Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
LOVIE
“This it?” Rich drawls, pulling into the Commons and pointing to the front door of Terrica’s shop.
I clear my throat, shifting in his passenger seat. “Yeah…”
I try to inhale his smell and the leather from his seats to ease the nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach from seeing “T’s Braids” plastered above the building’s weathered awning, but it doesn’t work.
He double parks right in front of the shop’s door, and the locks on his truck pop up. Suddenly, I regret not telling him to take me home.
I scoot up, reaching for the door handle, but I can’t pull it because I’m waiting for him to ask me another question like he did back on Joliet.
None of his questions are like mine. In fact, they’re borderline offensive, but I can see Aunt Faye waving her hand and hear her saying, “That’s just Rich.
That’s how he asks questions.” I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who asks questions like Rich.
The truck’s quiet hum fills the silence between us. As soon as I tug the door handle, his voice booms from behind me.
“You forgetting Faye’s money,” he says.
I turn back around and find him rifling through his middle console, pushing his phone, a few napkins, and a shiny gold condom aside before picking up an envelope overflowing with twenty-dollar bills.
I squirm in my seat, chasing the rigid edges of that condom along with the memory of him admitting to what he does for women while he pinches a chunk of bills together and pulls them out.
I try not to jump to conclusions about where the money came from as he looks down and counts it out into two stacks, but all I hear are Terrica and Meechie’s voices in the back of my head, gossiping about the boys in the Bottoms and the dope they allegedly sell for Melo Barnes.
Rich picks up the first stack of money and pushes it toward me. “That’s yours.”
I push it back. “But I hardly cleaned anything.”
And I didn’t want to tote around any money that came from him.
“You was never going to,” he replies.
“So you’re paying for a cleaning service you don’t use?”
“When Faye offered to clean my house sometimes, she said she’d be cleaning it—not you. I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”
Another throb rolls through my middle as he picks up the other stack with his free hand. “Give this one to Faye.”
Her stack is larger than mine, but it makes sense because I was just her annoying little helper for a day who caused more harm than good. I even left her with an unhappy client because I couldn’t mind my own business.
He stares at me with the money in his hand while I glance behind him, avoiding his gaze.
I feel naked—like he can see right through my clothes—but it doesn’t change the way he treats me. He still talks and looks at me like everything is everything—like he always argued with poor battered women like me.
“Hm.” He hums, clumping both stacks together and pushing them toward me. “Put it in your purse and go see about your friend.”
“I can’t take your money.”
“Faye take it.”
“But she works for it.”
At least I think she did.
“Yeah, and you did too.” He rolls his eyes to the side and huffs. “Besides, you don’t know what me and Faye’s situation is.”
A sharp pang hits me in the gut because I truly didn’t. I’d strayed away from home for so long that I didn’t know what was what anymore.
“I promise a few hundred dollars ain’t gon’ put me out in the street,” he adds. “Take y’all’s money, go see your friend, and stop sneaking away from Faye and Kenny.”
I stare at his wet lips, waiting for his voice to get louder, but it doesn’t happen because Rich talks in an even slower, lazier drawl when he’s aggravated. I breathe out to nix the flutters in my stomach, but they’re so jarring they make me feel like I’m floating outside of myself.
His head lolls to the side, and he swipes his tongue against his bottom lip while pushing the money toward me again. I can hear him even though he isn’t saying anything. I even see all the rest of the questions he’s holding in about me and AJ behind his low eyes.
I reach out, curling my hand around the money, but as soon as I try to pull it, he holds it tight and forces his eyes onto mine.
“No more sneaking off to see me…” he mutters.
“I didn’t—”
“Because you don’t know me like that…right?” He nods his head slowly as if he’s trying to convince himself too.
My head nods along with his until his grip finally loosens. I take the money, stuff it down in my tote, then tug the door handle.
“Hey, Slim…” he calls out.
I look over my shoulder, savoring his comforting voice and that nickname one last time before I go back to just being Lovie.
He holds up a balled fist.
“The first step to throwing a punch is to be brave enough to ball your fist up.” He smirks, looking at my hand hanging off the door handle.
He lifts his balled hand higher, and I pull my hand from the door, clenching it into a fist and waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. I don’t feel brave enough to pound it into anybody.
