Juliet

Chapter 21

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

RICH

I rake my fingers through Slim’s soft hair and rock her in the chair on my back porch. The humidity makes her moist curls glide between my fingers as rain patters against the steel cover that extends over the porch.

I huff under my breath.

Arnez just doesn’t understand pretty baby birds like I do.

If she did, she’d know I couldn’t just stay away from Slim.

Shit didn’t work like that with me and her.

Arnez wouldn’t get how satisfying it was to finally have Slim’s naked body spread out in front of me, or understand how that tingling from fourth grade came back and spread in the pit of my stomach after Slim said I owned her.

She for damn sure wouldn’t understand that Slim wanted me so bad that I smelt it on her.

It floated off her body when she stood in front of me on my porch, and I hear it every time she talks to me.

She wants all of me, but I don’t think she understands that’s the one thing I can’t give her.

I pull the strap of my wife beater back over her shoulder while her bare pussy sits on my stomach.

Her first design of sophomore year lives in my house now. She let me peel it off her then made me follow her to my bedroom where she folded it and stuck it in a drawer next to my T-shirts.

“Don’t wash it…” she said. “It’s for those days when I’m not here. I sprayed my perfume on it before I left the house.”

Yeah…Arnez just wouldn’t get it.

I chuckle to myself, watching the light rain fall across my backyard.

Slim presses her ear over my heart and sighs. “Rich?”

“Yeah, Slim?”

“Can I tell you something?” she whispers.

“You can tell me anything. I don’t judge, remember?”

Her cheek lifts against my chest.

“Go ‘head. I’m listening…” I murmur.

Crickets chirp from the grass, and sirens wail in the distance while I hold my breath, waiting for her soft voice.

“When I first brought AJ over to meet Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny, Uncle Kenny said AJ reminded him of my dad, Tony.”

“Am I supposed to just listen or give you my stupid opinion on what you telling me?”

“I want both.”

I drag my finger against her tiny ear, tracing the diamond studs in her lobes. “‘Kay. I can do that. Keep going.”

“As soon as we walked through the front door, he said, ‘Damn, he’s got the same eyes as Tony.’ He was so excited that I kept looking over at Aunt Faye to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.

Him and AJ talked for hours—mostly about football and how AJ was brought up just like Tony was.

They both came from good families. Their mamas stayed at home and their daddies worked themselves to the bone to provide… ”

She takes a deep swallow and pushes her head deeper into my chest like she wants to crawl inside of me.

Afterward, she swipes her nose and lips against my skin. “Talk. I want to hear what you think, stupid man.”

I smile as a crack of lightning rips through the night sky. “You know, I don’t believe in seeing the good in men, but you got to see a lil’ part of your daddy in the man you were falling in love with even though he didn’t turn out to be so good. That was comforting, right?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She puckers her lips, kissing my chest and whispering, “Tony killed Mama.”

The inside of my stomach rumbles.

“And then he killed himself.”

For the second time in my life, I wanna throw up after Slim tells me about another stupid ass man that hurt her.

I scrape my fingers against her scalp, tugging her tangled curls. “Slim…”

“He said he was gonna do it every time she pissed him off, and he made good on his word. He’d punch her in the face right in front of me and say it.

” She looks up at me with her chin resting on my chest. “What do you think about that? Huh? What do you think about me falling in love with a man just like Tony Sinclair?”

Her red eyes pierce my face and her mouth hangs open while I try not to throw up the six-pack of beer me and Smitty downed before she came.

I curl my arm underneath her ass, pulling her closer and pressing my lips against her forehead. “We don’t have to talk about—”

“No, tell me. I want to hear it. I want to hear what you have to say about it. You’re my friend, right? Friends tell each other the truth.”

Her glassy eyes catch mine. “Are you the type of friend that Terrica was? She thought I was some dumb chick just like Mama was because we both fell for a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And Aunt Faye’s gonna think that too, because how dare I put her through the same shit Mama put her through? Do you think I’m dumb too?”

