Chapter 23
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
RICH
According to Slim, there are rules in friendships.
“I know you’re new at this, but the first rule in friendships is to keep in touch.
” Her soft voice crackles through my truck’s speakers while I listen to the voice message she sent me for the third time.
“I’m not trying to share locations or anything like that.
I’m just…I…I’d like to hear from you. It’s been a couple of days.
I’m not sure if you’re not a texter or…or anything like that, but you can send voice messages if they’re more convenient. ”
Her message came through as soon as I pulled in front of Beatrice’s house and put my truck in park. She saved her name in my phone in a way that only we understand: Slim
I smile to myself.
It’s only been two days since I last saw her, but she was really telling the truth that night in my kitchen.
She really ain’t like Beatrice, Rasheeda, or Red—she’s clingy.
My Slim is so clingy…and jealous…and too sweet for her own good, and there’s no other men or kids occupying her time so all she can focus on is me.
I glance down at my phone and tap the blue “keep” that hangs underneath her message right as another one pops up. My thumb hovers over the play button while that familiar thump-thump rattles inside my chest.
I hold my breath and press play.
“Faye has me out getting last-minute stuff for Family Fun Day while she goes to the annex building to get the permit for the park. So I’m Ubering all over the city and I love it.
Do you know how bad I missed Whataburger?
I didn’t realize how much I did until we took your mama there the other night.
I’m gonna have it for breakfast and lunch because I can finally eat without feeling like I’m gonna die.
Oh! I saw your mama off Bayou Bend this morning.
I hope you don’t mind, but I bought her a nice mint green tunic dress from Wal-Mart.
Her top was stained.” She sighs. “Anyway…you just hit the plus sign on the left side of the text box and press ‘audio,’ and you can send me one of these too. You can tell me how your day is going…or what’s on your mind. Only if you want to. No pressure.”
The only women that ever asked me about my day were Faye and the ones I came across in random restaurants and stores.
If Rasheeda asked, it was only because it was a reflex—something she blurted out because she’d been asking folks that question all day at work.
She never stopped talking long enough to notice that I never had an answer, though.
I was always the last thing on a woman’s to-do list. I came after their husbands, kids, grocery shopping, and work.
I was their break from all that. I listened while they ranted about their long-ass days at jobs they hated and lives they made with men they settled down with because they felt like they had to.
So there was never any space to ask about me…
or my day. But Slim wanted to know it all.
Shit, she might as well have asked me to rip out my heart and stick it in her lil’ hand.
I gulp in the stale air inside my truck as another voice message pops up in our message thread.
I press play.
“Actually, screw that. That was too nice. This is a reciprocal conversation, remember? So…I…I want you to tell me how your day is going. Please? Okay. Bye.”
I laugh.
I laugh so hard that tears prickle the corner of my eyes and my stomach does this weird fluttering it never did before. The flutter chases after my galloping heart like it’s trying to wrangle it in, because Slim had my insides all fucked up.
“Fuck…” I grunt, following her instructions and pressing that plus sign I never bothered with before.
As soon as I hit “audio” like she said, the phone starts recording and my mouth grows dry. The timestamp climbs higher and higher while I stare at the red dots racing across the text box like a dumbass until the only thing that comes out is a throaty, “baby?”
I stab the stop button and squeeze my eyes shut.
I think I know why Slim does this now. It feels good to hide from the world for a minute, even if I’m alone.
My phone vibrates, and I open my eyes back, looking down.
Slim
I’m waiting.
I hurry and send the message full of dead air and one pussy-ass word even though I shouldn’t have, but I really don’t know how to wrangle impatient baby birds just like I don’t know how to tell them “no.”
Slim
Yes?
Slim
Tell me more. I’m just sitting in the back of this Uber waiting to hear how my reticent friend is doing.
I blink over at Faye’s Camry parked next to Arnez’s Altima, then up at DeRay cranking up his lawn mower behind Beatrice’s open gate swinging in the wind. Wendell’s busted Nikes and Polos spill out of a black garbage bag lying on the curb in front of the gate.
Tamryn pushes out of the front door with a Capri Sun hanging out of her mouth and her face in her phone.
“Pup said you can take all that shit on the curb when you done!” she hollers at DeRay, pulling the front door closed. “He said drop it off at Goodwill if you can’t fit none of it.”
I look back down, pressing the record button and clearing my throat to get rid of the rasp that coated my voice before.
