Chapter 18 #2
“Oh please! Everybody around here knew what kind of dude he was. He was a troublemaker—a lost cause. All those Lovelace men are. Rich’s hand was forced!
If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be interested in no damn boxing career.
He’s still out there doing the same ole’ stuff that got him in this mess.
I heard some more shit went down on Joliet last weekend and he was involved in it.
Then he shows up yesterday with a cut wide as all get out on his stomach. I saw it when he took his shirt off.”
Cut?
I know his stomach well, and there was no cut on it when I left him last Saturday.
“I know that cut!” Uncle Kenny yells. “I ain’t losing my life over this dude!”
I stop breathing.
They’re really fighting now. It feels just as suffocating as the day they argued after the funeral home called to ask Aunt Faye if we wanted Mama’s services held on the same day as Tony’s like his family requested.
Aunt Faye slams her hand down on the arm of her leather chair. “You’re saying a lot right now, Ken, and I think it’s best that you cool it. And turn this goddamn football off! We’re tired of watching it!”
A crack of thunder shakes the house as the camera pans across Highmark Stadium and both teams’ upcoming opponents flash across the screen.
“Next Sunday we’ve got the Bills taking on Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers in Pittsburgh. Knights are gonna take on Josiah Joseph and the Falcons in Atlanta. Stay tuned for more Sunday night football here in Buffalo.”
“Cute outfit.” My Uber driver, Marsha, eyes me in her rearview mirror. “Girls’ night out?”
“Yeah” flies out of my mouth in an icy tone that I don’t mean to use.
I clear my throat. “I mean, thanks. I made it myself.”
First, the two-tone denim mini skirt lived in my dorm in a drawer under my A&P manual, and when I graduated, I hid it in the very back of my closet behind my old prom dress while packing for New York.
And it was still there when I rifled through my closet after Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny went to bed.
“Niceee. It’s perfect for tonight. The low’s only supposed to be seventy-five after this rain blows over.” Marsha reaches her fleshy, pale hand out, turning up the Sabrina Carpenter song she’s been humming along to.
A crackle of thunder shakes her Prius and makes me glance out of the window as if I’ll find Aunt Faye’s Camry trailing behind us, because at my big age, I’m still a runner.
I still remember how many minutes it takes for Uncle Kenny to fall into a deep sleep, which floorboards creak the loudest in the hallway, and how much pressure to put on the back doorknob until it quietly clicks into place.
Marsha turns onto Joliet Street and the neighborhood dog bounces by, barking at her back tires.
She groans. “The strays over here are a serious problem.”
This whole thing was a stupid idea. Maybe the stupidest I had since I wandered down into the subway for a second time searching for the random Dominican girl I spilled coffee on two weeks before.
Back then I had the same longing pang in my chest as I walked around the subway platform looking for her black ringlets and old Coach bag all because she told me her corny blanquita therapist said her secret superpower was embracing fragile women like herself after she helped a neighbor whose boyfriend punched her during an argument.
Now I’m doing the same desperate thing with Rich—wandering around the neighborhood searching for him and that cut on his stomach even after he told me to stop doing it.
What’s even worse is that I’m doing it on a Sunday—the day Beatrice and Aunt Faye said they don’t bother him on.
“Alright…here ya’ go,” Marsha drawls with a sigh as her car rolls to a stop. “We made it through thunder, lightning, stray dogs, and a few fabulous sex workers trying to flag us down at the intersection. It’s this house, right?”
This was a really stupid idea.
But I’m too close to turn back.
I eye the worn-down house at the random address I typed into Uber to get me to Joliet Street, then sit forward in the back seat, squinting into the dark, wet street until I catch a glimpse of those metal folding chairs on Rich’s porch.
“Actually, it’s that one right there.” I point toward his house, that’s further down the street.
She nods and drives forward, stopping in front of Rich’s pristine, empty driveway.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I grab my purse, then push out of the car, slamming the back passenger door behind me.
On my trek to Rich’s porch I see the things I didn’t notice that second day I came to his house—all the things that should’ve clued me in that he was around—like the Tupperware container tucked on the side of the porch filled with kibble for the neighborhood dog, and the open side gate swinging back and forth in the wind.
A faint thump of bass shakes his wooden steps as I climb them and amble toward his front door.
I raise my hand and pound on it.
