Chapter 12 #2
I open my eyes and thrust my chin out as if to say “hello” but he doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he cocks his head to the side with that same even expression and blinks at me while I try not to fall victim to his russet-colored eyes.
“You’re scared of… me?”
He nods.
“Be for real.” I roll my eyes. “You know what? This is silly. Let me put this cake somewhere so I can go.”
I teeter around in my heels until his voice stops me.
“You know, it’s always you lil’ bitty ones with the most heart.”
I turn back around. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I told you, you were tough,” he mutters, looking away.
Rich Lovelace is scared of me?
It’s an off-color thing for a guy like him to admit, but then again he’s just flirting with me like he always is.
“So you must be scared of Rasheeda too then, huh?” I ask. “She’s not much bigger than me at all. I mean besides the hips and massive ass… but whatever.”
He snorts out a chuckle that makes me chuckle, and they easily blend together like they did when we laughed outside of Lucky’s.
“Nah. I ain’t scared of Rasheeda.”
“Oh.” I jerk my head back. “Why not?”
“Put that down, and I might tell you.” He nods toward his cake.
I look down at the sweaty box I keep forgetting about.
When I look back up, he’s smirking and I want to get closer to him so he can answer my question, but I know better. I need to find that plot I lost after we found each other in his kitchen.
I twirl around, scouring the gym for a safe space to sit the cake. I find a perfect empty square right next to his gym bag on the bench because God is obviously testing me.
I slide the box into the space and as soon as I turn around to tell him I’m leaving, I almost stumble because he’s sitting up with his muscular, veiny arm out, holding the ring’s ropes open.
Oh, Jesus.
Why is he getting closer?
And why does it feel like my feet are moving when I was just standing still?
“C’mon…come talk to me and show me how you walk in your fancy boots,” he murmurs.
“They’re… they’re Maison Margielas, Rich,” I stammer out in a daze.
“Shit, learn me somethin then.” He lifts one side of his mouth, muttering, “Maison Margiela.”
His deep drawl swallows “Maison Margiela” and drapes it with more swag than it probably deserves, and I think my knees are trying to buckle, but I’m too stuck on stupid to look down at them.
He crooks his finger at me like he always does. “C’mon, come let me see you up close in your outfit. I like it. You look real pretty, mama—too pretty to be way over there.”
That’s it.
That’s the catalyst.
That’s the moment my insides explode and remind me of how Rich’s deep voice feels like a warm, cozy blanket swaddling me.
He chuckles. “I mean you halfway to me. You might as well keep on.”
It’s embarrassingly true.
I’m so close to him I almost taste that oakmoss scent that’s always lingering on his body.
I place my foot on the first step that leads to the ring and climb up, but my trek is anything but dainty because of that stupid bruise on my side.
I duck under the ropes he holds open, quietly wincing as my side throbs from the pressure.
I feel his eyes on me so I try to contort my body into a less awkward stance, but my tight dress makes it hard.
As soon as my left foot makes it through the ropes, he lets them go and stands up.
We face each other.
“Now what was all that nosy shit you was asking me from down there?” he asks.
“I asked why you aren’t scared of Rasheeda like you’re scared of me…and before you try to flirt and weasel out of an answer—I climbed in this stupid ring in heels.”
His tongue darts out, settling against his swollen bottom lip as he looks away from me. “What I need to be scared of Rasheeda for? She don’t have no heart.”
There’s no passion in his voice when he talks about her. It’s hollow. It’s not like hers was that day she walked up on us in his backyard.
“And I do?” I ask.
He smirks, shrugging and avoiding my gaze. “Guess it’s my turn, huh?”
“Your turn for what?”
“To ask a question. What’s that you told me? Asking nosy questions is how you have a decent reciprocal conversation. It’s how you learn people. Ain’t that how you said it?”
My face heats.
“So how much I owe you for the cake?” he asks.
I huff to myself. “That’s…that’s not how birthday gifts work.”
“Well, how do they work then?”
“It’s something special given to you from others to commemorate your birthday. It’s to celebrate you. You’re not supposed to pay people for giving you gifts.”
“Oh.”
Mr. Copeland’s chatty self was right. There was no way Rich celebrated his birthday.
“Did Rasheeda even get you anything?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing?” I whisper back.
“Nothin.”
“That’s…sad.”
He shrugs. “I guess. What’s a man supposed to want for his birthday, anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t know, lots of things—cologne, clothes, shoes, tickets to see his favorite sports team, a nice card, maybe.”
“So I’m supposed to give her my money to go buy me all that?”
