Chapter 9 #2
She rolls her eyes. “And since when is AJ okay with you riding around with other men, anyway?”
See, this is why AJ didn’t trust her.
She saw all the holes in our relationship that I tried to hide with fake smiles and expensive “I’m sorry” gifts that me and her used to fawn over.
“Rich was just being nice and giving me a ride after I finished up at his house. He’s training with Uncle Kenny, and Aunt Faye cleans his house. I was helping her out today.”
“Yeah, I heard Kenny had taken him in at the gym after that shit he got into with Melo and that boy that worked for him…but I ain’t know about that cleaning part.”
“Melo Barnes?”
Saying “Melo Barnes” out loud makes me cut my eyes to the front door of her shop. Her and Meechie always said to be careful about saying his name out loud because he was always listening, and now I’m sure I know why Rich ended up training with Uncle Kenny.
“Yeah…that Melo.” She glances back down at the braiding hair, letting her long burgundy braids fall over her eyes. “Kenny must not know you be in Pup’s truck like that in between their training sessions, huh?”
“He really was just giving me a ride over here. That’s it.”
“And you really might wanna take an Uber next time with everything going on around here.”
“Did something happen while I was gone?”
She sighs. “Nothing that you should be concerned with since you have your new life to worry about. Like I said—take an Uber next time.”
“Oh—kay…”
She doesn’t give me the usual interrogation.
She doesn’t ask what Rich smelled like or if I had any plans to give him a fake number since he “wasn’t my type.
” She doesn’t even give me the rundown on the tea about him that I missed.
Instead, she frowns and keeps pulling the braiding hair apart while I glance around her shop.
Nothing’s changed in here since the last time I came.
I’d sat in her chair and laughed for hours while she installed knotless braids that AJ hated as soon as he saw me coming out of baggage claim at LaGuardia.
Any hairstyle that fell past my shoulders was dangerous because he swore they made other men stare too hard and for too long.
“My twelve o’clock is on her way,” Terrica mumbles.
She’s cold, and I guess I would be too. Our relationship didn’t have a proverbial ending, just like mine and AJ’s. One day I picked up my phone to call her, only for AJ to tell me not to bother.
“It’s either me or her. I’m tired of her big ass mouth—always yapping and telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing.
I saw what she texted you. You can leave if you want, but I’ll make you regret it,” he said casually, lying across our bed and scrolling on his phone.
“My cousin Marni can be your maid of honor.”
That bile sneaks its way up my throat again.
“You gonna call AJ to pick you up?” she asks, draping a piece of hair across the braiding rack that sits on the counter behind her chair.
“It’s just me.”
“Right. That’s why I asked if he was gonna come get you. I have a busy day.”
“No, T. I left. I left him.”
She stops pulling at the hair and looks up at me. Her eyes rove my body and stop on my engagement ring that had been burning my finger ever since Rich exposed me.
“Oh.” She cocks her head back. “Like how you told me you left after he started making you wear jeans to your statistics class because he swore your professor wanted to fuck you?”
She asks the question as if I didn’t beg AJ not to throw my skirts and shorts in the campus donation bin.
I swallow and look out of the shop’s windows for Rich, but he’s long gone and I don’t understand why I can hear his voice in my head telling me I’m tough even though we’re nothing to each other.
“Or like how you left when he made you cut your braids out as soon as you got to New York?”
As if I didn’t sit on our bathroom floor bawling while he watched me do it.
I should tell her about all the times she cried on my shoulder over her dumbass exes, but I can’t because Rich is a liar. I’m not tough at all—just really fuckin broken.
“Or like that time he poured a drink on you and dragged you out of Meechie’s party by your hair beca—”
“You don’t have to throw every mistake I made in my face.”
She tosses the hair down and puts her hand on her hip.
“I’m not throwing anything in your face.
I’m reminding you of all the times you dragged me into you and AJ’s shit, talking about you were ‘leaving him’ and I ended up getting fucked over in the end and looking stupid for supporting you when you call me talking about you and him ‘worked it out.’ He threw away your fuckin FIT application knowing how much that master’s program meant to you!
I was gonna fly up there and beat his ass for that! How do I know this ain’t one of those—”
“Okay, I get it! I was stupid!”
Her body jolts.
I don’t even recognize my voice. It’s raspy and full of resentment after arguing with Rich on the side of the road while he looked down at me like a proud daddy.
“I get it,” I croak. “I was really stupid…but I’m not going back.”
“You tryna convince me or yourself?”
“I…I…I’m not trying to convince either of us. It’s the truth.”
She takes a cautious step toward me, narrowing her eyes.
I shake my head, looking away.
I just need her to see me in the same way that Rich did—as if I’m still normal—as if it’s okay that I was too scared to ever fight back, but I get it.
She can’t trust me anymore. Aunt Faye used to tell me that a person only had so many times to go back on their word, and I think I’ve gone back on mine one too many times with Terrica.
“I think I should bring you to Faye,” she mutters, picking her keys up from the counter behind her chair. “Tell me where she is and I’ll bring you there.”
The inside of Terrica’s Beamer smells stale even with the Black Ice air freshener dangling from her rearview mirror.