“I’m…I’m at B’s, baby. I’m just making sure her yard gets cut and I…I wanted to get some more measurements for the ramp in the back and take care of something.” I cut my eyes back over at Faye’s Camry. “Where you at? Why Faye sent you to do that by yourself? You got money, right?”
I send the message and stare at it as it sits there, waiting for her to listen.
My eyes dart from my phone, to my truck’s radio, then to DeRay tossing a few sticks in a pile he started, then back to our message thread.
This is what motherfuckas did all day when they texted their gal?
I shake my head. “Fuck this.”
I can’t wait and play these silly voice message games, so I press her name and call her. It rings too many times before she finally answers with rustling and loud voices in the background.
“Hold on, Rich…” she rushes out. “I need fifty black Gildan shirts. This is forty…and six of them have stains.”
“They’re not stained,” a nasal monotone voice responds.
“Yes, they are—here and here. I mean, I’ll take them stained, but you need to take ten percent off the total.”
My stupid, galloping heart finally slows to a steady jog, and I drop my head against my headrest while I listen to her haggle back and forth over fifty black Gildan T-shirts. Shit, I don’t even know why the brand matters, but I know better than to interrupt her and ask.
“Well, if you can’t take off ten percent, then I need six new shirts.”
I smile at the way her soft voice never climbs high, even when it should. Her and the man go back and forth until they settle on fifty black Gildan shirts, six without stains, and a ten percent discount just because he liked her cargo pants and “funky heels.”
“Mr. Lovelace…” she sings. “Are you still there?”
“Mr. Lovelace?”
“I mean, I can always let my intrusive thoughts win and call you ‘Daddy’ like that one weird chick does, but I have some decorum despite my raging daddy issues.”
I chuckle.
If only she knew that “Mr. Lovelace” sounds even better than “Daddy.” Shit, anything that comes out of her mouth sounds superior to the stuff that comes out of any other woman’s—even her moans.
“I’m okay. You know that, right?”
I snort. “What you talkin about?”
“That’s why you called, right? To make sure I wasn’t being kidnapped by some strange Uber driver and to make sure I have enough money to pay for my Ubers, food, your mom’s stuff, and all of this junk Faye has me picking up…
.” She laughs. “Yes, Mr. Lovelace. I’m fine.
I’ve got it covered. I heard the panic in your voice in that message you sent. ”
“That’s why you wanted me to send them voice messages?”
She sputters out a laugh. “Yeah. I wanted to deceptively capture your voice on audio so I can analyze it later.”
“You know Myra installed a camera in Steve’s glasses to stalk him one time, right?”
“Oh my God. Your obsession with that chick needs to be studied.” She laughs harder. “But I guess now that I’ve sneakily gotten you on the phone, you can finally tell me how your day is going—not about all the things you’re doing for another woman you’re fucking.”
The last part of her sentence reeks of disgust. It oozed off of “fucking” and makes my eyes shoot down to my lap.
My dick is hard.
The crazy thing about it is that I can’t even remember when the blood started rushing to it. It could’ve started while I listened to her first voice message, or it could’ve been when her voice veered off and “Mr. Lovelace” dripped out of her mouth in a hot, syrupy tone.
“You think I’m gon’ go in here and fuck B?” I ask, staring down at my dick pushing against my jeans.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re gonna go do after you finish checking the lawn and taking measurements and whatever else you plan on doing over there. One thing I’ve learned after all of this…this…shit I’ve been through is that I can’t control a man.”
“You sure about that?”
“Oh, I’m sure. I’ve got the scar on my face to prove it.” She laughs sarcastically.
My stomach drops and I swallow the taste of that scar I pressed my lips against while we sat on my back porch. “Slim?”
She huffs. “What?”
“Do you belong to me?”
Static crackles over her hard breathing. “Don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to. It’s too early in the morning for that.”
“Answer me.”
“Hold on, Rich. Ma’am, can I get a grande iced chai tea latte with two pumps of vani—”
“Tell that lady to give you a minute.”
“Rich,” she hisses. “There’s a whole line of people behind me.”
“Fuck them.”
“Rich…seriously?”
“Yeah. I’m tryna listen to you right now.”
“Ma’am…I’ll be right back. I am so sorry.”
She mutters out a low “excuse me” as more static crackles over the phone.
“Okay, I’m away from the freaking barista. You happy?”