Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
LOVIE
I hear Mama again.
Her raspy laugh curls around Rich’s voice in the message he sends me after I text him that I can’t get out of bed today.
“I ever tell you about the first time I lost a fight?” he asks between deep breaths as birds chirp in the background.
“I was sixteen. It was the second time I ever fought a grown man at Lucky’s.
The first time I fought down there, I won, and Arnez told me it was just dumb luck.
She said they had put me up against some ole’ tired nigga who’d lost more than he won all his life and that wouldn’t be the case every time. ”
I pull my heavy duvet over my head and bring the phone closer to my ear as the next message plays.
He laughs. “The dude’s name was Showtime. He had to have been at least ten years older than me. I remember bumping his fist before the match started and feeling the weight of it. Felt like I was pounding a brick.”
I try my best to paint a picture of Rich at sixteen, but all I see are his scared, russet-colored eyes that make me want him even more.
The next message plays.
“I never even touched his face during the fight. I think I got one body shot in before his fist hit the side of my head and knocked me out. Man, I felt that shit in my heart.” He sucks his teeth.
“A complete KO. I thought I was dead. Next thing I remember was waking up in the parking lot with Smitty flashing a light in my eyes, Senior asking me if I knew how many fingers he was holding up, and Arnez crying.”
He laughs hard as if he’s reminiscing about some silly schoolyard fight while I grimace.
“After that I ain’t wanna get out of bed for a minute.
All the folks that had bet on me because of what I did the Sunday before were assed out of rent money, light bill money, car note money.
I felt like shit. How could I show my face at Lucky’s knowing I’d let a motherfucka knock me out cold?
I even had the proof on the side of my head. ”
An unintentional smile covers my lips, and I glance down past my faded Target bra where my healing bruise sits in a swirl of brown-gray that blends into my skin.
“But you wanna know what I did after that, baby?” he asks.
I suck in a gasp as if he’s here, lying next to me, whispering that soft word in my mouth.
I try to pull the feeling of his lips to the forefront of my brain, but it’s hard.
I’m convinced they have to be experienced in the now.
There are too many little things my imagination can’t replicate, like the way his stitches feel against my tongue or the way his fingers curl around my throat when I get too carried away.
His last message plays as I scroll back to the others and save them for tonight when my loneliness gets the best of me and my fingers try to recreate his touch.
“I got up out of bed and ran back to Lucky’s,” he says. “Senior said the only way to face my fears was to run straight to the shit that scared me the most. So I did…and I’m still here, just like you’ll still be here. You a big dog, remember? Get up outta bed.”
I toss the duvet from over my head and sit up, scratching my tangled curls with my healed nails that look worse than they feel. The burnt orange color had mostly flaked off, leaving me with raggedy, unintentional orange French tips.
I push up from the bed, leaving my phone buried underneath my duvet and pulling on a sweater and Rich’s sweats I left on the floor.
I hear Uncle Kenny’s grunts from the backyard as I patter barefoot through the house and into the kitchen where I grab the full cup of coffee Aunt Faye forgot on the counter.
I look into the mug.
My wild curls stick up in the coffee’s black reflection as the steam tickles my nose. She didn’t even bother adding any sugar or cream to it.
I tighten my grip around the mug, walk toward the back door, and pull it open.
Uncle Kenny puffs out a breath, pounding his gloved fist into the punching bag dangling from the tree that sits between our yard and Old Man Hester’s. His white T-shirt clings to his body like a second skin because it’s one of those days where the leftover summer heat simmers.
I step outside and let the back door close on its own, but he doesn’t look up.
“Morning…” I call out, walking toward the steps and sitting down.
He whips his head toward the porch, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Girl, I thought you were gone with Faye.”
“I wasn’t feeling good.”
He throws a lazy punch at the bag. “You know it’s Tylenol in me and Faye’s room.”
“Yeah…I know. I don’t think I need Tylenol, though.”
“You need me to call Faye?”
“No, Uncle Kenny. You don’t need to call her.”
He swipes his gloved hand across his forehead and wrinkles his eyebrows. “Oh, well, did you need a few dollars or something?”
“I don’t need money.”
I think I was six the first and last time Uncle Kenny asked me a question about something that didn’t revolve around the mundane happenings in our house—like asking me to keep the hallway light off so the light bill wouldn’t go up, or asking me to knock on him and Aunt Faye’s bedroom door before I opened it.
