Chapter 22
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
LOVIE
Rich Lovelace saw another part of me he wasn’t supposed to see, and he still won’t look at me any differently. I never even told AJ the truth about how Mama and Tony died…but Rich knows.
He grips his steering wheel and stares straight ahead while the city’s skyline glitters behind his head.
Sparkling lights dance from the skyscrapers and decorate the sky as his truck glides across the layer of wetness that blankets the streets.
We’re supposed to be driving to Chantilly, but we’re taking the long way, and I don’t even care.
The evening rain came and went, and the temperature settled into a nice, breezy seventy-five degrees, just like my Uber driver said it would, but I’m not even experiencing it in my denim mini.
I glance at Rich’s Nike sweats I rolled down to fit my waist and his matching slides that swallowed my feet. When I complained about the bottom of his sweats dragging against the wet grass on our walk to his truck, he picked me up with ease and carried me the rest of the way.
I’ve successfully stayed with him long enough to catch the slow jams playing on Majic After Dark, and if it were up to me, I’d stay longer, but I’m not supposed to be here on a Sunday, anyway.
“I gotta get you home so you can get some sleep,” Rich had muttered, running away from my wet mouth on his back porch after our confessions settled in the comfortable silence between us.
He drags the back of his hand over his heavy eyes.
He hasn’t slept, eaten anything (besides me), or done anything for himself since I’ve been with him.
He didn’t even have a post-fight ritual he followed.
AJ had meltdowns if I didn’t follow his post-game ritual to a T.
I had to make sure his chef cooked a carb-less dinner, make sure we had passionless sex, and he needed at least six hours of undisturbed sleep if he took a loss.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
Rich glances at me. “What you talking about?”
“For interrupting your night. I know you don’t like to be bothered on Sundays after…you know.”
His head lolls to the side. “Who said that?”
“Aunt Faye said it first…then Beatrice double downed on it in her kitchen. She said she wouldn’t dare bother you today.” I look down at my lap, rolling my eyes.
“And you believed B?”
I shrug. “She’s known you a lot longer than I have.”
“We talking about the same Beatrice? The Beatrice that live at the end of my street? The Beatrice that’s dared to bother me plenty of Sundays.
The Beatrice that ain’t told me ‘happy birthday’ but have my birthday cake still sitting in her refrigerator?
” He snorts out a laugh that’s so contagious I want to catch it. “That Beatrice? Man…”
“She never even told you ‘happy birthday?’”
He shrugs, waving his hand. “Not every woman is as tender as you are, baby.”
A flutter escapes from that clusterfuck in my stomach and immediately gets swallowed by a sharp burn.
“You beat up her ex or whatever he is, you fuck her, you’re damn near remodeling her house…
and you mean to tell me she didn’t take two seconds to call and tell you ‘happy belated birthday’ after all the dust settled?
Did she at least thank you for what you did?
You could’ve—no, you already got in trouble for that. ”
He chuckles, looking back at the road.
I don’t like this heat.
It makes my neck hot and my mind race with irrational thoughts that Rich probably wouldn’t like.
I scoff, rolling my eyes. “You and your selfish friends with benefits. You don’t ever get sick of them?”
Another loud laugh bursts from his mouth. “It ain’t nothing to be jealous of. You know that, right?”
“I’m not jealous.” I cross my arms, staring out the passenger window.
He snorts, reaching over and tugging my arms apart, then threading his fingers through mine. “You wanna know what I do on Sundays after I win your Honey Bun money?”
I nod.
“You really wanna know?”
“Don’t annoy me right now and don’t tell me anything silly.”
He laughs, squeezing my fingers. “I roll a blunt, eat my dinner while I can still feel my face, and I just found out that Arnez got me paying for a Netflix account every month so I watch Ozark until I can’t sit still.”
My stomach drops. “That seems… a little lonely.”
He shrugs. “After I watch a couple episodes, I take a drive to see the only other person that knows what I do on Sunday nights besides you.”
I turn away from the window and catch his eyes as he eases to a stop at the red light on Bayou Bend. “Who’s the other person?”
“Nobody you need to be jealous of.”
He unravels his fingers from mine and looks up at the red light.
Maybe I am jealous?
I think I forgot how dizzying the feeling is.
The last time I was jealous was when WAG Watch leaked the picture of AJ’s side chick’s positive pregnancy test. AJ didn’t even quell any of my jealousy afterward, though.
He just scolded me for caring that he gave another woman something that should’ve been reserved for me.
