Chapter 19 #3
“Growing up, I ain’t understand too much about caring until Senior got this girlfriend that cared a lot…
about God, birthdays, and a boy that could never imagine himself as anything other than what everybody around here said he was.
Faye thinks she knows what’s best for me because she cares a lot.
She’s the closest thing I ever had to a real mama, and I don’t wanna fuck that up by telling her that she cares about me more than I care about myself sometimes.
Now no more questions about all this silly stuff that won’t matter six months from now when you all patched up and living your new life. ”
Finally connecting another obscure dot in his life still doesn’t settle my curiosity. It just makes another strange feeling sneak out of that clusterfuck in my stomach. This one is overwhelming and all-encompassing, and makes me want to run faster toward him.
He picks the glass of liquor back up, pushing it toward me. “Finish eating.”
I grab the glass and take another shot to drown every confession he fed me.
Four shots, four forkfuls of fish and one blunt later, Rich’s heavy red eyes stroke my side.
He’s so high that the red tinge coating his pupils looks painful, and I’m so tipsy that his Jack Daniel’s tastes like a French 75.
I think he can see me the clearest when he’s floating, just like I can see him the clearest when I’m almost drunk.
I see the little scabs along his arms and chest and the way his movements get stiffer and slower as the night wears on.
“How are you still moving right now?” I slur.
“‘Cause fighting is a lot like getting drunk. You take hit after hit and shot after shot until the adrenaline makes you numb.” He swallows tipsily. “Then the next day you wake up and feel it all—the bruises, the cuts, the breaks. It’s like a fight hangover. You all irritated, weak, and sore with no appetite.”
“Ahh. So that’s why you don’t eat anything on Mondays?”
“Is my nosy baby bird tryna learn me?” He chuckles, sparking the lighter and holding the flame to his second blunt.
“Yup, and apparently you have to be under the influence for me to do it.”
He laughs harder, tossing the lighter onto the island.
“Your jaw looks better.”
“It feels better.” He stares at me through hooded lids, letting his eyes caress my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I feel better, but you don’t.” He lazily points to my throbbing side. “That still hurt so bad that you can’t eat? You been home for a few weeks now. The pain should’ve at least eased up enough for you to eat.”
I straighten my back, shrugging. “I figured I just needed to be patient and the pain would ease up eventually.”
He reaches out, tugging the bottom of my shirt. “Lemme take another look.”
I gulp down the tangy mixture of blackened fish and Jack Daniel’s that sits at the base of my throat. He doesn’t even slow-walk me into exposing my body to him this time, and I’m okay with it. We don’t need slow walking anymore.
He pushes his blunt toward me. “Hold that.”
I grab it and a gentle sigh escapes my lips as he grips the bottom of my baby tee, pulling it over my head without disturbing the glass of liquor and blunt in my hand. He drops the shirt behind me on the island.
This time I remembered my Wolford bra and its matching lace panties, but I don’t think Rich cares about bedroom optics. He had stared at my Target bra back at Worthing as if it were made from the finest silk instead of nylon and spandex.
I glance at my chest, waiting for him to realize the easy way he makes my nipples pucker against the lace, but he pushes his face toward that stupid bruise instead.
“You said it was just bruised,” I murmur. “What’s the problem?”
“Ain’t no problem.”
I roll my eyes toward the ceiling, taking another sip out of his cup as he hovers over my ribs without touching them.
I glance at the meager piece of fish and two spears of asparagus that’s left on our plate. “You still haven’t eaten. We’re supposed to be eating together, remember?”
“Mhmm,” he hums, tilting his head with his eyebrows furrowed. “I’m gon’ eat. Don’t worry.”
He’s going to touch it again. It’s in the way his eyes volley from the bruise to me like he’s waiting for the moment I’m drunk enough to let him do it.
He lifts his hand and I lift mine too, pushing it between him and my abdomen as the liquor gurgles up my throat.
“You still feel it, even after drinking the liquor, huh?” he whispers with his hand hovering in the air.
I nod slowly.
I felt it with each chew and subsequent swallow. I felt it so much that I was starting to question his initial assessment of it just like he was, but I wouldn’t dare question him out loud.
“Why you ain’t say nothing?” he asks.
“I didn’t want to insinuate that you were wrong.”
He shakes his head, then nods toward my hand where the blunt dangles between my fingers. “Take a hit.”
I furrow my eyebrows at the blunt. “Of this?”
“Yeah…just a lil’ one, though. Nothing crazy. It ain’t gonna hurt you.”