I nod toward the tattered bag. “Everything okay at the gym?”
He pulls off a glove while I try to chip away at that “biological thing” that always floats between us.
“You know how it is with them boys—trouble just always seems to find them and then it finds me in return.”
“Yeah…I remember you used to let Zaire come over for dinner sometimes because you found out his daddy had put a lock on their refrigerator. He ate cauliflower for the first time at our house.” I snort, remembering the way he scrunched his face up after asking Aunt Faye what it was.
“I’m sure you can handle whatever trouble this new one is bringing. ”
He looks away, then pushes the bag with both hands to steady it. “Hmph. Zaire, Legend, and EJ were malleable at least. They were bullheaded, but they were also boys at the end of the day. They still had some hope left in ‘em.”
I let out a soft hum, taking a slurp of the bitter coffee. “I’m sure Rich still has some hope left in him too.”
The sound of Rich’s name makes his top lip curl and his eyes roll toward the house. “I don’t know about that. He done aged out of that ‘hopeful’ phase.”
I swallow the sharp aftertaste of the coffee and run my tongue along the parts of my mouth that it singed. “You really think so?”
“Listen, when you live the type of lifestyle he lives, ain’t no such thing as hope. It’s just eat or get ate and Rich been eating for over fourteen years.”
I want to argue back, but it’s not like Rich ever told me any differently.
He always made it sound better by sandwiching the words between kisses and his own version of sweet nothings that I held onto and replayed in my head while I laid awake at night fantasizing about silly things, like us existing together somewhere else where we were normal and not broken.
“Faye thinks because she knew him as a lil’ boy that he’s still that same kid, but…” He frowns, shaking his head. “The game is the game…and it’s a cold one.”
“Do you think there’s ever really a way out?”
“I used to…” He stares off into the backyard, shaking his head. “But the hold that…that—”
“Place?”
His eyes widen and I take another sip of coffee before murmuring, “I know they’re still fighting down at Lucky’s. That’s what Rich does—he fights. And that’s where your fighters come from—Lucky’s.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’m…I’m not six anymore, Uncle Kenny.”
He lifts his bare fist, nudging the bag with his knuckles. “Yeah, you’re not.”
I stare at my feet as Old Man Hester’s rooster crows from next door. The silence between us is a familiar one that I never bothered to break until now.
“Do you like me living with you and Aunt Faye?”
“What you mean?”
I glance back up at him. “Remember that time you asked me if I liked living with you and Aunt Faye?”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Well, you asked me that. We were parked outside H-E-B and you asked if I liked living with y’all while Aunt Faye was inside buying a Coke.”
He scratches the back of his bald head and looks everywhere but in my eyes, but I chase after them until he turns his head away from me.
“That was probably around the time we first got you. The therapist used to tell us to check in with you every now and then, so I did it from time to time.”
“I only ever remember that one time, though.”
“Well, brains are funny, Lo—”
“You know I told you I liked living with y’all, but you never told me if you liked me living here. I waited for you to say it that day, but you never did.”
He looks back over at me—not in my eyes but at my chin.
“Do you?” I ask.
“Do I what?”
“Do you like me being here with you and Aunt Faye?”
I feel like I’m six again, leaning forward in the backseat of his truck, waiting for those words to come out of his mouth to quell that longing I had in my chest for a man to want me.
“Is this your way of telling me you moving back in?” he asks.
My stomach drops.
I shrug, shaking my head. “I just wanted to know how you felt about me living in your house for eighteen years, but since you brought up moving back in…I’m I’m…not going back to New York.”
His nostrils flare for the tiniest second, then relax. “AJ know you not going back home?”
“That wasn’t my home.”
He scoffs. “Relationships are hard, Lovie.”
“Nobody ever said they were easy. If they were, don’t you think ours would be something other than this…whatever it is.”
“Look, romantic relationships take time and effort, and you can’t just up and leave because of a disagreement. He said he would take care of you.”
I choke out a bitter laugh. “A disagreement?”
“Ain’t that why y’all broke up and made up all those other times?”
“You…you don’t get it.” My throat grows dry, and I try to swallow to quell it, but it doesn’t work.