Chapter 18 #3
I just want him to hold me like I’m a baby again and agree with me when I tell him how fucked up it is that Uncle Kenny still talks about AJ like he’s his long-lost son.
I want him to dance with that hot neediness between my legs and tame it so I won’t dare do another crazy thing like this.
I want to see that cut on his stomach, and I want him to tell me how it got there.
“My uncle wants to wash his hands of you,” I blurt instead.
“Okay?”
“Okay?” I repeat. “He thinks you don’t want a boxing career.”
“Because I don’t. Now you know your uncle doesn’t like me and you should understand why he wouldn’t want you down here. Listen to him.”
My stomach drops from hearing that confession finally come out of his mouth, but my brain doesn’t get the memo that he’s shooing me away so I keep talking.
“He…he said you had a cut…on your stomach. Is it because of what you did for Tamryn?”
Another rumble of thunder shakes his front porch as he eyes my face, then my body. “We not doing this tonight.”
I swallow a choke.
He sighs, turning around and holding the door open with his elbow. “Come in and let me get my keys—”
“But it’s raining. You’re…you’re scared of the rain. Remember?” I blurt.
I wasn’t supposed to say that. I was supposed to belt out a sexy, mysterious quip that would make him change his mind, but that neediness makes me regress right back into the Lovie who doesn’t know what to do around men anymore.
The muscles in his back flex as he takes his elbow off the door and curls his hand around the knob. Sadly, I had wrangled Yesenia back to me in the same pathetic way.
“Hey, Yesenia,” I murmured after finally finding her black ringlets on the subway platform. “I…I was thinking about what you told me your therapist said about you…”
“Does that guy who answered your door know you’re scared of the rain? He’s probably never even been out in a storm at night by himself like us, huh?”
He snorts out a quiet laugh, turning back around and facing me. “Is my baby bird jealous I got company over?”
Yes.
A shallow breath escapes through my lips. “No.”
“‘Kay.” He smirks. “I know you ain’t get dropped off over here just to tell me your uncle gossips about me in front of you or remind me of some shit I told you the other night to make you feel better. Come inside so I can get my ke—”
“I had to come. How else was I supposed to tell you? I don’t have your number.”
Wait.
That wasn’t supposed to come out either.
He chuckles to himself, murmuring, “So you want my number? That’s what this about?”
“I just…I think…you know—”
“You just, you think, you know?” He lifts his cheek. “Nah. I don’t do all that hemming and hawing. You know what you doing by coming here. You know I’m the weak one out of the two of us. If you wanna keep up with me, then just say that at least.”
“Keep up with you?”
“Yeah…ain’t that what you want? Tryna make sure I ain’t playing daddy to no other baby birds?”
“Yeah,” I finally reply pathetically. “Yeah, Rich. I am.”
The words make my shoulders relax in a way that only happened after I had one of those lonely orgasms he induced.
He blinks slowly, then reaches out to thump my balled fist hanging at my side that I don’t even remember balling up. His touch makes the yearning between my legs heavier.
A flash of lightning zigzags across the dark sky, and the neighborhood dog clatters up the porch, whimpering. He twirls in a circle before sitting right next to me and staring up at us.
Rich rests his head on the doorframe, taking a swig of his beer while staring at me and the dog. Another Rich question is brewing right along with that storm that sent me running to him.
He swallows, eyeing my stilettos, then pointing toward them. “Do New York own them too?”
This time I didn’t fret before sticking my feet in the shoes because now I know Rich likes “too much.” He likes me to wear all the dainty, girly things that I like so his eyes can caress my legs then droop into low slits afterward.
“No, he doesn’t own them. They’re just really bad Rene Caovilla dupes I found at the flea market in college.”
“Rene who?”
I giggle. “Caovilla. I had to glue the damn rhinestones on myself.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” I shrug. “I still—”
“Make them look like they cost a bag because you just make everything look expensive.”
A wild flutter rages out of that ball in my stomach.
“And the skirt?” he asks.
“I was supposed to get rid of all of my skirts and dresses my sophomore year at Lockwood because one of my professors complimented a strapless mini dress I had on. He did it in front of New York. After that, he made me pull every single dress and skirt out of my closet, hold them up for his disapproval and then stuff them into trash bags to be put in the campus donation bin. I kept this one, though. I rolled it up and stuffed it down my sweatpants when he wasn’t looking.
