonna let me bring him to Lucky’s on Sunday and get him around some grown men, right?”

He pushes up and swipes his hand across Ky’s head, massaging his identical waves. “Lucky’s ain’t no place for a baby. You of all people should know that. Take him up to the rec and sign him up for basketball like I told you to do last month.”