Chapter 37 #3
We played dominoes on the rickety card table he pulled from his garage, and Beatrice said Senior had put his right shoe on by himself that morning when I stopped by to finish painting her kitchen.
For the first time in a long time, life felt decent, but then Arnez power-walked through the side gate with a black eye and busted lip that made me drop the domino I held in my hand.
“I need to talk to you, Pup!” she yelled. “Don’t overreact or go calling Daddy. I just…I just need you to listen to me.”
I couldn’t.
I didn’t hear anything past the words she hurled at me after I asked her who had bloodied her pretty face.
“Tact, Pup—learn it! Don’t fuckin run up on me and ask me questions in a way that makes me feel like trash! Especially when deep down you already know the answer to your stupid ass question!”
Deep down, I did.
The suspicion sat in the back of my head like a quiet afterthought while I went through the motions and she fell in love with a boy that could never look me in my eyes anytime we were in the same room.
That suspicion grew like an uncontrollable weed when she stopped grabbing the Laffy Taffys from the cashier’s counter at Lucky’s, when her visits with Senior got shorter, and when her clothes got baggier.
Deep down I did know.
More words fell out of her swollen, bloody lips that night, but I ain’t wanna hear them.
I wanted to hear Jamari. I wanted him to look me in my eyes and explain to me how he could ball his fist up and pound it into Arnez’s face.
I wanted him to tell me why he thought he would get away with it, but all I heard were her bloodcurdling screams and the desperate rattling in Jamari’s chest while I tried to make him a man in the same way Senior and Smitty made me one.
“Pup?” Arnez squeaks. “Why’re you looking like that? Why are you looking like you’re gonna throw up?”
I open my mouth to tell her that Slim asked me the same thing once, but instead of sputtering it out, I choke.
“I…”
“You what?” She sniffles.
Jamari is in her eyes now. He stares at me through her, and I see that boulder of anger, resentment, and love sitting on her shoulders.
“I…I see you. I see how bad I hurt you,” I reply.
She scoffs, swiping her hand across her wet face and cutting her eyes at me.
“I’m sorry.”
The words feel like they weigh a ton as they fall out of my mouth, but I hear Slim’s soft voice in my ear—telling me to keep going—to keep practicing until I can lift them up and hold them on my own.
“I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for…for taking Jamari away from you.”
Arnez closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as another round of lightning whips through the sky, making the hair on my arms stand up.
“But you still don’t regret it, do you?” she whispers, opening her eyes and staring at the roof of my truck.
“I remember the first time Senior tried to whoop you. You remember that day?” I ask.
She nods, swiping away another tear. “I hurt Faye’s feelings. I told her she wasn’t my mama, so I didn’t have to listen to her.”
“And when Senior held that belt over you, I—”
“You went ballistic. You snatched it out of his hand like he was some random man on the street. Then he brought you in the backyard and y’all fought so hard that I thought he was gonna kill you.”
“But did he touch you?”
“No,” she rasps.
“Did he ever try to touch you after that?”
She shakes her head.
“He always said that as a man, my job was to protect you. I don’t ever remember him singing to me as a baby or telling me he loved me, but I remember him explaining to me how fragile you were. Why you always think I let you beat me up?”
Her lips curve up, and she glances down.
“If I wouldn’t even let the man you came from raise his hand to you, then why would I let some boy do it? I’ll never regret protecting you, and if you hate me for that, I’m okay with it,” I murmur. “So am I still just like Senior?”
She folds her lips under her teeth. “I don’t think you ever were.”
We stare at the fog coating my windshield and the raindrops racing through it. My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I can feel that it’s Slim without looking at it, just like I can hear her when she’s not with me. It’s the hardest part of the day. It’s that time when her head starts spinning and I try to predict how many more days she can chase me before she gives up.
Arnez cuts her eyes toward my phone glowing inside my pocket. “It’s her, huh?”
“It’s just a text. She just checking on me,” I choke. “I made her go home with Faye on Sunday after you left. So…so we’re good.”
“Who’s good? Me and you or you and her?”
My throat constricts. “Me and you.”
My phone vibrates again.
“Maybe you should check it,” Arnez mutters.
“It’s…it’s nothing. Eventually she’ll fall asleep.”
“You can always just block—”
“I said she’ll fall asleep soon.”
