Chapter 12 #3
He nudges my fingers away from the zipper and presses his hot hand to the bruise, and I think I see AJ’s Bottega sneaker barreling toward my side again before my vision goes black.
“What the fuck—” I recoil, shoving my hand against his head.
“You good,” he murmurs, letting me scrape my fingers through his hair.
“No, I’m no—”
He presses the bruise harder as more tears well in my eyes from the scorching heat that shoots through my body.
“Stop!” I howl. “Move!”
“I said you was good,” he repeats in an even calmer tone.
“And I’m telling you I’m not!”
“I ain’t asking. I’m telling you that you good. Look at me.”
I’m so stupid that I actually do it.
Our eyes touch and then dance together—grazing one another and pulling back until he smiles and I forget about the hot pain surging through my body. I can’t even feel his hand on my skin anymore.
“You balling that up ‘cause you gon’ use it?” he asks, nodding to the left side of my body.
My eyes shoot down to my clenched fist hanging next to his face.
“No,” I rasp out.
He smiles bigger and shakes his head as I uncurl my fingers from my hand.
“Dry your face off. Big dogs get knocked down sometimes. You still got heart, though. You still tough, mama.”
I swipe the other tears from my cheek and suck in a deep breath that hurts.
“Did his stupid ass take you to a doctor?” he asks with his hand still pressed against the bruise.
“No.”
“He was too scared?”
“Uh-huh,” I whine.
I can’t tell Rich about how hard AJ always cried after our fights, or that I was always the one picking up the pieces afterward because I always saw the tortured little boy who still lived inside of him.
So, I’d clean myself up, wipe his tears, and reassure him I wouldn’t dare put his career in jeopardy, but I think Rich already knows all of this just like he knows all the other ugly things about me.
“It’s your rib. It ain’t broken—just bruised.” He presses my sore rib one more time as if he wants to be sure.
I bask in the way his calloused hand scrapes against my skin and I think I’m used to the pain now, or maybe I’m just too consumed with Rich’s touch to focus on it anymore.
“Jeez, thank you, Dr. Lovelace,” I reply, dropping my head and snorting.
“You’re welcome, smartass.”
“I guess you would know the difference between a bruise and a break, huh? I imagine broken and bruised ribs happen a lot at that illicit place you work at.”
He smirks.
“So did you break your ribs the same way you broke your jaw? That pretend girl you told me about socked you in ‘em?” I smirk, anticipating the pain that still hasn’t reappeared. “Or some of those crazy guys down at Lucky’s got the best of you?”
His eyes meet mine. “It was the girl. It’s always her. She a bully, ya’ know? She ain’t do it with her fist, though. She crushed ‘em with some Maison Margiela boots.”
I sputter out a laugh. “You’re really annoying.”
I bite into my lip, eyeing the coarse waves in his hair. “So… when will I feel better since you’re such an expert?”
He shrugs, finally pulling his hand off me, leaving me to look back at AJ’s carnage.
“Bruised ribs heal over time. A doctor can’t do much besides give you some ibuprofen. The main thing you need to do is keep breathing.”
I cock my head to the side, biting my tongue until he snorts out a laugh and pushes up from the ring. “That wasn’t no generic advice.”
“How do I know that?”
He wipes his hands down the sides of his shorts and casually taps me above my bruise with two fingers. “Lemme show you. Stand up straight and poke your chest out.”
I thrust my shoulders back and push my chest forward because it’s impossible to defy Rich when he’s in “doctor mode” even if it feels like that bruised rib will pierce right through my flesh.
“C’mon, poke it out more. You tough.” He flattens his hand against my side and looks down at me through long lashes while I laugh.
“When you get home, I want you to get a pillow and put it right here,” he says, strumming his fingers against the bruise in featherlight strokes that make my limbs loose.
“After that, you take deep breaths for as long as you can. Then whenever you feel you can do it, you take another deep breath and cough real, real hard—as hard as you can.”
I swallow, nodding.
“You ready to show me how you gonna do that?” he mutters, making my middle throb.
I nod again.
“A’ight. Show me. Take the biggest deep breath you can take for me.”
I inhale so hard that it feels like I might implode.
“Now cough.”
A loud hack shoots from the deepest depths of my chest and comes out in a nasty wet rattle that makes him lean in closer like he wants to study every strange noise that comes from my body.
“That’s how you keep the mucus out your lungs and keep away any infections since you can’t breathe deep like you need to. ‘Cause it hurts when you do that, right?”
“God, yes…”
It hurt so bad that I slept upright while AJ lay beside me engulfed in a sleep so deep that he gasped out the quietest snores throughout the night.
