Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
RICH
Lovie stares at Ky like she wants to keep him while Rasheeda walks him out of my backyard.
Lovie.
That’s what Faye said her name was in that voice message.
“I know you’re headed over to Doctor Borrowitz’s office to get that mouth handled!
” she yelled over the loud buzzing from their washing machine.
“But I’m sending my niece, Lovie, to take care of the house while I go run a few errands and check on your daddy at Beatrice’s.
Just so you know—Ken is trippin about her being over there… ”
She never finished what she had to say, but she didn’t have to. Any man with a baby that looked like Lovie would trip over her roaming around some random man’s house by herself, whether she was cleaning it or not.
The wind blows a curly piece of her baby hair. She reaches up and smooths it back with her bandaged fingers while I inhale her scent that the wind picked up. She smells fresh, like she rolled in a field of lavender.
Lovie is an ironic ass name for her to have because she doesn’t look loved at all.
She looks lost more than anything, and even though she ain’t some random woman anymore, she’s still “Slim” to me—little bitty, whiskey-eyed, and younger than me.
I hear it in her light voice. It bounces from proper to twangy in a natural rhythm.
And she has a stutter that makes my heart stutter a little.
All of it reminds me that she’s off-limits unless I wanna start some shit between Faye and Kenny.
Rasheeda’s car engine hums to life in my driveway, and Slim scoffs. “Well, wasn’t she just a ray of sunshine and… ass.”
Afterward, she turns around with a frown. “What does she mean, ‘take him to Lucky’s?’ Take him to Lucky’s and do what? Get gas?”
Her nosy questions make me forget any smartass comebacks because Faye’s obviously been keeping her under lock and key.
I get it, though. Slim is too soft to know about a hard place like Lucky’s, and Faye lives over on Chantilly now.
Folks over there look at Lucky’s like it’s Bayou Crest’s dirty little open secret and they treat fighters like we’re pariahs.
“She just talking,” I reply, waving my hand. “Go get in my truck.”
“Huh?”
I point to the front passenger door. “Go get in.”
“Why? What’d I do?”
She doesn’t even wanna know where I’m taking her, but she wants to know what she did wrong.
I shake my head. “You ain’t do nothing at all. Just go get in.”
She stands stock-still and stares at me until I turn around and walk toward the passenger side of my truck. I pull the door open, letting the music that’s playing spill out.
She stares back at my house and then at my truck like she doesn’t want whatever we just did to end, even though it wasn’t supposed to have happened.
I shouldn’t have let Smitty’s ass get in my head, and I shouldn’t have let her hang around here long enough for her to feel like she’s not supposed to leave.
I crook my finger, then pat the leather passenger seat. “C’mon, come get in.”
She hesitates, then walks toward me. I try not to smile at the ripped jeans, F&S Cleaning shirt, and Nikes she wore to “clean” today. For some reason, I’ve got this funny urge to see her in all of her glory because I know it usually costs a grip to even breathe her way.
When she gets to me, our bodies are so close I can smell her again. I clench my teeth while she grimaces and pulls herself into the passenger seat.
I close her inside and round the truck. When I climb behind my steering wheel, I reach into the backseat and grab the white tee I tossed back there.
As soon as I pull it over my head, she buckles her seatbelt and curls into the passenger door because deep down I scare her no matter how curious she is about me.
I scare her so bad she does this thing with her body where she tries to move it as far away from me as she can every time I’m close enough to touch her.
She’s like a lil’ chihuahua—full of bark but too scared to actually bite because she’s really just a tender lil’ thing.
I roll down the passenger window for her and back out of my yard. “Where you supposed to be at? I’mma take you there.”
She rolls her eyes. “Here.”
I snort out a low laugh.
I know better than that. She’s supposed to be up in New York in some big penthouse getting taken care of just like Smitty said, or in some cookie-cutter suburban house in Pearland with five kids and a dog—not here.
We roll next to Smitty’s porch, and she pokes her head out, inhaling the outside air while resting her chin in the crook of her arm.
“You supposed to be cleaning at another one of Faye’s houses, or do I need to take you back over to Chantilly?”
“Who was that girl?”
We’ve only known each other for a day and a half, but she’s already questioning me about another woman. And here I go—answering her like a lil’ bitch.
“That was Rasheeda.”
“Oh…is she your friend?”
She even asks messy questions all prim, proper and siddity. Rasheeda would’ve just asked me if I was “fuckin that girl that pulled up.”
“Nah…she ain’t my friend.”