She holds her hands up as if she’s surrendering. “Okay. I’m just saying if the texts are getting out of hand, I can help you make them stop like I did with—”
“Ain’t no need for that. Just let her get it out.”
I drop my head against the headrest and stare at the raindrops on the windshield while my phone buzzes again.
“Pup…” Arnez whispers.
“I said, leave her alone.”
“But you’re crying.”
That warm wetness I only feel when it comes to Slim soaks into my cheek. I reach up and wipe away the tear, then pull my hand back, staring at the wetness on my fingers.
I clear my throat, croaking out a pathetic, “I’m straight.”
“No, you’re not.”
Arnez reaches over with caution, pushing her hand into my pocket and pulling my phone out.
“Just cut it off,” I mumble, reaching for it.
She pulls her arm back, and I close my eyes as tight as I can just like Slim used to do when we first met. “Leave it alone, Nez.”
I hear her shuffling around, unlocking my phone.
“I saw your dad yesterday…” Slim murmurs from it, making my eyes pop open. “I was too scared to tell you in the message I sent last night.”
I hold in the rest of my tears.
Who knew there was so much crying involved at the pinnacle of a fighter’s life?
I reach over to grab my phone again, but Arnez pushes her arm between us.
“But I saw him and I did something really embarrassing. I cried in front of him. Can you believe that, baby?” Slim asks in disbelief. “He taught me this trick to make it less embarrassing, though. He says Arnez used to do it. I’d tell you, but I don’t think I’m even supposed to know about it.”
Arnez cuts her eyes at me. They trace over my face and body as I sink back into the passenger seat while the messages keep playing.
“I guess I’m never beating those Myra Monkhouse allegations, huh?
Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying Ozark. I wish I was at home with you so I can hold you during this terrible, ugly weather.
I know how much you hate it when it rains.
I need to go to bed, though. There’s something I need to take care of tomorrow.
” She sighs. “I love you, Mr. Lovelace.”
Her casual confession hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
She said she loves me.
I open my mouth and try to take a breath, but it’s useless. I still can’t breathe.
I feel Arnez’s eyes on me while my heart stutters in that scary beat only Slim controls. It pitter-patters in a wild dance that makes me dizzy.
I reach out and grab the dashboard while I try to remember what I even did to make her feel such a crazy thing for a stupid ass man like me.
“Pup?” Arnez whispers.
“You…you only have two minutes before it goes away. You need to keep that.”
“Pup, are you ok—”
“I said keep it,” I grunt, digging my fingernails into the dashboard.
A hot tear falls onto my arm and sinks into my skin while a heavy silence sits between us.
“Do you…” she whispers, letting her voice trail off. “Do you feel that way about her too?”
I follow a fat raindrop as it races down the windshield while Slim’s message replays in my head.
“I can’t remember the last time I ate, but I remember yesterday at 10:20 Lovie sent me a text saying she had plain oatmeal for breakfast because it was the only thing she could stomach.
I can’t remember what the fuck I put on yesterday, but I know the last time I saw Lovie she had on a Worthing Boxing Gym sweatshirt, black leggings, and boots.
I know what scares her and what haunts her.
I know what pisses her off. I know what it feels like to make love to her, and I know she knows I’ve never been in love before, so she’s been holding my hand and walking me through this these past few days. ”
The front windshield blurs and I blink to clear my vision, but more stupid, burning tears fall.
“There’s…there’s a part of my brain that Senior ain’t nurture on purpose because it was the only way he could turn me into what I am.
And Lovie is so damn meddlesome that she poked at that part so damn much until she figured out how to open it and nurture it herself.
And now that it’s open, I don’t know how I was ever living with it closed like that.
I’m…I’m fuckin crying right now. You ever seen me cry before? ”
I turn toward Arnez and find her staring at me with her eyebrows pinched together and tears streaming down her face.
“I know it’s not her that you hate—it’s the situation. She blew into my life like Faye blew into Senior’s, shaking up shit and…and it’d be pretty fuckin selfish of me to fall in love with her when I took—”
“Go,” she mutters. “Go get her.”
“Nez…”
She sits my phone on the middle console and reaches over, pressing her cold fingers into my cheek.
She swipes her thumb across it. “Never mind what I think.”
“I’m not forgetting about our problem or ignoring it. It’s just—”
“You need her with you to weather this storm. I get it.”
“Yeah, but not just this storm. I need her with me for all of ‘em.”
She nods, dropping her hand. “Love looks good on you, Pup.”