Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
LOVIE
“I don’t know if I can keep at this training thing,” Uncle Kenny garbles around a mouthful of spaghetti.
Aunt Faye rolls her eyes and collapses into her matching La-Z-Boy across from his. “What you talking about, Ken?”
“Your boy showed up at the gym yesterday with two black eyes and a busted head this time.”
I blow out a breath, hugging the loveseat’s ratty throw pillow closer to my chest just like Rich had told me to. My eyes stay on the football game playing on the living room TV even though they want to veer toward Uncle Kenny.
Aunt Faye scoffs. “Okay? What’s the problem? He’s a boxer. That’s what happens during sparring.”
“He ain’t no damn boxer.”
I hold in my own scoff, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth.
Rich really wasn’t a boxer.
Last weekend, his fist landed against Wendell’s fat face with the same deafening bang that rang out when he punched that tire in his backyard. I’ve never heard that sound come from any of the punches that Uncle Kenny’s boxers landed.
At first I buried the memory deep into the back of my mind where I put me and AJ’s fights, but it kept clawing its way out and begging me to remember the tiny bit of satisfaction I felt after Rich hit Wendell and the way he didn’t apologize for it afterward.
It floated in my head as much as the memories of our tongues gliding together.
Uncle Kenny huffs. “I’ll be damned if I let him spar with any of my guys. So I know he ain’t get no two black eyes from nobody at Worthing.”
I shake my head, but they don’t even notice.
When they drift into their world, I’m almost always an afterthought.
It’s not that they do it on purpose, it’s just that they had planned a life together before I came to be with them.
Terrica always thought it was a “biological thing.” She said it didn’t mean they didn’t love me.
They were just forced to be parents before they could even have their own kids.
They only had a year together before I came, and the older I get, the more I think there’s some truth to her theory.
“If he keeps messing around with my time, he ain’t gon’ ever be a boxer.
One thing I can say about those other boys that showed up on our porch is that they wanted it,” Uncle Kenny says, leaning forward with his bowl cupped in his hand.
“They were tired of walking into a lion’s den.
They wanted out. It was the first thing that came out of their mouths when I met them on that front porch. ”
He points toward the front of the house. “What the hell does Pup want? Huh?”
“He wants to be a boxer,” Aunt Faye replies.
Listening to them bicker is different now that I’m privy to things that I wasn’t privy to before. Now I know the “lion’s den” isn’t some metaphor for the streets. It’s Lucky’s. It’s interesting to witness the creative ways they tiptoe over their words.
Aunt Faye crosses her legs, staring at the TV. “Rich wants it. I told you he wanted it the day he came and sat in our kitchen.”
I glance toward our small kitchen.
Rich had actually been past our porch and walked into our house?
My Rich?
He wasn’t actually mine, but the words danced in my head at odd times, like when thunder clapped outside, when I saw a black pickup truck on the highway, or the first time I plunged my fingers inside myself after remembering the passionate way he sucked my tongue into his mouth.
I haven’t even touched myself in over a year, but I’m doing it for him now.
I gulp and try to picture him in our space, but I can’t. He’s like a myth—always existing in people’s mouths and minds but hardly ever around in the flesh.
Uncle Kenny snorts. “If you believe this dude wants to be a boxer, I got a bridge to sell ya’, Faye.”
“Don’t be condescending!”
He waves his hand and picks up his glass of whiskey from the end table next to his chair.
“Ain’t nobody being condescending. That dude don’t want nothing outside the Bottoms. Seems like you the one that can’t accept that.
Maybe it’s you that wants it for him since you brought him to this house, but he sure don’t. ”
She brought him here?
I side-eye her as she blows a breath out of her nose, glancing at me. “We’re just talking, Lovebug. Ain’t nobody arguing.”
“Yeah…I know,” I mutter.
The excited murmurs from the sportscasters on TV cut into the silence as Uncle Kenny shrugs.
“Ever since you brought him over here we been going at it. I told you I was done after Zaire got killed. I don’t wanna be involved in nothing with no goddamn Melo Barnes.
I got enough shit to worry about. I can’t be stressing over my gym and the safety of those boys.
” He looks over at me afterward like he went too far, but I pretend I didn’t hear it.
“Rich ain’t gonna bring problems to your gym,” Aunt Faye replies. “He’d never do that with all those boys there.”
I hold in a huff this time.
