Chapter 27 #2
“He was good—just sleeping on and off.”
“Oh…and Beatrice?”
My high makes the tangy barbecue sauce skip across my taste buds, then makes me blurt, “She wasn’t there,” in that pussified way Slim likes.
“Hm.” She hums, reaching over and grabbing the piece of chicken I bit.
“Oh yeah? Where was she?” she asks, taking a bite out of it.
“Out. Gone. Away from me. So don’t ask about her no more today,” I reply evenly, making her pupils dilate and her lids sink.
I roll my heavy eyes toward Donovan. “You brought any cards, D?”
He eyes us awkwardly and pats his pocket, pulling out a ziplock bag full of bright cards. “Uh…I’ve got UNO.”
“UNO?”
He laughs. “The rules are easy—like way easier than Spades. Uh…you wanna teach him how to play, Lovie?”
“Play these,” Slim murmurs, plucking a handful of cards from my hand and slapping them onto the deck between me and Donovan.
Afterward, she picks up my cup and takes a sip even though she hates brown liquor.
I don’t think she’s drunk, but she definitely feels good. We ate together, drank together, and now we’re playing UNO together even though she has her own hand to play. She hangs over my back with her chin on my shoulder.
“Ba—Slim,” I murmur out sloppily. “You can’t keep looking in my hand. That’s cheating.”
She sets the cup back down beside me. “I’m just teaching you how to play.”
“Nah, you playing for me. Stop that. What’d you say about that stacking shit, D?”
He glances up at me and I see all the “lying motherfuckas” he wants to call me written on his face because Slim isn’t following the lie I told him. I can’t blame her, though. I think I did this all wrong. I should’ve tried pushing them together sooner—back before I tasted her and she tasted me.
He lets out a deep sigh. “We’re not stacking. We’re just playing the regular way, Lovie.”
He picks up the cards Slim put down, leaving one. “Here.”
He pushes them toward me, and she takes them, stuffing them back into my hand with the rest of my cards.
“Sorry, D,” she mutters sweetly. “I thought you said we could.”
“I didn’t, but it’s okay.”
She slaps a green nine on the deck, letting her head rest against mine while Donovan tosses down his green card.
“Play this one,” she whispers, pulling a draw four from my hand and slamming it on the deck for me. “Now I have to draw four.”
She leans over me with her chest smashed against my neck and pulls four cards from the deck that Donovan calls the “draw pile.” She sticks them in her hand, adjusting them right in front of my face.
Her soft curls tickle my cheek while she takes her time, grouping her cards by color. Her hair smells just like the skirt she left in my drawer. The fresh lavender scent makes my dick twitch because I finally have her in the flesh instead of in my head.
Donovan takes a deep breath, puffing his cheeks out. “I’m gonna go grab a few sodas from the cooler. Y’all want anything back?”
She nods. “Can you bring us back some water?”
“Yeah, for sure.” He flips his cards over. “No peeking while I’m gone. You’ve wreaked havoc on this game, girl.”
She lets out a fake giggle and watches him with a smile that’s just as fake while he slides off the truck and dusts the back of his cargos.
As soon as he walks toward the pavilion, she reaches out and flips his cards over. “He sucks at UNO.”
“Stop looking at that boy’s shit.” I reach over, flipping his cards back. “And stop being rude.”
“I’m not being rude. Y’all said y’all wanted to play UNO, so we’re playing UNO.”
Donovan’s goofy laugh hovers over the music.
I glance over at the pavilion right as Faye hooks her hand around his arm and points toward Kenny at the barbecue pit. He fits in good with them. Faye’s eyes even light up when he talks.
Slim slides off my back, sitting next to me. “Is this why you came out here?”
I study the rainbow of cards in my hand. “What you talking about?”
“Look at me.”
I glance over at her glossy lips.
She juts her chin toward Donovan. “Did you come here to do whatever weird shit Senior did with Faye? Are you scoping him out so you can hand me over to him? Is that what this is?”
“I know you need to watch your mouth. I ain’t seen you in five days, so what the fuck you think I came for?” I lay my cards down, picking up our cup and taking a swig of the whiskey.
It burns my throat this time.
She scoffs and snatches it from my hand. “Yeah…and the fact that he’s here with Lucky just made things easier, right? Now you can kill two birds with one stone. You can fuck up my head then pawn me off on some easygoing dude who’s too scared to tell me I’m cheating in UNO.”
She takes the last bit of my whiskey to the head and slams the cup on the bed of the truck.
“I think you good for the rest of the night. Don’t drink nothing else. That ain’t no French 75.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Right…but you on the way there. So chill out.”