I think he’s prolonging our time together, and I’m falling for it, even though I’m not supposed to, because he’s just like all the other guys Uncle Kenny brought into our lives.
He leans over and hooks his index finger underneath my tucked thumb.
“Thumb goes on the outside,” he says, tugging it. “That generic enough for you?”
I laugh, nodding.
“You tough,” he adds, leaning back into the driver’s seat. “You know that, right?”
“That sounds nice.”
He snorts out a laugh. “Just know this—if you wasn’t tough, you would’ve gave up on leaving when you didn’t get away the first time. Now go.”
This time when I turn to leave, I don’t look back even when my fumbling stomach urges me to. I push out of his truck, slide down and slam the door closed. As soon as I’m alone outside, I gulp in the crisp pre-fall air, glancing around.
The Commons is emptier than I remember it being.
In the two years I’ve been gone, a beauty supply store replaced Rawlings Pharmacy, and now the beauty supply store has a “for lease” sign in one of its empty windows.
Now Terrica’s shop, Copeland’s Bakery, and the Citi Trends that anchors the shopping center are the only businesses left.
Terrica’s baby blue Beamer is parked in its usual place, three parking spots over in a handicapped space with her mama’s handicapped decal hanging from the rearview mirror.
The car still looks as new as it did when we went to pick it up from the dealership Meechie worked at in Upper Kirby.
It was Terrica’s first big-girl purchase, and seeing it makes me long for the days we spent joyriding around the city before AJ put a stop to it.
I step underneath the drab beige awning just as the wind blows a ball of napkins and dirt across the empty sidewalk.
When I glance over my shoulder, Rich’s truck is still there.
I can’t see him through the dark tint on his windows until he leans over the steering wheel and looks right at me.
He twirls his finger, signaling me to turn around.
I do it and pull the door handle to her shop, but it jams. Right when I try to give it another yank, Terrica’s thick silhouette appears behind the glass.
She swipes her hands down her leggings, twists the lock, and pulls the door open with a frown. “Lovie?”
Her almond eyes glide over my sneakers first, then brush the rest of my body and stop on my face.
“Hey…” I mutter.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I’m…I’m visiting for a while and figured I’d stop by,” I reply breathlessly.
She looks past me at Rich’s truck and frowns before moving to the side to let me in. As soon as I step inside, she slams the door behind me and locks it back, wafting the smell of edge control and developer up my nose.
There’s distance between us that wasn’t there before because AJ stopped trusting her a month after my move to New York, so that meant I had to stop trusting her too.
I couldn’t feel the distance from so many miles away, but now my day of reckoning is here and I want to throw up all over her shiny tiled floors.
There’s nobody in her chair, but she has her iPad propped up on her vanity playing some Tyler Perry movie we’ve seen a thousand times.
I idle by the door and wait for the hug that I know won’t come. She doesn’t even dust her chair off for me to sit in so she can inspect my hair and tell me everything I’m doing wrong with it. Instead, she walks back behind the chair and picks up the braiding hair she was separating before I came.
After a beat, she looks up at me, pursing her glossy lips and raising her eyebrows. “Pup? Really?”
“Pup?”
“Rich Lovelace.” She huffs, pointing her thumb toward the parking lot. “That’s who dropped you off, ain’t it? That’s his truck.”
Lovelace?
Dang, even his last name is attractive.
“Oh, yeah—Rich.” I shake my head, tapping my palm against my forehead, remembering the nickname Ky blurted. “You know him?”
“I know enough to stay away from him no matter how fine he is.”
She’s never said that about any of the guys from the Bottoms. Usually, the grittier they were, the easier her panties came off for them.
My eyebrows furrow, and I let out a snort. “Oh, wow. Why? What’s different about him compared to the other guys from the Bottoms you liked?”
“Doesn’t matter. He ain’t your type. So why are you worried?”
I choke out a stunned laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He ain’t from The Woodlands, Katy, or some affluent New Jersey suburb. He’s from right here—right off Joliet. He doesn’t know shit about Chanel, Paris Fashion Week, or French 75s, and he’s not a pretentious asshole. That means he definitely ain’t your type.”
She says the words in a matter-of-fact way, and I guess she’s right.
Rich isn’t my type even though it feels illegal to think that.
Then there’s the air of mystery that’s always swirling around him that I can’t seem to penetrate.
Everybody’s always saying so much about him while also saying nothing at all.