He absolutely wouldn’t just like he wouldn’t let Ky get caught up in fighting or let Tamryn stay in a house with Wendell.
“If it wasn’t safe for him to be there, you’d know that,” she adds.
“McCall just threw a perfect pass to Boyd, and Boyd dropped the ball again. What the heck is going on?!” the sportscaster on TV yells.
“If the Knights are gonna take this, they’re gonna need Boyd to make these plays in the final stretch.
Looks like his lackluster performance from last week is still lingering on. ”
“Dammit, AJ!” Uncle Kenny sucks his teeth.
This morning when I passed their bedroom door, I realized there’s been a secret alliance forming in the house since I didn’t get on a plane to head back to New York.
There were murmurs of a breakup and questions being asked about who caused it.
Was it me or AJ? And did this mysterious ending mean AJ had to disappear from Uncle Kenny’s life too?
“Just ‘cause they supposedly broke up don’t mean I have to stop supporting him, right? He said he’d get me tickets when they come down to play the Texans.
The Knights ain’t played the Texans in four years,” he said.
“I told Chico I’d bring him with me and…
and the boys really need that AC unit he promised me. ”
“We bickered when you offered to pay for Zaire’s funeral and when I warned you that EJ was getting desperate,” Aunt Faye mutters under her breath. “But I guess it doesn’t count ‘cause you brought them into the fold, right? When it’s somebody I know, you’re quick to toss them out like trash, huh?”
“Faye…” he warns. “My boy’s team is playing. I can’t talk to you about this and watch.”
See what I mean?
His boy?
“C’mon, AJ, get your head out your ass,” he grunts to himself.
A wet cough rattles the inside of my chest because Rich’s breezy instructions replay in my head at least once a day. I close my eyes, riding the wave of discomfort that flows through my body afterward.
When I open them, Uncle Kenny’s frowning at me over the rim of his glass. “You sick?”
“Allergies.”
“I got some Claritin in there.” He hooks his thumb toward the kitchen without asking anything else because “Rich questions” don’t exist in this house, just like Rich didn’t exist online when I went looking for him all because I needed to ask him how was I supposed to just forget him…
and his taste…and his voice? And what was going to happen between him and Melo because of what he did to Wendell?
You can’t just assault your boss’s brother without consequence.
But Rich isn’t a TikToker or an Instagrammer, and I couldn’t find any trace of his face on Facebook after logging into my decrepit account. There were only so many variations of “Rich Lovelace” and pretend nicknames I could type in before I fell asleep with “Rich Love” in the search.
He was gone…again.
He carried me through Beatrice’s side gate, drove the ten blocks back to Chantilly with his hand on my thigh and dropped me off right on our doorstep an hour before Uncle Kenny and Aunt Faye made it home.
“Go take a bath and get in bed,” he murmured, raking his bloody fingers through my hair before I walked inside. “It’ll make you feel better.”
It didn’t. Climbing into an empty bed only made me feel worse. Especially when I was supposed to want AJ on those sleepless, empty nights, like Yesenia warned.
I didn’t want AJ, though.
I wanted hard.
I wanted rough fingertips digging into my ass, unmanicured nails scraping against my scalp, and calloused hands gliding across my stomach, and the person who had all of that was done with whatever we had.
It was in the hard look in his eyes when he told me not to come looking for him anymore.
So I agreed I wouldn’t do it, but didn’t he know I said things to him I didn’t mean sometimes?
“Are you done with this, Ken?” Aunt Faye asks, shaking her crossed leg and gesturing toward the TV. “Because I think we need to talk without the background noise.”
“There’s still six minutes left in the game.”
“And you got six seconds to cut it off.”
A Pizza Hut commercial flashes onto the screen right as I start on my second deep breath.
“All I wanted was to watch the game today.”
“Right…while casually telling me you wanna give up on Rich.”
“Look, you said I could still watch AJ. So let me.” He points toward the TV while cutting his eyes at me. “And Rich ain’t giving me anything to work with, anyway. He’s combative…and…and truthfully, I think he’s just like his daddy.”
Aunt Faye sits forward, tossing her glasses on top of her head. “Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘I think he’s just like his daddy.’ They like that street shit. They don’t wanna learn no skills.”
“You didn’t even know Senior like that! Just because y’all met once and got a few friends in common doesn’t mean anything.”
I squint at her lips as she hurls the words out. I can’t even look at her the same after hearing Senior belt out that soft nickname—Faye-baby.