Her wild eyes dart around the dark park and land on Donovan and Kenny at the barbecue pit. Kenny lifts the lid and points at the meat like he’s giving Donovan a quick how-to, and Donovan pretends to care like a perfect nephew-in-law in training.
“I don’t fuckin want that boy and you can’t make me want him,” she grits out.
“Didn’t I tell you to watch your mouth?”
“When he comes back, I’ll tell him.”
“Be quiet, Lovie.”
“Why? Because I caught on before you could do it? One second we’re playing UNO and the next you’ll be leaving me here with him to talk about Marvel movies and anime while you go give some other woman what I want?” She laughs sarcastically. “Be fuckin for real.”
My heart stutters.
She has to be drunk. Those were some drunken ass words she blurted. That wasn’t no shit you said with a sober mind.
I blink down at her. “What you mean, what you want?”
Her tiny nostrils flare and my dick twitches again.
She cuts her eyes at it as if she knows what’s up. “When he comes back, I’ll tell him how I’m literally begging for your dick while you let other selfish ass women have it with no problem.”
I swallow her smell and the remnants of whiskey that hugged the insides of my mouth. “Lovie.”
“Or I can tell him I know everything about you. I know the rhythm of your heartbeat, I can recognize your smell in a room full of people, I…I even know how many stitches are left in your mouth because my tongue loves it there.”
My stuttering heart drops to my knees. “Don’t you tell that boy none of that.”
“Why not? He should know everything about me before you set us up, right? He should know it all.” She huffs. “Yeah… I should definitely tell him about us.”
My throat tightens, and I choke out a raspy, “Don’t you dare.”
“Or what?” She tosses her cards, sending them scattering across the bed of my truck. “Or fuckin what, Rich? You gonna hit me like he used to?”
She still doesn’t know how to argue with men, so her words come out in short, quiet spurts, but her eyes tell it all.
“You know I can’t even raise my voice at you. I…I can’t even tell you ‘no’ without feeling guilty, so you fuckin know better than that.”
She grabs her head. “Do you hear yourself? You say shit like that to me and then act as if I shouldn’t want you.”
She points past us at Kenny and Faye smiling at each other behind the barbecue pit. “I won’t be like her. We’re not her and Senior. I’m not letting that place or your dad’s toxic beliefs win. I’m not letting your head win this fight between us.”
“Lovie…don’t do this shit right now. Not here.”
“Stop calling me that. That’s not what you call me.” She stabs her finger into my hard chest and moves her face closer to mine like she can’t decide if she wants to slap me or kiss me, and I’m so faded I’ll take either.
I gurgle up a hiccup as Donovan gaits back toward my truck with a goofy smile, and two bottles of water and a Sprite tucked under his arm. The corners of his mouth drop when he gets closer to us.
He stops in front of the tailgate, eyeing the scattered cards and Slim’s finger pressed into my chest. “Is…is everything okay?”
She whips her head toward him. “N—”
“Yes…yeah,” I cut her off, curling my hand around her finger. “We good. You still wanna play, right, D?”
“Yeah…I mean, it looks like we might need to start over.”
Slim grabs my arm and yanks me, but my body doesn’t budge. “I need to talk to Rich.”
Donovan looks at me with his eyebrows wrinkled like he wants me to tell him what he did wrong because even after a painful game of UNO and an hour of forced interaction, Slim still won’t look at him.
“Just let me holler at her real quick, D,” I mumble, wrapping my hand around hers and peeling her fingers off my arm.
“I…” He blinks and nods. “Uh, okay.”
“Just stay here. We’ll be right back.”
He sits the drinks on the tailgate as we slide off of it. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I feel all the whiskey I drank rush through my limbs and make them go limp.
I look from left to right.
A group of girls walk by, staring at Slim and then smiling at me.
The park is full now because the sun had finally set and brought out all the folks that aren’t supposed to be here—the ones like me.
My truck is the first in a line of slabs, Chargers and Camaros because anything happening in Barnes-Blank Park turns ratchet as soon as the sun goes down.
Worthing’s Family Fun Day is no exception.
I don’t know where to go until Slim power walks to the passenger side of my truck and yanks the door open.
I look at D and open my mouth to say something, but I don’t even know how to explain me and Slim to him. I don’t know how to tell him he’s just a casualty—an innocent party who got caught in this war between me, her, and this stupid life I live.
I shake my head, following her and opening the driver’s side door.
As soon as I climb inside, she grabs my keys I left on the middle console. I reach over and try to take them back, but she snatches her hand away. She breathes out in tiny gasps, pressing random buttons on the key fob until my truck chirps and the locks clank.
“Look, you need to calm—”
“How much?” she asks.