Chapter 12 #4
I clear another hunk of mucus from the back of my throat. “What if I did something to her?”
He shakes his head. “If you did, you ain’t mean to do it.”
“I’m…I’m not what you think I am.”
“What do I think you are?”
Innocent.
Without blame.
“A nice girl…”
“‘Cause you are. Now what could a nice girl like you do to her?”
“I went back on my word too many times, and when you do that, people stop trusting you,” I mutter, waiting for the judgment to cover his face like it did Terrica’s.
I don’t know why. This is the same man who’s friends with benefits with a married woman, the same man who even Terrica was afraid to get involved with. He’s the man who’s crazy enough to fight other crazy men for a living.
He shrugs. “Why you give a fuck about other folks trusting you? The only person you should trust is yourself.”
“I’d expect that response from somebody with no friends.”
“Friends get you in trouble. The quicker you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”
He waves me to him without giving me a chance to respond, and I guess this is it for us…for the third time.
I trek toward him, climbing through the ropes he holds open. He follows behind me and grabs my hand just as my foot touches the first step.
His hand swallows mine and its calloused skin scrapes against my palm as he threads our fingers together.
I think I’m finally fully experiencing those working hands Aunt Faye mused about.
I never realized how much I needed the hardness of a man’s unmanicured hands until now because AJ went to the nail salon just as much as I did.
The hard pads of Rich’s fingers don’t help the growing puddle in my panties because now I want to know how those working hands might feel sliding against my naked body.
I huff to myself, carefully pattering down the steps behind him.
When we make it to the bottom, he scans the frayed bandages around my fingers until a loud dually truck drives by, honking its horn. He looks over his shoulder and drops my hand, and I feel like a silly teenage girl who still got giddy from holding hands with a guy.
I wiggle my fingers that he touched as he walks over to the bench where the cake box is and picks up his gym bag, exposing an intimidating black gun. My body grows cold as he picks it up, and I hear Terrica’s voice from that day in her shop and Aunt Faye’s ominous advice about letting Rich “be.”
I try to pretend I don’t see the gun. It’s hard to ignore it as he holds it tight, though. He doesn’t clumsily fumble with it like AJ does with his, or wave it around so close to my face that the metal touches my nose. He’s careful, like he understands just how bad a relationship I have with guns.
I eye it closely as he tucks it into the side pocket of his duffel.
“Do you really need that here?” I ask.
“Yeah…not every man likes to fight.” He picks up the cake, nodding his head toward the door while I bite my lip at his bluntness. “Go.”
“You know how to put the padlock on, right?” I ask breathlessly, following the direction of his head. “One time one of the boys didn’t do it right, and another one broke in and stripped the AC unit for its copper.”
“Mhmm…” he hums back.
“And you know how to turn off the lights in the back, right?” I glance over my shoulder just as he shifts the cake to his free hand and swipes the big light switch, drowning the gym in darkness.
I blink hard. “Okay, I get it. I’m shutting up.”
He chuckles then sings, “Time for you to go home, Slim.”
When we step outside, the brisk night air tickles my bare arms, reminding me that Rich Lovelace saw another part of me he wasn’t supposed to, and he still isn’t looking at me any differently.
He keeps a hold of the cake and easily rolls down the garage door. Afterward, he clinks the padlock back onto the metal handle with one hand.
He looks up at me, pulling it to test its sturdiness. “I do it right?”
I gulp, giving him a lame thumbs-up. “Mhmm. Perfect.”
I force myself to pull my eyes from his veiny arms and turn around. As soon as I do, a red pickup truck speeds down the street, coming to a tire-screeching halt right in front of Worthing. The driver lays on their horn, making me move closer to Rich.
He pulls himself up from tinkering with the lock and turns to look at the truck as the driver rolls their window down.
“What’s goin on, Pup?” an older man yells, pushing his fat head out.
My tense shoulders drop when he flashes a gap-toothed smile at us. I smile back because he’s bald and unassuming like Uncle Kenny, even though there’s nothing behind his smile. It’s empty in that shallow way that makes the hairs on my arm stand up.
Rich takes a step toward the truck, and I follow his lingering scent until he turns his head with his eyebrows raised.
“You good?” he asks, pointing toward my purse.
“Yeah…yeah. Of course,” I reply, pulling the strap over my shoulder and bouncing on my toes.
He snorts, swiping the side of his nose and shaking his head. “No, I’m asking you—is you good to order your Uber? Like, do you got money or do you want me to take care of it?”
“But I—”
“Go home, Slim.”
A lump as nasty as that mucky feeling forms in my throat.
Go?
I blink up at him.
I know I look like that lost puppy Mr. Copeland described when he talked about a baby Rich following his daddy around, because I didn’t plan anything further than this.
What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?
There’s no “me and Terrica” anymore, and I don’t know how to explain that to Aunt Faye either.
Rich looks from me to the man hanging outside his truck’s window, tapping his fingers against the driver’s side door.
He huffs. “C’mere real quick. Lemme get rid of him.”
I shuffle behind him with sweaty palms while he totes all of our stuff in his hands. When we approach the truck, he leans into the window, holding on tight to the cake.
The man glances down at the cake box, then reaches out, turning the volume down to the blues he has playing. “I ain’t mean to interrupt.”
“You good.” Rich cuts his hard eyes at me, but I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me.
“Who you is?” the man asks, following Rich’s gaze and looking over at me.
“Lov—”
“What’s up, man? What you need?” Rich cuts in.
My breezy smile falters at the hard stare Rich gives him while bitter cigarette smoke filters from the lit cigarette burning in the ashtray in his cupholder.
Rich leans closer into the truck, easing his forearm on the ledge of the window, forcing me out of the frame. The low hum of the blues and the truck’s engine fills the silence between the three of us.
Rich blinks at the man until he flashes that gap-toothed smile again.
“Beatrice sent me around here to look for you,” he says.
“What she doing that for?”
“She say you usually be over there by now to see your daddy and she was getting worried.”
Rich twists his lips, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye like he’s thinking about each of his words before he says them in front of me.
I lean forward to listen more closely.
The man picks up his cigarette and takes a drag. “You still plan on stopping by?”
Rich shrugs.
He blows a big cloud of hazy smoke through his wide nostrils. “Well, she say she got something she need your help with.”
“Something like what?”
He sits the cigarette back in the ashtray. “You know she ain’t gon’ tell me much about what’s going on at that house. She told me to come down here to look for you, so I came.”
Afterward, he leans forward and pushes the truck’s gearshift up, making Rich step back with the cake. He tugs the side of my dress to pull me with him.
The man doesn’t give any parting words before he turns the music back up and speeds off, leaving a trail of smoke from his truck’s exhaust pipe swirling behind him.