I only have to knock twice before it swings open, exposing a man with a weather-beaten brown face and chapped lips. He cocks his grey eyebrow up when I smile at him.
“Hi, is Ri—”
“Pup!” he hollers. “That thief out here!”
“Thief?” I mutter to myself, frowning. “Hey, I’m no—”
He stalks off before I can tell him he’s mistaken. I’ve never stolen anything in my life—not from Rich, or from anybody. I didn’t even steal from Citi Trends that time Terrica begged me to during her stupid shoplifting phase.
I push my hand out to stop the front door from closing in my face. Music floats from the back of the house while the man’s husky voice intertwines with Rich’s deep one that makes my fingers curl into my palm.
So he lives.
Tonight, there’s no Teddy Pendergrass haunting me or raunchy cuts that remind me of college playing. There’s just smooth rap booming from the back of the house as if both men had decided UGK would satisfy their aural cravings.
“You can start pulling them sealed pieces into the shed!” Rich yells from somewhere inside the house. “That rain about to come down!”
There’s no clusterfuck of emotions swirling inside me right now—just hot neediness that followed me all the way from Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny’s couch.
It’s the same neediness that suddenly appeared while me and Rich stood in the ring at Worthing.
It sits right at the apex of my thighs and dances outside my panties, taunting me.
Somehow it replaced that mucky feeling I was sure I couldn’t get rid of.
“Shit,” I huff to myself just as Rich rounds the corner of his foyer.
He has clothes on tonight, and that’s just as bad as him walking around half naked.
Who knew paint stained Dickies and a wife beater would make my middle throb?
One day I’ll have to tell Rasheeda that her “man” looks good half naked and clothed, or maybe today he’s Beatrice’s responsible chin-checking man who protects her house?
I can’t keep up with who he belongs to. I just know he really doesn’t belong to me no matter how many times I make myself cum to memories of his face and mouth.
I step back when he gets closer even though I’ve tried this trick before. Putting space between us doesn’t cure my curiosity for him. It just makes me blurt out embarrassing things like, “Who was that?”
Rich smirks, holding a beer bottle at his side and leaning against the doorframe.
He stares at me through those low bedroom eyes, biting down on his swollen bottom lip. A fresh gash sits above his left eyebrow with a skinny butterfly bandage plastered over it and those two black eyes Uncle Kenny raged about look like they’re healing.
“Hi, Slim. How you doing?” he drawls out in amusement.
I pinch my eyes shut, shaking my head. “Sorry, but that man called me a thief, and I am not a thief.”
His quiet chuckle kisses my ears. “Well, that’s what happens when you go digging in folks’ stuff without their permission.”
“I told you I was looking for—”
“A cup. Yeah, I know,” he murmurs.
“I…I really was.”
“Mhmm. You better be glad I ain’t tell him about that fork situation. You getting a reputation down here.”
My mouth tingles.
“Open your eyes,” he says.
I can’t.
“What I tell you about closing your eyes like that?”
I pinch them tighter until his rough finger brushes my eyelid and swipes across my brow.
I’ve been waiting for this touch, but it’s not even enough.
It’s just a little tease that makes me take a step forward and close some of the distance I put between us.
A blend of weed, gasoline, paint thinner, and oakmoss trickles up my nose.
Somehow the combination of scents smells more expensive than Baccarat Rouge and all the other bullshit cologne AJ wore.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, dropping his hand. “You ain’t supposed to be over here. You know better.”
I did.
Just like I knew how much that hardness in his voice made me plunge my fingers deep inside myself while I chased him from my lonely bed on three different nights last week because we aren’t strangers anymore. I know him.
I peel my eyes open and scour his torso. “I won’t tell anybody what I saw last weekend at Beatrice’s. You know that, right?”
He snorts, swiping at his nose. “How you get over here? Another Uber?”
“And Wendell hit you first. I saw him do i—”
“Stop.” He shakes his head. “You gon’ go get in my truck and I’m gonna take you back home.”
But nobody at home holds me like he does. Nobody there sees me like he does.
“But I don’t want to go back—”
“Nuh-uh. You got me with that shit last time. C’mon. Come get out this rain while I get my keys.”
A hard ball crawls up my throat. “But wait…”
He sighs. “What is it, Lovie?”
It’s raining and I’m chasing all those things I never knew I wanted—rough hands, veiny forearms, and a man who could give a shit about Paris Fashion Week, Chanel and French 75s.
Fuck.