“Nah. I…I don’t think that at all.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?” She tilts her head. “Like you’re gonna throw up?”

“Hush. Ain’t nobody looking at you no type of way.”

“You are…” Her voice cracks. “Just tell me you think I’m dumb for falling for the same type of man that she did.”

“Shhh. I don’t think that.”

Her eyes widen. “Then what the fuck do you think?”

I wrap her head in my hands and pull her closer, pressing my lips against the tiny scar that slices through her eyebrow.

What I think is that if Slim wasn’t my baby bird, I’d tell her how I’d kill Kenny, and if Tony Sinclair hadn’t offed himself, I would have killed him too, but I already said that word she hated out loud one too many times. I have to be tactful with her…or empathetic, like she says.

“Tell me what you think,” she murmurs.

I push her head back onto my chest and drop mine against the house, gulping in a mouthful of air.

“Oh, baby, you really shouldn’t care what a dumb man like me thinks…

but I like to hear you talk about the first time you fell in love, even if it was with the wrong man.

I like to hear you talk about how you lived through something as hard as your daddy taking away your mama and how you’re still living and still learning even after experiencing some of the same horrible shit she did.

I see you and I’m listening like I always do. Keep talkin.”

I swallow the bile sitting in my throat while she lets out a ragged breath.

“Me and Mama tried to hide in the hallway bathroom like we always did. Mama had one of those old, heavy armoires that she got from Grandma. She’d push it in front of the door and tell me to ‘hush’ while he tried to ram his body through it to get to her.

One day it was just too heavy for her to push, or maybe she was too exhausted from fighting. ”

She shuffles against my chest and her breathing picks up.

“She didn’t even scream when he crashed through the door and pointed his gun at her.

She just flung her body on top of mine as if he cared enough about me to take me with them or something.

” She chuckles, staring out into my dark backyard with a complacent look on her face.

“I ran three streets over to a neighbor’s house in the rain with Mama’s brains all over me.

I remember I knocked on the front door and when our neighbor answered her face turned so pale I thought she had died too.

She called the cops, and they came with their pale faces and looks of pity.

It was the first time I ever saw a cop up close.

One of them carried me around while she questioned our neighbors about Tony and Mama and their perfect relationship.

Her name was Detective Soto and…and she hugged me to her chest when I told her what I saw him do to my mama.

She was the first person to hug me that night.

Mama didn’t even get to because she was too busy arguing with Tony about a fuckin man he thought she was looking at while we shopped in Target. ”

I’ve never wanted to crawl into somebody’s head before, but here I am, trying to figure out how I can break into Slim’s brain and erase all the bad memories she keeps reliving.

“One time, I asked Aunt Faye if Tony even loved me because I can’t remember his touch or his smell.

She said not to worry. She said the memories would come back, but that was fifteen years ago and I still can’t even tell you what he smelled like, but…

but I know your smell, Rich. It literally lives in me.

It’s not your cologne or…or body wash. It’s in your skin. But wha…what does that mean?”

My heart stutters in the same rhythm of her words. “What does what mean?”

“What does it mean if I can’t remember shit about Tony Sinclair’s smell, but I can remember everything about Rich Lovelace’s? I can be blindfolded in a room full of men and still find you, and fifteen years from now, I know it’ll still be the same.”

I think Slim might be the epitome of all those pussy problems Senior says I have—the one he says I should stay far away from if I ever come across it.

She looks up with her nostrils flared. “I…I can’t even call that man ‘Dad’ because it doesn’t feel natural. Tell me what all of this means.”

I open my mouth and choke on my words, and a loud sob jolts out of her. It rings through the night air as her shoulders shake and tears fall down her cheeks.

“Shhh…” I mutter, pulling her body as far into mine as it’ll go. “Hush.”

“Tell me!” she sobs. “And don’t you pour sugar over shit either.”

