Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
LOVIE
“There’s other tiles that need to be mopped,” Aunt Faye utters, breezing past me in Ms. Vera’s kitchen.
I glance down at the one sparkling tile I’ve been dragging the mop across. “I know. This…this one just has one of those stubborn stains in the grout that you hate.”
“Mhmm. I bet it does. But it’s so shiny I can see my reflection in it now. I think you can move on.”
I fling the mop back into the bucket, wringing it.
Afterward, I plop it back down onto the other tiles I neglected while she gossiped with Ms. Vera and “straightened up” the sunroom that she straightened up when we came on Monday.
Every now and then when I walked past the doorway to check on the laundry, I’d hear their low murmurs.
“Maybe, her and the boy decided on an amicable breakup, Faye,” Ms. Vera said in her gravelly voice.
“I mean, we’ve had some bad breakups back in our day that we ain’t wanna tell the world about.
Shoot, you of all people should know that.
I remember when you couldn’t even get up out of bed.
I swear the pain just sat on you and wrapped you in its clutches. ”
I shudder, dragging the mop across another tile.
There’s this nasty, bone-chilling feeling that came with me from New York.
I don’t know why it’s on me or where it came from.
All I know is that it clings to me like muck, and it even woke me up out of my sleep last night.
I stumbled into the bathroom to hurl it into the toilet, but it’s so stubborn that it festers like the hot bruise on my side.
Aunt Faye leans against the wet counter and pulls her phone out of her pants pocket. She looks down at it with those same bags still sitting underneath her eyes.
She lied to Uncle Kenny again today. She told him she didn’t have any money for our lunch even though I gave her the wad of money Rich told me was hers.
I’m not our family accountant, but I know that Aunt Faye has never been responsible for anything except her phone bill for all twenty-four years of my life, and now she says she’s broke.
She squints down at her phone with a smile. “Rich wants a cake for his birthday.”
She muttered the words to herself, but I heard them—I heard him. I heard Rich after not hearing him for days after our run-in at Lucky’s. Uncle Kenny didn’t bring him up when we met him for lunch at Luby’s earlier, and Aunt Faye didn’t talk about him when we worked.
“What was that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow and looking up at her.
“Nothing. I was talking to myself. You never talk to yourself?”
“Not in front of other people.”
She rolls her eyes. “You got a mouth like your mama. You know that?”
“You’ve been telling me that since I could talk.”
“‘Cause it’s the truth. Sonia had a mouth so smart, Mama used to pop her right on the lips, and then I’d ask if I could pop her too. I should of did the same to you.”
I huff. “Whatever.”
Hearing Mama’s name again makes that nasty, mucky feeling cling tighter to my chest. It’s been so long since I heard it this often, it almost sounds like another language.
It’s not that it’s a unique name, but somehow during the time I was in New York, I only ever heard it once in the hallway outside of Yesenia’s cubicle after not hearing it at all for so long.
“So, what kind of cake does he want?” I mutter.
“Who?”
“Rich.”
I hate that his name soothes my dry throat as soon as I say it.
“When you were talking to yourself a minute ago, you said he wanted a cake for his birthday.” I stop mopping and lean against the handle. “So, again, what kind of cake does he want?”
Her eyes widen for a second before she rolls them. “I was just talking.”
“No, you were just reading that text on your phone from Rich about what he wants for his birthday.” I point at it in her hand. “Because you talk to him a lot.”
I saw his name at the top of her text message threads in her phone the other day even though she’s never been much of a texter.
She cuts her eyes at me. “You don’t have any business to mind?”
“You and Uncle Kenny are my business. I saw that unopened bottle of blood pressure medicine in the guest bathroom and you’re—”
She raises her eyebrow.
“You’re taking clients out in Manvel, texting with Uncle Kenny’s projects and cleaning their houses. Somebody needs to monitor y’all.”
She howls out a loud, raspy laugh. “Girl, we’re grown. The only person you need to monitor is that fiancé of yours.”
That mucky feeling clings to my skin now, and I can’t find the words I yelled at Terrica the other day in her car.
Jesus, how hard is it to tell Aunt Faye that I woke up and left AJ after losing one last fight?
I wasn’t like Mama. I knew when I had enough.
When I don’t respond, her smile disappears. “Did y’all talk or is he still too busy to have a conversation with you?”
“I…”
The word lingers in the air, but nothing comes after it.
It’s like I can’t form the sentence I need to say.