After that, I learned how to hide my jealousy so well that it only bubbled to the surface but never leaked out.
Now, it’s pouring out, and Rich Lovelace knows another damn embarrassing thing about me: I’m a jealous woman.
I chuckle under my breath as a plane flies over the downtown skyline, flashing its lights into the dark sky. My stomach jolts as if I’m on it, heading to a new place I’ve never been.
“What you over there laughing at?” Rich asks, stifling a yawn.
“You want to know something?”
“Mhmm…” he hums back. “Tell me, mama.”
“You’re boring—like insanely boring…and if you ever tell anybody else how boring you actually are, I’ll have a problem with that. You know that, right?” I laugh harder.
He shakes his head, laughing. “Nobody cares enough to even figure that out about me. I told you not everybody is as tender…or jealous over me like you are—not even Rasheeda.”
“I guess I’m really not so tough after all, huh? I can’t be tough with all these tender and jealous feelings swirling inside me.”
“You can have feelings and still be tough. Sometimes we need both ends of the spectrum to balance us out. We can’t be all good and all bad, or all hard and all soft. The balance makes us tougher. And I ain’t pouring—”
“Sugar over shit. I know.” I smile. “So you think there are some good in men, then?”
“Yeah,” he replies with a sigh. “But it don’t change the fact that we all still stupid—still too angry, still have too much power, and still want too much control.”
For the first time in my life, I think I understand Rich’s strange ideology about men, but there’s a problem. He’s the exception to that ideology, but he doesn’t want to be.
I giggle. “You’re such a misandrist.”
He reaches over, squeezing my cheeks. “And you such a nerd. I hope your kids are just as nerdy and jealous over their daddy as you are.”
Another pesky feeling sneaks from that clusterfuck in my stomach and makes me shift in my seat.
I can’t put my finger on this one, but it’s heavy even though I know he’s not talking about fathering my phantom babies.
He’s talking about some strange future man who’s supposed to come sweep me off my feet and love me more than I love him.
Just as the light turns green, that familiar face Aunt Faye waves at and slips money to every time she sees her, stumbles into the street. Her blonde wig sits on top of her head in a sad, wet, crooked heap. She’s less zombie-like tonight, and that makes me feel better.
I push my face against the window to get a better look at her before we drive off. Our eyes meet just like they did when I was in the back of Christophe’s Uber. She waves, ignoring the crosswalk and ambling toward Rich’s truck with her red Solo Cup dangling from her hand.
I reach down into my purse that’s on the floor between my legs and as soon as I curl my hand around one of Rich’s crisp hundred-dollar bills, he flicks his blinking light on, turning his wheel to make a left.
“Wait,” I blurt. “Don’t le—”
He lays on his horn just as a sporty BMW speeds toward her.
“What the fuck?” he belts.
I brace myself against the dashboard while the BMW’s tires let out a piercing screech. The car jerks to a stop as soon as she lifts her arms to cover her frail body.
Rich shoves his truck’s gearshift into park and slams his hand on the driver’s side door, rolling my window down at the same time the BMW’s driver’s side window rolls down.
A young boy pushes his hood-covered head out and his big, red eyes dance across my face then dart behind me toward Rich.
He holds his arms up with his phone curled in his hand like he’s ready to be frisked while a TikTok plays in a mindless loop. The annoying music from the video blasts through his speakers and fills the awkward silence between us.
“My fault, Pup!” he yells over the music. “I…I was lookin down at my phone and when I looked up, she was right there. I swear to God I wouldn’t do no crazy shit like that, man.”
He pushes the car into park, keeping one arm hanging out of the window. I swing my head between him, a hard-eyed Rich, and the lady as she hobbles over to the driver’s side of Rich’s truck with her chapped lips set in a frown.
The boy gets out, and two more cars glide up to the intersection, laying on their horns as they swerve to miss him walking toward us.
“You know my daddy…Terrell,” he says with a wild look in his eyes. “He be down at Lucky’s. They call him Big T.”
He approaches my open window, and my palms grow misty at the harsh way his chest rises and falls. It’s the same way Wendell’s chest moved when I watched from behind Beatrice’s screen door while he talked to Rich.
“Don’t you ever walk up on her like that. I don’t give a fuck who your daddy is,” Rich’s icy voice booms from behind me.
The boy stops in his tracks. “My bad…I’m…I’m just nervous.”
“Rich…” I hiss under my breath. “He’s scared—”
“Be quiet.” He reaches over, tugging my arm. “Come here.”