3. Jabari JB Haynes
Jabari "JB" Haynes
Ilied. I ain’t have no fucking work. Soon as I pulled away from Lee’s place, I headed across town trying not to think about the way she looked at me when I admitted I’d been fucking other women while she was gone.
It didn’t work because I could still see her standing beside that bed in them little pajamas looking at me like she hated my ass, and I couldn’t even blame her.
She did five years behind some shit that belonged to me, got out that morning, and before the day was over I’d already lied to her again. That shit didn’t sit right with me.
What the fuck was I supposed to do though? Tell her everything tonight? She hadn’t even been free twelve hours. I wasn’t finna dump five years’ worth of shit in her lap before she had a chance to sleep in a real bed.
I was gonna tell her, just not tonight. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
The farther I got from her place, the more my mind went back to everything I’d done for her.
I had her apartment paid up for a year, ten racks, a new Benz, and whatever else she needed.
I’d spent five years making sure Lee wouldn’t come home with nothing, but none of it could buy back one day she’d lost because of me.
I knew that, and she damn sure knew it too, but it didn’t stop me from trying.
By the time I pulled through my iron gate, it was late. I parked in the driveway and sat behind the wheel for a second before grabbing my keys and heading inside.
I barely got the front door open before little feet came flying across the living room.
“Daddy!”
I looked down just in time for JJ to slam into my legs. “There go my boy.”
I scooped him up with one arm and kissed both his fat cheeks while he laughed and squirmed in my arms.
“Stop!” JJ squealed, pushing my face away.
“You the one ran over here.”
“I been waiting for you!”
“I can tell.”
JJ wrapped his arms around my neck while I carried him farther into the house. The Ms. Pat Show was playing loud as hell from the living room, which told me Hannah was probably still up even before I asked.
“Where your mama at?”
He pointed toward the couch. “In there.”
I already knew I was in trouble before I saw her sitting on the couch with her arms folded across her chest, wearing one of them oversized T-shirts she lived in lately. At five months pregnant, even that big-ass shirt wasn’t hiding her belly anymore.
Hannah looked at me, then at the clock. “Took your ass long enough.”
I set JJ down and he took off toward his bedroom. The second I dropped onto the couch beside her and reached for her, Hannah shoved my hand away.
“Don’t come touching me after you been posted up with that bitch all day.”
I let out a long breath. “Hannah, don’t start that shit. You already know what it is.”
“What I know is you spent your whole damn day playing house with another woman.”
“Hannah...”
She cut her eyes at me. “Did you tell her about us?”
I leaned my head back against the couch cushions and rubbed both hands over my face. I was tired as hell. “It’s her first day out, man.”
“So what?”
“I already broke the girl’s heart once. I wasn’t trying to drop that shit on her the same day she walked back into the free world.”
Hannah laughed, but there wasn’t nothing funny. “JB, you been having excuses stacked up for the last few years.”
She shifted on the couch until she was facing me. “I’m your girl. You come home to me every night. Your clothes in my closet. Your son got your name, and I’m carrying your daughter. Soon as we step outside this house though I’m supposed to act like none of that shit exists.”
“We been through this conversation.”
“And we gone keep having it until it makes sense.” She pointed toward the front window like Lee was somewhere out there. “Because you still choosing her.”
I shook my head and kept my voice low because JJ was still somewhere in the house. “Lee took a federal charge for me, Hannah.”
“I know what she did.”
“Then you know I’m not finna abandon her just because you my lady now.”
Hannah stared at me without blinking and I knew damn well that wasn’t the answer she wanted.
“And keeping this shit quiet been helping you too,” I added.
Her eyebrows pulled together. “What the hell that’s supposed to mean?”
“You bought Love-Lee after she went in.”
“So?”
“So, nobody thought shit about it because you worked there.” I leaned forward with my forearms resting on my knees. “Let them find out you got two babies by Lee’s man and watch how quick some of them women sitting in your chairs start looking at you different.”
Hannah’s face hardened, but I kept going. “They loved Lee before they ever loved that shop.”
For a few seconds, neither one of us said anything. The Ms. Pat Show was still playing on the TV in front of us while Hannah sat there staring at me like she was deciding whether she wanted to argue or throw something.
Then she went straight for the question she’d probably been waiting all night to ask. “You fuck that bitch?”
I laughed once. “Man, hell no.”
Hannah didn’t ease up. “Let me smell your dick.”
I stared at her. “Who the hell you supposed to be? Yvette?”