But how can I even say it to her once I think of the perfect one?
She doesn’t see right through me like Rich does, and there’s no muscle memory from years of swapping secrets like there was with Terrica.
It’s like digging through mountains of words for the ideal neutral ones that can convey just enough to keep her away from the ugly truth.
“Things are…are complicated between us right now,” I mutter, resting my chin on top of the mop handle.
She looks up at the ceiling before glancing back at me. “Hmm. So, are we talking complicated like another girl approaching you in the street about some silly text he sent her, or another rumor you saw on one of those gossip blogs type of complicated?”
She chooses her words carefully, like I imagine she used to do with Mama when they talked about her relationship with Tony.
Somehow, she makes the incidents sound like little blips in me and AJ’s relationship when they were much more—like an embarrassing run-in with his side chick while I ate dinner with Terrica at Mastro’s, and then a messy Instagram DM from WAG Watch about her and AJ’s “pregnancy scare”.
I look away from her intense gaze. “Like it’s best if I stay home for a while, complicated.”
“But what about the wedding? You already started planning it. You said me and Kenny were gonna meet y’all in France to look at the venues once AJ wrapped up the season.”
I feel all the how’s, when’s, and why’s coming, so I blurt, “I…we need to press pause on it.”
It feels easier than telling her that the relationship she always warned me about had spiraled into the same mess Mama and Tony’s had.
Her brown lips fall open, and she nods. “Oh…okay. I understand. Well, are you okay?”
I nod, suddenly becoming fascinated with all the tiles I haven’t mopped.
“Are you sure?”
“Ye…yeah.” I glance up.
Her face relaxes as if my response temporarily quells all her worries about me, AJ, and a wedding that’ll never happen.
“I…uh texted him about that AC unit he promised Uncle Kenny. No response yet. He has a game in Cleveland tomorrow so he’s probably getting settled into the hotel there.”
“Okay…I’ll let Kenny know.”
All it had taken was for me to stop stalling and check Google and AJ’s Instagram to figure out his whereabouts because Rich’s stupid question wouldn’t leave my head no matter how many days it’s been since he asked it.
“What you mean you don’t know where he at?”
He’d belted the question out incredulously with his perfect eyebrows bunched together, and I’d balked at it every night in bed until his voice roused me out of my sleep one last time. So, I watched AJ’s Instagram story from my burner account.
I found him eating brunch at Orsay with Blake looking happy and relaxed, donning a Denim Tears puffer that I picked out on a trip to Tokyo.
He didn’t look like a man whose fiancée had left him, but then again, what did I expect?
He’d strolled into plenty of places with a relaxed smile after we fought.
Usually, the more at ease he looked, the more he fumed inside, and maybe Rich was right.
Maybe men like AJ don’t just let women like me walk away.
I bite my lip. “So what kind of cake does this dude want?”
Her eyebrows wrinkle. “Why do you care so much?”
“I’m just making conversation.” I shrug. “Remember, you used to say, ‘Talking keeps the boredom at bay.’”
And it’s the only way I can make sure Rich still exists because all I have are faint memories of us arguing at the dead end of Joliet, and his masculine scent cemented into my brain from the wind blowing it my way when we walked out of Lucky’s.
I don’t have his number to tell him I know where AJ is now, and he doesn’t have mine to remind me of how tough he thinks I am.
“He wants a German chocolate cake from Copeland’s,” she finally says.
“People still get cakes from Copeland’s?”
“Not like they used to. But he’s still holding on.”
“Dang. I remember folks used to line up on Saturday mornings for their German chocolate cakes.”
“Yeah…I run into his wife every now and then. She says some days are better than others ‘cause it’s so much competition now—I mean we got a freakin Whole Foods.” She curls her lip up.
“And some kind of weed bakery over by the washateria, but Copeland’s is still standing by the grace of God, among other things. ”
“And this guy wants a cake from there…on a Saturday…two hours before they close?” I raise my eyebrows, shifting my weight from one leg to the other as my nipples pucker against my bra at the possibility of hearing Rich’s drawl just one more time. “How do you even know it’s his birthday anyway?”
“Jesus, Lovie, the man told me the other day.”
“So he just volunteered the infor—”
She flings her hand up. “Look, when people share stuff with you on a whim, it means they want you to care. So, I’m caring.”
I fold my lips under my teeth and nod. “Right…”
I force my eyes to stay straight and not roll because Rich Lovelace didn’t just share stuff on a whim.