She curls her fingers around the steering wheel and stares straight ahead at her shop. “Where do I need to take you?”
“I told Faye I’d spend the day with you.”
“Yeah, and I’m asking you where I should take you.”
“I…” I glance down at my bandaged fingers sitting in my lap. “I don’t know.”
“Look, I can’t cancel my twelve o’clock. I already canceled enough appointments to take Mama back and forth to the doctor. I ain’t canceling another one just to sit here and go back and forth with you.”
I whip my head toward her and try to catch her eyes, but she won’t look at me. She’s not like Rich. She doesn’t need eye contact no matter how uncomfortable the conversation is.
“Can we at least talk?” I ask.
“About what? About how you left AJ for the tenth time.” She tosses her fingers up, curling them into air quotes.
“Congratulations. I’m happy you finally realized that a man who controls every breath you take ain’t a man that loves you.
Now please tell me where I can take you so I won’t miss my appointment. ”
“Wow.” I belt out a bitter laugh. “Thanks for the encouragement, I guess.”
She slaps the steering wheel and whips her head toward me. “You know what, Lovie. I picked up the phone to call and tell you they was gon’ cut Mama’s foot off only to find out you had blocked me.”
My stomach plummets. “Oh, T. I’m sor—”
She sticks up her hand. “Don’t. I called you day and night for three days.
I even tried DM’ing you on IG and I damn near had a heart attack when I saw our message thread was gone.
So I’m sorry I’m not tap dancing and clicking my heels because you popped up on me after a year of silence.
You can save your apologies. I don’t want ‘em.”
Now the air smells like Burberry Goddess. The vanilla scent burns my nose as it simmers off her, and angry tears well in her eyes. Her freckled face morphs into a blur.
I want to hug her like I used to do after she’d tell me how happy she was that Hazel had forced us to play together that one summer because she finally had a sister.
Before that, we’d just stare at each other while Hazel gossiped with Aunt Faye in our driveway until one day in July Hazel pushed her my way.
“He went through my phone and saw your text—the one telling me you’d buy my plane ticket home if I needed you to.”
“Because I would have,” she rasps. “I would’ve went up there and got you if I had to and you let him tear us apart.”
“I fought for us,” I choke out, slamming my fist into my hand. “I begged. I cried. I bargained.”
“And then what? Huh? Then what happened?”
“He beat my ass so bad for having the audacity to ask for my best friend I couldn’t even bathe myself for a week. Imagine what would’ve happened if he caught me trying to reach out to you again? I was trying to survive.”
The words weren’t supposed to come out that way, but they surged out of me like they were tired of floating back and forth in my head, and maybe it’s all just muscle memory. I always told Terrica the secrets that hurt the most.
She drags her hand across her cheek while choking out a loud huff.
A rough hiccup rocks my chest as if my body knows that I shouldn’t have said anything.
She could go off and tell Meechie what I said, and Meechie could tell other folks until it all explodes in a scandal that AJ won’t be able to outrun—at least that’s what his agent, Blake, told me once.
“You’re not just protecting him; you’re protecting his legacy.
I’m talking, lost endorsement deals and negative public perception for years to come.
You tell one wrong person about what happens when you two fight and suddenly we’re in a media circus because you’ve tarnished the image of one of the league’s golden boys.
If you’re in this for the long haul, it’s best to keep your mouth shut or you’ll make my job a lot harder,” he said.
Terrica’s eyes sink into slits and she narrows them at me. “And you were shocked when he did it?”
Her words are so cold that a shiver courses through my body. “T…”
“Don’t.” Her nostrils flare. “The writing was on the wall the summer before you graduated. It was bound to happen. I told you to leave him alone after that night at Meechie’s, but you wouldn’t listen.
He snatched you up in front of everybody—pulled out a handful of your hair.
” “Jalen and Malik was gon’ whoop his ass for that shit.
His own damn friends were gonna fuck him up for you, but you protected him. ”
“He…he could’ve lost his scholarship for fighting. He could’ve ruined his life.”
“So you let him ruin you instead?” she asks.
“He wasn’t always like this. You know that. He…he was…”
“Perfect? Yeah, you always bragged about him being so perfect.”
I glance up at her. “We used to cry together about his mama and daddy sleeping in separate rooms. He used to tell me about how disappointed his daddy was that he didn’t follow in his footsteps and become a doctor like he wanted. There was just so much pressure he was always trying to outrun.”
“But did he ever cry for you? For all the shit you’ve been through?”
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the memories I have of AJ’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Something changed that summer before I graduated. It’s not as cut and dry as you think.
It’s like one day I woke up and we had gone from screaming matches to me running from his fists, but I was still in love and telling myself that this hit would be his last one.
It’s like I was stuck on a hamster wheel chasing the boy I used to cry with. I couldn’t just…leave.”
“Well, what did you think was gonna happen if you stayed with him, huh?” She scoffs. “You said yourself that men like him don’t get any nicer once they show you who they really are. You said your daddy just got meaner and meaner as time went on…”
If I had anything in my stomach, I’d throw it up, but there’s nothing left except regret.
I told Rich I wasn’t tough.
“You can take me to Dr. Vick’s place. Faye should be finishing up over there,” I mutter.