Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
RICH
Slim stares at the dust that Wendell’s pickup truck kicks up while I stare at the way her soft curls blow in the wind.
She’s a lot like Faye, and I don’t think either of them realize it.
Faye showed up on our porch one day asking for Senior with a duffel bag hanging off her slender shoulder and tears in her eyes.
She was pretty in a sad way that a wilted rose is, and Arnez used to say she must ain’t have any family because why else would she wanna be with us?
No other woman Senior fucked ever wanted to just be with us—except for Faye.
“Who was that?” Slim asks, turning around.
I shake my head, nudging her in the back toward Worthing. “It was nobody.”
Wendell Barnes is just like his brother, Melo, minus the tenacity. They’re like that annoying piece of gum that won’t come off the bottom of your shoe no matter how many times you drag it across the concrete.
He’s somebody Slim didn’t need to be smiling at and giving her name to, but I had no right to tell her that because she ain’t mine no matter how good her hand felt in mine, or how much she hated when I told her to go.
Her brain is still fused to that ballplayer’s.
If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t still be protecting his reputation.
Arnez is the same way with Jamari even though it’s been two months since he left her, though. She even keeps his picture in her car.
“Well, he’s obviously somebody to you if he came looking for you,” Slim says.
“Right…he said he was looking for me, not you, nosy girl.”
Her cheek lifts and her eyes dart away as I pull the cake she brought closer to my side.
If Kenny had big nuts, he’d kill me for tricking her into coming to find me again. He’d walk right up to me and bust my ass, but I don’t think his nuts even hang like that for real.
“So, is you good or what?” I ask, pointing to the black bag hanging off her shoulder. “Or you already spent the money I gave you last week?”
Her cheek falls in a way that makes my stomach drop as if she’s my irresponsible girl who burns through my money faster than I can make it.
“No…I…I just…”
“You just what?” I reach inside the front pocket of my duffel, feeling around for my phone.
I pull it out, waiting for her to give me whatever excuse pretty girls like her dole out after burning through a man’s money. I open Cash App just as the lamppost above us flickers on. Crickets chirp out in the distance while my thumb hovers over the numbers and another car speeds by, honking.
I look up at her. “You just …what?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” She huffs, crossing her arms over her middle.
“C’mon, tough girl. You ain’t got all night, remember? So what is it? What’s the problem?”
She looks down the street and her upper lip twitches, and I think this is slowly turning into one of those “tact” situations.
I look away with her just like we did last week on Joliet. This time I know we look stupid as hell, but for some reason I don’t mind looking stupid with her.
“What that nigga do with your money, Slim?” I ask, staring out onto the empty road.
“His money was never my money, Rich.”
“None of it?”
“None.”
It’s a concept I can’t understand even though I ain’t never been engaged, married, or committed to a woman. In my world, money had always just been… money. It was hard-earned and well spent.
Rasheeda took it out of my wallet to do shit like reload Ky’s lunch account because her husband stopped doing it when they separated, and Red liked for me to pick out her hairstyles and pay for them.
There’s just something about a pretty ass woman sticking her hand out in front of me that makes me feel like I have to put something in it.
Slim gulps in a breath of air, glancing down as a tiny gust of wind kicks up a cloud of dirt. It swirls around in a circle next to her foot.
“Everything was his,” she says.
I glance at her boots that made me question my sanity and point at them. “Even those?”
“Yeah…even these.”
“How that work, mama?”
She snorts, twisting her foot.
“I got these the day after the draft when he got his signing bonus. The money hit just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “I’d never seen twelve million dollars sitting in a bank account, and it was the first and last time I saw how much money he had.”
We turn our heads at the same time and our eyes crash into each other’s.
That lost look swirls inside hers again.
I try to chase it because I wanna know if that ball player is at the other end of it.
I rack my brain trying to piece together the roster for the New York Knights and pick out the man that looked like he had the balls to break Slim, but I’m too stuck on the words coming out of her mouth to finish my mission.
“You know he always said I was his number one girl, but I never felt like it. When he got his first game check, his number two got a Benz and a monthly allowance, but I couldn’t even drive one of his three cars without begging him beforehand.
I asked him ‘why’ one day and you know how that went… ” She smiles.
