13. Lee
Lee
Colombia was a whole damn movie. Between getting my teeth fixed, all the shit we got into, and the time me and JB spent together, it was the perfect baecation. I drank so much guaro one night I ended up telling that man to put a baby in me, and of course his freaky ass obliged.
What happened in Colombia stayed in Colombia. At least, that was what I was telling myself.
Soon as we touched back down in Mobile, everything pretty much went back to normal.
JB went back to running his trucking company and being gone more than he was home, and surprisingly, I didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would.
As long as he called every morning and every night, I was good.
I missed my man, of course, but I wasn’t sitting around miserable every time he left either.
For the first time in a long time, I was starting to have a life of my own again.
Most mornings, I ended up at my kitchen table with one of them plastic mannequin hands in front of me and a nail tutorial playing on YouTube.
Five years was a long time to be away from anything, but in the nail world it felt like fifty.
Every other video had some new technique, product, or design I had never seen before.
I’d pause the video, try it myself, cuss when mine looked nothing like theirs, then soak it off and start over.
I was getting better, though. Good enough that I’d started taking pictures of the sets I liked and saving them to a folder on my phone. I had another folder full of nail suites I’d found around Mobile.
I wasn’t ready to jump right back into owning another salon.
Love-Lee had been my baby, but employees, booth rent, inventory, payroll, and everybody else’s problems weren’t what I wanted right now.
A suite sounded good. Something small that belonged to me, where I could take my own clients, decorate how I wanted, make my money, lock the door at the end of the day, and go home.
When I wasn’t doing nails, I’d find something else to get into.
Sometimes I went over to Maisie’s and sat on her porch until she got tired of me.
Other days, Anika, Nina, Wren, and I would meet somewhere for dinner and end up sitting in the booth talking shit long after the waitress had cleared our plates.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Van had become part of my routine too.
Most evenings after he got off work, he’d either text me or show up at my door with Snoop, and the three of us would walk around the neighborhood.
Some nights, we barely talked because Van was tired from work or I was lost in my own head.
Other nights, we’d get to talking about some random shit and look up to realize we’d been gone for over an hour.
They weren’t dates. I ain’t think of them like that.
We were neighbors. He had a dog that needed walking, and after spending five years with somebody telling me when I could eat, sleep, shower, go outside, and damn near when I could breathe, I liked having somewhere to go just because I felt like going.
Tonight, I was sitting on the edge of my bed tying my shoe when JB’s name popped up on my phone.
“Hey, baby,” I answered, putting him on speaker so I could finish getting dressed.
“What you doing?”
“Getting dressed.”
“For what?”
The question came so fast I stopped fooling with my shoe and looked at the phone. “Damn. I can’t put clothes on?”
“I ain’t say all that. I asked where you going.”
“Nowhere. I’m about to walk around the neighborhood.”
“With who?”
I laughed under my breath. “Nigga, why is this an interrogation?”
JB started laughing too, like he hadn’t just hit me with three questions back-to-back. “Damn, Lee. I just asked a question.”
“Several, actually.” I tightened my shoelace and stood. “Where you at?”
“Just left Birmingham. I’m finna stop and get something to eat before I keep going.”
“Again?”
“What you mean, again?”
“Every time I talk to you, you eating.”
“Man, I ain’t ate since earlier.”
“Your earlier and everybody else’s earlier must be different.”
“Whatever.”
I carried the phone with me into the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror while he fussed about how long he’d been on the road. My new teeth still caught my attention every time I saw them. I smiled at myself, turned my head a little, then smiled again.
I had probably looked at these damn teeth five hundred times since Colombia.
“When you coming home?” I asked.
“Probably Sunday night. Might be Monday morning depending on how this shit go.”
That pulled my attention away from the mirror. “You said Saturday when you left.”
“I know. They added another load.”
“Of course they did.”
“Don’t start, Lee.”
“I ain’t starting nothing.”
“Yes, you is. I can hear it.”
I laughed and walked back into the bedroom. “I said four words.”
“And had an attitude with all four.”
“Boy, whatever.” I picked up my lip gloss from the dresser and tossed it into my pocket. I didn’t like how often he was gone, but I knew what came with his business. At least I was trying to. “Just be careful, and call me when you stop tonight.”
“You know I will.”
There was a brief pause before his voice softened. “I love you, Lee.”