“I’m dead serious, JB.” Her voice cracked just enough to take some of the bite out of it. “If you touched her, I’m packing me and my kids up tonight and you’ll never lay eyes on us again.”
That shut me up because looking at her sitting there trying not to cry, I knew what all that shit was really about. Hannah was scared I was gonna choose Lee over her, and I couldn’t even blame her for feeling that way because the truth was, I never planned on falling for Hannah in the first place.
After Lee got locked up, Love-Lee Nails sat empty for months. Customers kept calling around asking if anybody knew when the shop was opening back up, but there wasn’t nothing to tell them. Eventually the building went up for sale and Hannah bought it.
People expected her to keep everything the way Lee left it.
She didn’t. Hannah changed the paint, ripped up the flooring, replaced the furniture, and made the place look like hers.
She even changed the name to House of Hannah, and it didn’t hurt business none because you still couldn’t get an appointment in that motherfucker.
I didn’t run into Hannah again until almost two years after Lee went in. I was in Biloxi blowing money at the casino, something I used to do whenever work got on my nerves, when I spotted her standing at a blackjack table with a drink in one hand and a stack of chips in front of her.
I knew that face as soon as I saw it, so I walked up behind her and leaned close enough for her to hear me over all the casino noise. “Ain’t you shawty that got my girl shop back up and running?”
Hannah turned around, and the second she realized who I was, a grin spread across her face.
“JB?”
“Yeah.”
“I ain’t seen you since...” She stopped herself before finishing.
“Yeah,” I said, because there wasn’t really nothing else to say.
Her smile faded a little. “How Lee doing?”
I looked back toward the blackjack table. “She surviving.”
Hannah nodded. “I think about her all the time.”
“Shit, I think the whole hood do.”
“You still go see her?”
“Twice a month.”
She gave me a small smile. “Tell her I asked about her next time.”
I nodded and finished what was left in my glass. “I will.”
We left the table after that and grabbed two seats at the bar. One drink turned into two, and before long we were talking about everything except gambling.
Hannah looked over at me. “I was scared to death buying that place. Everybody in the city knew what Lee built, and I knew they was gone compare every little thing I did to her.”
I took a sip of my drink. “Lee wouldn’t have wanted that building sitting there going to shit. She’d rather somebody who actually cared about the shop have it.”
Hannah looked at me. “You really think that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
After a couple more drinks, we stopped talking about Lee altogether, and Hannah looked over at me. “You got plans tonight?”
“Nah.”
She looked down at her drink for a second before meeting my eyes again. “I got a room upstairs.”
That was all she had to say because Hannah was fine as hell.
Light brown, thick as fuck, with a little waist that made all that ass stand out even more.
Her lips were full, and she had them pretty eyes that could turn mean quick when she got to rolling them damn things at me.
Her brown hair with all that blonde in it fell past her shoulders, and she had tattoos all up her arms with enough more peeking out from under her clothes to make a nigga wonder where else she had them.
I’d been lonely longer than I wanted to admit, and enough liquor was in me to stop pretending I didn’t know exactly what she was offering. I dropped some cash on the bar, finished what was left in my glass, and stood up.
“Lead the way.”
What was supposed to be one night didn’t stay one night. Nine months later, JJ came screaming into the world, and somewhere along the way Hannah stopped being somebody I messed with when I was lonely and became my woman.
Sitting beside me now, she looked like she wanted to cuss my ass out all over again, but instead her face crumbled a little.
“I don’t want to compete with Lee for your heart, JB.
” She wiped at her eyes quick, like she was mad the tears had even showed up.
“I gave you a family. Why the fuck ain’t that enough? ”
I didn’t have an answer that wasn’t gonna hurt her, so I reached for her instead. This time she let me pull her against my chest. Hannah buried her face in my shirt and cried while I held her, rubbing my hand up and down her back until some of the fight finally left her.
I loved Hannah. She was my woman, JJ was my son, and the little girl she was carrying was mine too. This was the family I’d built while Lee was gone, and none of that was fake.
The problem was, neither was what I felt for Lee.
She’d been with me since we were fourteen, she’d done five years behind my shit and never once gave them my name, and I couldn’t look at everything she’d lost because of me and decide that just because I’d built another life while she was gone, she was supposed to come home and figure the rest of hers out without me.
After a while, Hannah’s breathing slowed, and I moved my hand from her back to her stomach. Our daughter kicked against my palm, reminding me of exactly what I had sitting right here in front of me.
I wasn’t leaving Hannah, and I damn sure wasn’t walking away from my kids, but I couldn’t let Lee go either. Somehow, I’d figure that shit out like I always did.