“Oh.” She sits straight up and grabs her seatbelt, pulling it away from her neck. “So, that was your girlfriend?”
“No.”
“But you just said—”
“I’m fuckin her, not romancing her.”
“Taking care of her kid is romancing her, no? You held Ky like—”
“Like his mama should’ve, but she ain’t mature enough to understand what a lil’ boy like him really needs.”
Her eyes get even softer, and my dick twitches like it did when I found her digging in my kitchen cabinets yesterday.
I grab her headrest, turning my head and backing out onto the street.
“Is his daddy okay with you making suggestions about his son’s extracurriculars and doling out life advice to him?” she chirps as one of her soft curls brushes my arm.
She still doesn’t ask where we’re going, but she’s got enough nerve to ask another messy question in that tone I think I like.
I snort. “I don’t know. Whenever you find his sorry ass, maybe you should ask him. You jealous or something?”
“Jealous?” she yelps.
“That’s what I asked.”
She whips her head toward me. “Look, I don’t even know you well enough to be jealous of what you seem to do for your friend with benefits and her kid.”
All of her words run together, and her tone is even more proper than before, like she’s trying to tread as lightly as she can, but I hear what she really wants to say underneath it all: I ain’t her type. She’s just too nice to say it to my face.
All of it makes me smirk and crave the argumentative side of her that I’ll never have because in her mind, we’re not even supposed to be breathing the same air.
“‘Friend with benefits?’” I chuckle, shaking my head.
“Well, that’s what two people are when they’re having casual sex without strings attached.”
“Or we just two grown folks fuckin. No friendship involved. You too young to understand that or something?”
Her face falls. “Gosh, she’s worthy of sex but not friendship?”
“I don’t have friends.”
“Well, that’s depressing. Why no—”
I sigh. “A’ight. Where you supposed to be at?”
“I told you.”
“No, you didn’t. You told me a smartass half-truth.”
“I didn’t.” She furrows her eyebrows and crosses her arms.
“You did.”
Now we’re arguing.
As a matter of fact, it feels like we’ve had this petty argument somewhere else in another lifetime, but I can’t pinpoint how or when.
I just know she’s running from something, and now I’m caught between it and her.
I don’t think Kenny and Faye even know what it is.
I can see it on her face, though, and when she’s close enough, I can even smell it.
She brushes down that same baby hair from earlier, flashing the ring on her left ring finger again.
The sunlight hits the pear-shaped diamond while I try to picture her lame ballplayer.
He probably looks like the PA that fills in for Dr. Borrowitz sometimes and laughs at his own jokes. She seems like she likes corny men.
“Where your husband?” I blurt, playing her game. “You want me to take you to him?”
She gets real still and looks straight ahead as I drive down Joliet. We’re not even driving anywhere in particular and I ain’t as mad about her wasting my time as I should be.
“I’m not married,” she says.
“So you engaged then?”
She keeps staring ahead at the empty street.
“So when’s the wedding?” I ask.
“There’s not gonna be one.”
“Oh. So, you broke up with him? What, you getting cold feet?” I glance at her.
We’ve passed the Jenkins’ house, Mrs. Monroe’s house, and Beatrice’s. I hit the brakes as we roll to Joliet’s dead end.
“So…you broke up with him?” I ask again.
“No,” she mumbles.
“‘No?’”
“Nothing.” She presses her arms against her chest so hard the outline of her nipples pucker against her shirt and makes me push back when I really shouldn’t give a fuck about her or her “mysterious” ballplayer.
“Now, I might be a lot of shit, but I ain’t deaf or dumb. You said there ain’t gon’ be a wedding, even though you wearing an engagement ring he gave you. And now you saying you didn’t break up with him.”
Her mouth opens, and she looks around my truck again.
“What, you can’t break up with your fiancé?” I ask.
“Can’t?”
“That’s what I said.”
She huffs and rolls her eyes. “You know what? Just forget I ever said anything to you.”
“No.”
“You can’t force me to tell you my business.”
“I can when you were digging in my business in my house where I pay the bills.”
She unfolds her arms, and her eyes have that same wild look they had yesterday in my kitchen. She reaches for the passenger door handle, but I press the lock before she can touch it.
“Unlock the door,” she grits out.
“Where you going?”
“Away from here.”
“And where is that?”
“Listen, I can walk to Lucky’s and figure it out from there.”
I huff, shaking my head. “No, you can’t. You ain’t walking nowhere around here and figuring out shit at Lucky’s by yourself.”
We both know better than that.