” I sputter out another giggle at the ridiculousness of it all.
“I’d be damned if I threw out my first design from sophomore year. ”
“You made that?”
“Yes!” I yelp, making the dog’s ears perk. “It took me four trips to Value Village to find three different pairs of Levi’s with the perfect contrasting hues and three weekends to sew this skirt. Everybody on the quad loved it. Do you know how many parties I missed working on this damn thing?”
I glance at the raw hem I preserved over the years by handwashing it, and the little details I only know about, like the off-white stitching around the zipper I had to resew because Terrica ripped it trying to model it in my dorm room.
“It turned out so much better than my sketches,” I mutter, closing my eyes and inhaling the fresh scent of rain.
“And you mean to tell me New York ain’t bend you over and fuck you in it for doing such a good job like I would have?”
My eyes pop open.
Now that was a fucking Rich question.
A big, Rich question.
It was so big it made me shake my head and choke out a “no” while wetness pooled around my eyes and inside my panties.
“He hated it as soon as he laid eyes on it,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
“Mhmm. I know,” he hums, reaching out and swiping at the wetness underneath my eye before holding his hand out. “C’mere. Come get out this rain before you get sick.”
I place my hand in his and let him pull me through the front door and close it.
Stepping inside his house doesn’t feel as strange as it should. Oddly enough, it feels like I’m coming home after days of being away in some strange place.
“You breathe today?” he asks, tugging me through the foyer.
“Uh-huh,” I mutter, threading my fingers between his and taking a big whiff of that scent floating off him.
I stare at our fingers together, admiring the way my soft brown complexion complements his deep one. Dried paint scrapes against my skin, making me hold his hand tighter.
“Now if Kenny come over here clowning because you hanging down here, you gon’ take up for me, right?”
His words sound like sweet little country keepsakes I can stuff in my pocket and pull out later to replay over and over again. I swing our hands in a lazy back-and-forth motion while I patter behind him, staring at his massive back.
I can get used to this view.
“You heard me, Slim?” he drawls.
“Uh-huh.”
“You ain’t heard nothing I said. C’mere.” He tugs me in front of him, sitting his hand at the nape of my back and pushing me in the direction he wants me to go.
We glide through his living room where he slides my purse off my arm and sets it on the floor beside the couch. Afterward, we leave a trail of wet, dusty footprints across his vinyl floors, but he doesn’t seem to mind, even though his house is spotless like always.
He nudges me onto the back porch where the man who answered his front door leans against the deck’s wooden banister, patting the bottom of a pack of Newports.
“I say it’ll take us another two weeks, Pup,” he mutters out in a jumbled mess of words. “We can stagger the plywood and seal the other pieces on Tuesday when you ain’t so worn down.”
I glance at Rich, searching for the part of him that’s worn down, but his low eyes are lit with energy and he isn’t moving like a man who fought in a lion’s den just a few hours ago.
Whatever they’re building sits in the middle of the backyard next to a lawnmower. It’s just a big mess of wood scattered around. Some pieces are stained and others aren’t.
Rich nudges me toward the man. “She said you been calling her a thief, Smitty.”
“Ain’t that what she is? I saw her running up outta your house the other week, and I saw that broken jar. Seem like thievery activity to me.”
So this is Smitty?
I snort to myself.
I try to remember him clunking through my graduation party two years ago, but I can’t.
There were so many faces and voices in my memories from that day that I’ll probably never see or hear again.
A lot of them had heard about AJ and just wanted their chance to sneak a peek at him before he flew out to Vegas for the draft.
Most of them didn’t even know me—they knew Uncle Kenny.
“See how she smiling?” Smitty points at me. “I had a gal like her before. She stole everything I had but my drawls after we made love then smiled about it when I hunted her down.”
Rich belts out a loud laugh. “You sure she was real and it wasn’t that dope talking to you?”
“Nigga, I know the difference between real and fake pussy.”
“Man, don’t be talking like that in front of her.”
Smitty holds his hands up, crumpling the box of Newports.
I raise my eyebrows at Rich. “I’m grown. I’ve seen and heard worse.”
“Yeah, you grown until Kenny get down here and remind you that you ain’t.” His hand slides to the top of my ass as heavy raindrops splatter against the porch and onto the wood that’s still sitting in the grass.
I scoff, rolling my eyes. “He doesn’t control me.”