“No.” I snort, rolling my eyes. “I mean, she can use her own mon—”
“She don’t even own a wallet.”
I huff. “Okay, you’re generous. I get it.”
“Oh, that’s what they calling it nowadays?”
“Calling what?”
“Being a grown ass man.”
That nasty fumbling in my stomach comes back while Rasheeda saunters back into my head in her clingy sundress.
“Well, did she at least give you a happy birthday shout-out on social media? She looks like the Facebook type.” I curl my lip up in disgust.
“Nah. That ain’t allowed.” He laughs.
“So you’re strict?”
He smirks, eyeing my legs again and making my face hot. “I ain’t strict with her at all.”
“You mean to tell me she didn’t give you a birthday shoutout, cook you a meal, or had Ky draw you a card, but you’re sharing your body with—”
“It’d be kinda crazy for a woman to do some silly shit like that when she’s in the middle of a divorce, don’t you think?”
A quiet gasp I don’t recognize as my own echoes throughout the quiet gym. “She’s…she’s married? But Ky…”
“Had a step-daddy…and doesn’t understand that I can’t be his new one.” He smiles gently. “And the details of Rasheeda’s relationship really ain’t my business unless her husband makes it mine and start disrespecting her or her baby.”
For a moment I think I see shame in his eyes, but it flutters away before I can truly observe it.
“My turn again?” he mutters before I can internalize any more of him and Rasheeda’s messy relationship.
“But…I didn’t—”
“You did. You asked me four questions.” He holds up four fingers. “I counted all of ‘em. We’re having a reciprocal conversation here, remember?”
For a second, I can hear the words he refused to say out loud. The ones where he admitted to counting each syllable that came out of my mouth—but I think that’s too soft for a guy like him to admit.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
“So you found that nigga yet?”
“Yes,” I whisper back without bothering to ask who he’s talking about.
“No follow-up questions about his whereabouts?” I add.
“That’s between you and God.” He raises his eyebrow. “Unless you ready for him to meet God.”
The threat is as casual as everything else that comes out of his mouth.
It makes my insides somersault even though I know nothing will come of it.
It’s just a nice thing for a man to say to a woman like me.
Me and Rich aren’t anything to each other so there’s no reason for him to make good on any silly promises that involved harming AJ.
“Next question then,” I choke out, mimicking him.
“A’ight… let me see it.”
“See what?” I frown.
He points to the left side of my body that throbs underneath my dress.
“That’s not a question. That’s a request.”
“Okay. Can I see what you too scared to show folks?”
I hold in a groan.
It was another one of those questions that soothed a part of my brain I didn’t know had been neglected until I gaited up to him in his backyard.
“Well?” he asks, blinking at my tender side.
Now instead of worrying about exposing myself to a man I hardly know, I’m dying to remember if I put on my Wolford bra I wore on my trek back to Houston or the ratty Target one I found in my dresser.
I swallow a lump in my throat.
Why am I even agonizing over something as silly as a bra?
“You should just show me,” he whispers as if he’s living in my head.
Yeah… I probably should.
“I ain’t gon’ tell nobody what I see—not even them people you say matter—you know the ones that don’t know your secret.”
Yeah… I know, Rich.
Instead of answering him out loud, I grip the zipper on my dress.
He doesn’t even do the gentlemanly thing and offer to look away while I pull it with my trembling hand because I don’t think he’s a gentleman in a traditional sense.
He’s the type of man who’ll block people’s views of my exposed body by angling himself in front of me, but he won’t look away from my breasts when they pop out of my dress.
As soon as the zipper gets to the end of its track, an embarrassing tear rolls down my cheek while I expose the evidence of my quiet secret to him. I swipe at my wet face with my forearm as our eyes travel to it.
It’s uglier than I remember it being this morning. It’s blacker, angrier, and more pronounced.
I sniffle, scoffing and dropping my hand to cover it, but he falls to his knees and knocks my hand away, pushing his face close to it. His warm breath caresses the hot skin.
“Rich,” I hiss. “People might see—”
“See what?” He tilts his head, blinking at the black and purple bruise that stretches along my rib cage.
“My breasts—duh.”
“You got a bra on.”
I glance at the baby-blue Target bra. “Oh, yeah…I do.”
I roll my eyes.
“Ain’t nobody stupid enough to walk in here while I got you like this,” he mumbles more to himself than me.
His eyes twirl across the nasty mark as he studies it without pressing a finger to it. He won’t even press his moist lips against it even though they keep dancing dangerously close.
I huff, reaching for my dangling zipper. “Well, you’ve seen more than what you should’ve. That’s enoug—”