“I love you too.”
“Aight, baby. I’ll call you later.”
We hung up, and I dropped my phone onto the bed before checking the time.
Van was late.
Only by about five minutes, but he was usually right on time. I went into the kitchen and got a bottle of water, took a few sips, then wandered back into the living room. By the time I checked my phone again, five minutes had turned into seven.
Where the hell was he?
I found myself at the front window before I even realized I had walked over there. I pushed the curtain aside just enough to look toward his place, saw nothing, and immediately let it fall.
Girl, calm down.
I had barely turned away when Snoop started barking his big ass head off outside. I peeked through the curtain again and saw him dragging Van up the walkway.
About damn time.
I headed for the door and had my hand on the knob before I caught myself rushing. I didn’t know why the hell I was acting like Van had been gone for six months instead of being seven minutes late for a walk, but I slowed my ass down anyway.
By the time I finally opened the door, he was stepping onto my porch. I didn’t even give him a chance to speak before I smiled big as hell, showing all thirty-two teeth.
Van stopped on the top step and looked at me for a second longer than usual.
“Damn, Lee.”
I laughed. “What?”
His mouth pulled into a smile. “You been waiting to do that, ain’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Nah. You definitely been waiting.”
“Just say they look good, Van.”
He laughed, but his eyes stayed on me. “They do. They look real good.”
“Thank you.”
“I like seeing you smile like that.”
Something about the way he said it took a little of the playfulness out of me. “Like what?”
“Without doing this.” He lifted his hand toward his mouth, halfway covering it. “You used to do that every time you laughed.”
I hadn’t realized he noticed.
“Yeah, well…” I ran my tongue across the back of my teeth. “I don’t have to anymore.”
“I know.” He smiled. “Looks good on you.”
Before I could figure out what the hell to say to that, Snoop shoved his nose against my leg and nearly knocked me backward.
“See?” I pointed down at him. “Your child jealous because somebody else getting attention.”
“My child is rushing you out the door because he needs to piss and apparently doesn’t wanna do it on your front porch.” Van tugged lightly on Snoop’s leash. “Come on, boy.”
“He got home training.”
“Snoop tried to eat a dirty diaper out the parking lot yesterday. I don’t know why you keep defending him.”
I stepped outside and locked my door behind me. “That don’t mean he ain’t got home training. Maybe he was hungry.”
Van stopped and looked at me. “A dirty diaper, Lee?”
“I ain’t say he had good taste.”
Van shook his head, laughing as we headed down the steps. “Man, come on.”
The weather had finally started feeling a little like fall.
Not real fall, because Mobile didn’t know how to commit to a damn season, but the air had cooled enough that I could wear a hoodie without sweating underneath it.
Kids were still riding bikes near the corner, somebody a few houses down was cutting grass even though daylight was almost gone, and Snoop stopped to sniff damn near everything we passed.
There wasn’t anything special about our walks. I think that was why I liked them.
We had made it halfway down the block when bass started thumping behind us, loud enough that I felt it before I even turned around.
“Damn.”
A big white Chevy was creeping around the corner, sitting so high off the ground I didn’t understand how anybody got into the motherfucker without a ladder.
The windows were down despite the cool air, and whoever was behind the wheel had the music loud enough to announce himself to the whole neighborhood.
“I thought folks only rode around bumping like that in the hood,” I said.
Van looked over his shoulder and immediately laughed. “Man, that’s White Boy Rick.”
“Who?”
“White Boy Rick.”
I looked from him to the truck. “That is not that man name.”
“Hell nah.”
“Then why you calling him that?”
“Look at him.”
By then the truck was close enough for me to get a good look at the driver.
Young white dude with a baseball cap pulled low and tattoos running down the arm he had hanging out the window.
His truck was clean as hell too, the kind of clean that told me he probably spent his Saturdays outside washing tires.
I started laughing. “Van, leave that white boy alone.”
“He like that shit.”
The Chevy slowed beside us, and the driver leaned toward the open window. “What up, Van?”
“What up, Rick?”
I turned my head so fast Van caught me looking.
“You really call that man that to his face?”
The dude heard me and started laughing. “He been calling me that shit for two years.”
“See?” Van said. “He answer to it.”
“You stupid.”
The guy looked over at me. “You must be the new neighbor.”