I run my nose along her face and press my lips against the shell of her ear while my heart stutters against my chest. Then the words topple out of my mouth in a sloppy free fall before I can stop them.

“It just means that you were born for me. It took some time for us to find each other, that’s all, baby,” I murmur, rocking her. “But you were never his …or…or Kenny’s to take care of. You were always mine to take care of—just mine. That’s all it means.”

Another ragged breath shakes her body, and she claws at my chest to get closer to me even though we can’t get any closer. She shuffles around, turning in my arms and staring up at the night sky as another crackle of thunder shakes the porch.

I swipe my finger across that tiny scar again, trying to absorb all the pain woven into its dips and curves.

Arnez just really didn’t fuckin get it.

She didn’t know how important it was to cherish these moments because they weren’t forever. They were all fickle—here today and gone tomorrow, just like Beatrice said Honey had been.

Slim breathes out, swiping at her face while the rain falls harder. “So how’d you know?”

“What you talking about?” I whisper, stooping down and pressing my lips against her ear. “How’d I know what?”

“How’d you know what AJ did to me? How’d you see through me like that?”

“I just…knew.”

“I told you I don’t want sugar over shit.”

My heart drums in that stuttering rhythm.

I swipe the tears from her cheeks and grab her head, turning it to the side. She lets me pull her bottom lip into my mouth and suckle on it, then lets me trace my tongue across her soft lips because somewhere along the way I fucked up. Now, she hates every stupid ass man—except for me.

“Tell me…” she mutters around my mouth. “Tell me how you saw through me. I’m telling you what I want and you’re supposed to give it to me.”

I leave a trail of kisses from her lips to her ear.

“Because you and Arnez are kind of the same,” I whisper.

“Oh yeah? How?”

“Tough, but soft at the same time. Senior used to call her his Tootsie Pop—hard on the outside but soft on the inside. Now, if you ever meet her, don’t tell her I told you this.”

She giggles, sniffling. “Why not?”

“‘Cause she don’t think she have any soft in her, but I guess it makes sense. Growing up in Senior’s house, you don’t have a choice but to be hard, and if you ain’t, you pretend to be.”

“Right, because he throws sweet puppies out in the rain.” She pulls my head into her neck, stroking her fingers against my ear while I chuckle. “Keep going. I want to hear more about Arnez.”

“Y’all both have smart mouths…and see too much good in stupid men.”

She laughs, swiping at her eyes.

“You give them chances they don’t deserve, give them special things you should protect…” I sneak my hand under the loose wife beater, placing it over her heart. “Like this.”

It beats against my hand wildly.

“Arnez had an AJ too. His name was Jamari.”

It’s the first time I’ve said Jamari’s name out loud since that first and last fight we had in my backyard, but saying it doesn’t make me feel any type of way.

It’s just another word shooting out of my mouth and into the night air.

It’ll tickle Slim’s ears for a second, then she’ll forget all about it like she’s supposed to.

I curl my arm under her legs, scooping her up and holding her like the baby I’m always telling her she is.

“Was he a wolf in sheep’s clothing, too?” she asks.

“Nah. He wasn’t even a wolf. He was really just a boy tryna be a man, and lil’ boys can’t take care of babies. You know that, right?”

She lets out a soft hum, staring up at me like I’m the end for her, and there’s a small part of me that hates it.

“So what happened? Did she leave him?”

I can tell her the truth about Arnez and all the lies she told me and Senior to protect a boy that still haunts us, but all that comes out is a soft choke from the back of my throat.

I press my mouth to her forehead with a grim smile.

“He left her. Me and him talked and decided that it was best for him to go back to where he came from. So they broke up, and he went to be with his grandma and his mama in Dallas. It was the best for everybody because of how crazy shit had gotten between them.”

“Do you think he’ll come back one day? Remember, you said that men like him don’t let women like us walk away?”

I stare up into the starless sky. “Yeah…I remember. They usually come back when you’re at your highest and they’re at their lowest. They’re selfish like that, you know?”