Sweat dots the top of my forehead from all the work I just did, and Rich’s eyes graze it. I see the moment where he decides he shouldn’t swipe it away even though I want him to. I want to feel the rough pads of his fingers on another part of my body again.
“You still breathing?” he murmurs, smirking.
I nod.
“Good. Congratulations on leaving, by the way.”
I try to focus on the painful deep breaths instead of the giggle that wants to come out because only Rich could make light of that crazy argument we had on Joliet.
“You did the right thing,” he adds as I let out an ugly snort through my nose that makes him press his palm harder into my body.
“You did an amazing job of letting that nigga live to play another game of football…”
I gulp. “How do you know he plays football?”
“I found out the same way you found out what I am—people,” he murmurs. “People will tell you whatever you need to know as long as you just listen.”
I swallow the ball in my throat and lean closer into his hand.
“He a thrower or a catcher?” he asks.
“He’s a catcher. He…he catches.”
“Ohhh…a wide receiver, right?” he hums to himself.
“Who told you that?”
“I told you…people talk, but you ain’t listening, though. He any good?”
“People say he is.”
“Oh yeah? What people? The people that matter? The ones that don’t know your secret? People like Kenny?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, I figured as much.” He nods to himself as if he’s tucking away that little stupid piece of information for later, and somehow his sharp words intermingle with my pain.
They take away the jarring, chest-aching memories from the night I thought I was dead. It was the night that made me collapse next to Yesenia on the train the next morning with a swollen, bruised body and tell her I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t love a man to death anymore.
The hard tug Rich gives my zipper pulls me out of my head. I look at his hand.
“A’ight, you can tell Faye that I got my birthday gift,” he murmurs, pulling my zipper back up and staring at my breasts one last time as if they belonged to him. “Time for you to go about your business.”
“Huh?” I whisper.
This time he doesn’t stop himself.
He swipes the sweat off my forehead with his rough palm and fixes my headband that had slid back. Now my panties are so soaked that I wouldn’t even be able to explain why if somebody asked because I think Rich was just being Rich this whole time. I don’t think he was flirting.
“Tell Faye I said ‘thanks for sending me my birthday gift,’” he murmurs again. “Now it’s time for me to send you on your way.”
On my way?
But there was nowhere for me to go.
“You listening to me, Slim?”
“But…but the cake?” I stutter out.
He looks over at the white box sitting next to his bag on the bench. “You paid for that cake?”
I shake my head.
“Yeah, he better not have made you pay for nothing in there.”
“Right. I heard your fists pay the lease there sometimes.” I mutter. “What does that mean?”
He glances down at his hands, then his eyes flutter away. “I told you Mr. Copeland runs his mouth. The next time I see him, I’mma tell him not to talk like that in front of you.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Go hang out with your friend like you said you were gonna do.”
I take advantage of our closeness and stare at the bottom half of his face, studying the tiny, jagged flesh-colored scars that mar his chin.
“Bring the cake home. You and Faye can eat it,” he finally decides. “Just tell Kenny she bought it for me.”
“It’s yours, though. It was for somebody else, and then I told Mr. Copeland it was your birthday, and…and he just decorated it and gave it to me. We can’t waste the cake, Rich.”
“We?”
“You know what I mean.” I huff, rolling my eyes and looking away.
He tugs at the zipper on my dress one more time, like he’s testing its sturdiness, and then lets go. “I’ll bring the cake home with me.”
And me too, right?
My body grows warm.
Jesus, I shouldn’t be thinking that either.
“Come on. Let me put you in another Uber. I got somewhere to be.” He steps away from me, turning around and swaggering back over to the ropes.
“Wait. But where’re you going after this?” I blurt out.
He raises his eyebrows. “Out.”
“To celebrate your birthday?”
“Nah…just out.”
“But I thought you didn’t have any friends?”
“I don’t.”
“So where’re you going then?”
“Damn, you nosy.” He lifts the ropes, waving me toward him. “I said I ain’t have no friends—I ain’t say I was a shut-in.”
I let out a giggle.
He rolls his eyes, smirking. “What, you want me to be lonely or something?”
“No, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, actually.”
He looks back over at me with one of those questions forming on his face. “You lonely, Slim?”
I cross my arms, avoiding his gaze.
For the first time since I stepped foot inside the gym, that mucky feeling slithers back up my body.
“Yeah,” I mutter.
He lets a low snort and keeps his eyes on me while holding the ropes open. “Why you don’t wanna fuck with your friend? The braider. What she do to you?”