I didn’t, but I wouldn’t dare interrupt her to tell her. It’s the first time I don’t have to trick her into telling me about the ugly shit she left behind in New York, and I ain’t about to ruin it.
“Terrica said he’d never buy me a car because it’d be like pushing his baby bird out of the nest to learn how to fly.
I’d have too much freedom. So I accepted that, and we shopped instead.
The SA at Saks must’ve seen a lot of us come through there—pretty girls with black eyes and black cards without our names on them, because she didn’t even bat an eyelash at the terrible way I smeared concealer over my eye.
It was the first black eye he ever gave me, and I took it in stride because I just knew he wouldn’t dare do it again—not to a girl like me—a girl with people… with…with family.”
My stomach fumbles and I hate it.
I’ve seen the life drain from a man’s eyes, but somehow Slim telling me about the first black eye her ex-fiancé gave her makes me wanna throw up.
“After that I got whisked away to New York to shop for penthouses while my face healed. I picked out furniture, paint colors, and kitchen appliances and never once realized he didn’t plan on putting my name on the deed.
He took his mom and his agent to the closing appointment for the apartment while I came back here to explain to Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny that I was moving in with him.
” She scoffs. “I was moving in with the man who punched me for asking why his side chick had so much freedom while I had none.”
The boiled eggs and yogurt I ate this morning gurgle in my stomach while she smiles at me with lost, empty eyes.
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”
“What you sorry for?”
“For vomiting my problems right at your feet. That’s not socially appropriate.”
I fold my lips under my teeth, doing my best to force my vomit down before blurting, “Not socially appropriate?”
Her eyes get big. “Yes.”
“Man, don’t you ever fix your mouth to apologize for being selfish, and fuck any stupid ass man you decide to love after this if he can’t understand that.”
Shut up, Pup.
This shit is for Kenny to explain to her—not you. Shit, if she was your baby she’d hate men.
Her lashes flutter and her eyes roam around like she’s chewing on my words.
I’m fucking up.
I’m getting too invested.
Shit, I ain’t even her type.
But I’m not Red’s or Rasheeda’s either. Red said I was the only man on her roster who didn’t read manga and watch anime, but she was obsessed with the way my dick felt in her mouth, and Rasheeda’s husband was a retired dope boy turned “entrepreneur.” I’m never their type.
Fuck.
“Any man I decide to love?” Slim repeats what I said, folding her arms. “You don’t think it’d be silly of me to fall in love with another man after this?”
Hell yeah.
Love made her too soft—too skittish—too agreeable. Love made her love unlovable men.
“I don’t judge.”
“Then what do you do?”
I shrug, looking up at the dark sky. “I guess be that nosy motherfucka that annoys you from time to time.”
She sputters out a laugh that eases the nausea in my stomach, and my phone slips against my sweaty hand. I turn it over where Cash App is still open and waiting for me to tap in the money I owe her for coming to me, but first I need to answer that question she couldn’t get out.
“So you wanna know if the money I keep throwing at you have conditions attached to it? Is that what you tryna ask me?”
She opens her mouth, then reaches up to rub the back of her neck before nodding. “Yeah.”
“Well, it depends…”
She shakes her head, taking a step back, and I reach out to tug her purse strap even though I wanna touch her.
I wanna scrape my fingers down her smooth face, wrap my hands around her cheeks, and tell her that if she’d tell me that ballplayer’s name I’d take care of him just because she comes to me when I ask for her.
“Let me finish,” I rasp.
Her eyebrows wrinkle and she tries to pull the strap out of my hand because I gave her too much space this time.
She can drop this purse and take off right down the street at any second and I wouldn’t be able to do shit about it.
She could slip right through my fingers, then I’d have to figure out another way to reel her back.
“Are you still that baby bird?” I rush out, twisting the leather strap around my hand so tight the blood stops flowing to it.
“Huh?”
“Terrica said he’d never give you a car or your own money because it’d be like pushing his baby bird out of the nest. Are you still that baby bird?”
She looks down at the leather twisted around my hand. “Yeah…but I’m not his.”
I nod, muttering out an “a’ight.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanna know.”
“Okay, and if I was still his pathetic baby bird, what would your conditions be before I took your money then?”
I shrug. “That you let me teach you how to take it and hide it because I don’t mind teaching baby birds how to fly.”