I sit the glass down and lift the blunt, staring at the end he’d been wrapping his lips around while I ate. It looks nothing like the pathetic cigarillo Terrica and Meechie rolled the first and only time I smoked with them at Barnes-Blank Park.
I slowly bring it to my lips, but he snatches it from between my fingers before they can touch it and takes a long pull from it. His nostrils flare as he holds in the cloud of smoke and crooks his finger at me.
Moisture builds in my mouth as I follow that finger I know all too well now.
The Jack Daniel’s had made my brain a fuzzy mess of obsessive thoughts about him, his body, and his moist lips, so I lean forward, hovering above them, and he blows out a thick white cloud of smoke that I inhale with ease.
It’s less harsh than the hits I took that time in the park and so smooth that I want to chase after it to swallow every morsel of himself he blew my way.
Maybe smoking isn’t such a disgusting habit after all?
My shoulders droop.
God, I miss his taste.
I lean in and try to press my lips against his, but he wraps his hand around my throat, gently pushing me back because he’s so damn strict.
I whine.
“What’s wrong?” he murmurs.
“You said you weren’t strict.”
“With Rasheeda, baby. I said I wasn’t strict with Rasheeda. But with you…” His thumb grazes over my Adam’s apple as he shakes his head. “I gotta be or you’ll eat me alive. I told you I’m scared of you.”
I’m so wet now that I think I can feel every dribble leak into the seat of my panties, but I also inhaled the biggest cloud of smoke I’ve ever had in my life.
The light, hazy feeling attacks my limbs and makes me curl my hand around his wrist as he holds me back from him.
Next, it attacks my legs and makes them wrap around his tapered waist.
“Slim…” he warns, uncurling them from his waist with his other hand.
“Rich…”
The shitty weed Meechie stole from her brother had only left me with a headache and a bad cough, but Rich’s makes me beg for him while my body floats somewhere above my head.
“Lemme touch it so I can take care of it,” he utters.
“I can take care of it myself.”
“That’s the problem.” He peels my fingers from his wrist, then stoops down to eye that ugly bruise that won’t go away.
“How is that the problem?” I run my foot across his side.
“Too many stupid ass men around you got you thinking you supposed to be taking care of yourself.” He gives my climbing leg a soft thwack until it falls back against the island. “Stop.”
“Rich,” I whine.
I don’t even recognize the dulcet tone coating his name as it flows out of my mouth. I sound like a woman who just learned what it felt like to be turned on by a man.
“I said, ‘Stop.’” He reaches out without warning, pushing his fingers into my side.
I’m floating so high that I think I’m watching him touch me from his kitchen ceiling. The sharp pain that stabs my side every time I swallow floats up and sits right next to me. Now I don’t feel anything except the things I want to feel, like his warm ear pressed into my side.
“Take a deep breath,” he says.
I suck in while my fingers find their way to his ear, dancing across the cartilage.
He gently peels my fingers off it. “Let it out.”
I blow it out, rolling my eyes toward the ceiling, and my fingers easily find their way back to his ear again. They glide across it until he peels each finger off one by one.
I sit back on my elbows, staring down at him.
“So, do I need another doctor, Dr. Lovelace?” I garble out, thrusting my abdomen closer to his face until he pushes it down.
“No. You just need to be good, ‘cause you being bad right now—like fucking with my head type bad.”
I smile, dropping my head back and basking in the way his calloused fingers glide across my skin.
I don’t know what he blew into my mouth, but it makes his kitchen feel like Es Cavallet, where I snuck away from AJ, got drunk, and skinny-dipped for the first time with the locals.
I feel the warm air tickling my bare skin and hear the waves crashing onto the shore.
“What you doing?” Rich asks, interrupting the deep whooshing of Es Cavallet’s water playing in my head.
I glance down and find him staring at my hand hanging from my left bra strap. My right strap dangles from my shoulder as my naked breast sits between us. I don’t even remember pulling it out, just like I don’t remember plunging my naked body into Es Cavallet’s bright blue water.
“I’m being good. I’m just trying to give you another one of those gifts you like.” I drop my chin against my chest, staring at him stare at my nipple. “So, what’s my prognosis?”
“It’s not broken—just really fuckin bruised…” he mumbles, kneading my thigh and staring at my breast.
I eye the bruises that wrap around his eyes and reach out, running my finger along the taut skin. “Now that that’s settled, who did it? I told you who gave me my bruise, now you have to tell me who gave you yours.”