14. Lee
Lee
Saturday morning, I had Anika all up in my closet, pushing hangers from one side to the other like I was getting dressed for a damn date instead of going to a pumpkin patch with my neighbor.
“So, are you starting to like him?” she asked.
I looked over and found her holding up my pink-and-white plaid flannel, watching me over the top of it with that nosy-ass look she got whenever she thought she knew something about my life before I did.
“Girl, please. He’s my friend.” I took the shirt from her and held it against myself in the mirror. “You think this too much?”
“For a date?”
“It is not a damn date, Anika.”
She hummed and reached into the closet again. I should’ve known better than to call her over. All I wanted was help figuring out what the hell somebody wore to a pumpkin patch because I’d never been to one in my life. Somehow, she had turned that into an investigation of me and Van.
Anika pulled out a white ribbed tank and tossed it onto the bed beside the light-wash jeans I’d already picked. “You don’t gotta lie to me, Lee.”
“I’m not lying. I like being around him, but we’re friends.”
“Okay.” She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. “I’m just saying, if you did start liking him, that wouldn’t make you a bad person.”
“I got a man.”
“I know you got a man.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
Anika sighed and sat on the edge of my bed. “I’m talking about you acting like being with JB means you ain’t allowed to notice nobody else for the rest of your life.”
“Because I’m not trying to notice nobody else. I could never cheat on JB.”
“And I ain’t telling you to cheat on him. I’m saying if you ever wanted something different, you could leave.”
I straightened and looked at her. “Leave JB?”
“Why you saying it like I told you to cut off your right arm?”
“Because I been with that man fifteen years, Anika. That’s half my life.”
“I know how long y’all been together.”
“Then why would you even say that?”
She watched me smooth the front of my jeans. “Because sometimes I wonder if you know you got choices.”
That made me turn around. “What the hell that mean?”
“It means you and JB got together when you were young as hell. You been with him so long that every time you talk about y’all, it’s like being together is just the natural order of things. Like there ain’t no other possible ending.”
“There ain’t.”
“How you know?”
“Because I know my man.”
Anika was quiet for a second. “Okay. Then how you know he the one?”
I frowned at her because I didn’t even understand the question. JB had been the one for so long that asking me how I knew felt like asking me how I knew my own name.
“I been with him fifteen years.”
“That tells me how long y’all been together. It don’t tell me how you know.”
“Because I love him.”
“I know you love him, Lee. I ain’t questioning that.”
“Then what are you questioning?”
She sighed and leaned back on her hands.
“I’ve dated enough to know what I don’t want.
That’s how I know the difference with Trevon.
I sleep good at night with that man. I don’t have to wonder where he at, if he gone call when he say he will, or whether he really wants to be with me. He makes my life easier.”
“And JB don’t make mine easier?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You ain’t have to.”
Anika looked at me for a moment before she spoke again. “All I’m saying is you spent a lot of years waiting on JB. Even before prison, you waited on that man in one way or another. Now you home, and he still gone more than he here.”
“He runs a trucking company.”
“I know.”
“So what you want him to do? Shut his business down and sit in the house with me all day?”
“That ain’t what I said either.” She stood and grabbed her purse from the bed. “You getting defensive, and I’m not even attacking your relationship.”
“Because you over here trying to marry me off to my damn neighbor.”
Anika laughed, and just like that, some of the heaviness left the room. “I ain’t marrying you off to nobody. I just asked if you liked the man.”
“And I told you he my friend.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Get out my house.”
She was still laughing as she headed for the bedroom door. “Have fun on your little date.”
“It ain’t a date!”
“Whatever, Lee.”
I heard my front door close a few seconds later and shook my head. “I can’t stand her ass.”
What she’d said stayed with me while I got dressed, though.
Fifteen years was a long time. JB had been part of my life since before I knew what the hell I wanted my life to look like.
We had grown up together, lost a baby together, built Love-Lee together.
I had gone to prison protecting him because, as fucked up as it probably sounded to everybody else, I had believed in us that much.
I still did. Whatever Anika thought she saw between me and Van didn’t change that.
Once I finished getting dressed, I pushed the whole conversation out of my head. I put on my jeans and tank, left the flannel open over it, slid into my Dunks, then added my hoops, bracelets, and pink Von Dutch hat. I was checking myself in the mirror when my phone buzzed on the dresser.
Outside.
“Damn. He could’ve gave me a warning.”
I grabbed my purse and headed out.
Van’s truck was sitting at the curb with the windows down and Fabolous and Tamia playing loud enough for me to hear “Into You” before I made it off the porch. When I opened the passenger door, Van looked over at me, and his eyes traveled down before coming back to my face.
I caught every bit of it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why you looking at me like that?”
He waited until I climbed in before answering. “I like your shoes.”
I looked down at my Dunks and then slowly back at him. “My shoes?”
“Yeah.”
“You looked at my whole damn body to tell me you like my shoes?”
That made him laugh as he pulled away from the curb. “Do you want me to tell you that you look good, Lee?”
“I ain’t ask you to tell me shit.”
“You kind of did.”
“I asked why you was staring.”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“You damn near scanned me.”
Van shook his head and pointed toward my seat belt. “Put that shit on.”
I laughed as I reached for it. “That’s what I thought.”
We hadn’t even made it out of the neighborhood before we were arguing about pumpkin pie again.
I told him he was wasting both our time because there wasn’t a pumpkin on earth that was about to turn into something better than my mama’s sweet potato pie, and Van accused me of being committed to hating something I had never even tasted.
“I’m giving you a chance to prove me wrong,” I told him.
“Oh, now I have to prove something?”
“You the one invited me.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to regret that shit.”
“No you ain’t.”
Van glanced over at me, and the smile that came across his face was slow enough to make me wish I hadn’t said anything.
“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”
I looked at him a second longer than I needed to before turning toward the window. “Whatever.”
I could still hear him laughing beside me.
The pumpkin patch was packed when we got there.
Cars covered damn near every patch of grass they had turned into parking, and once we made it through the entrance, I didn’t know where to look first. There were pumpkins everywhere, hay bales stacked around for pictures, kids running toward a corn maze, food stands, a hayride, and a little petting zoo off to one side.
Even before prison, I had never done no shit like this, and Van figured that out about five minutes after we walked in because I wanted to stop and look at everything.
He bought us little paper cups of feed at the petting zoo and handed me one.
“I don’t want this.”
“Feed the goat.”
“I don’t fuck with goats.”
“Are you scared?”
“No, I just don’t know that nigga.”
Van stared at me before he started laughing. “You don’t know the goat?”
“That’s what I said. Move.”
I should’ve left his ass right there laughing at me, but I let him talk me into holding the cup out anyway. The greedy motherfucker shoved his head through the fence so fast that I jumped, dropped the whole cup, and sent feed everywhere.
Van damn near folded in half.
“Shut up! He attacked me!”
“That goat didn’t attack you, Lee.”
“He snatched the cup out my hand!”
“He’s eating!”
“Well, he rude as hell.”
When we walked away from the petting zoo, my face hurt from laughing. We grabbed caramel apples and hot apple cider from one of the stands and wandered around without any real plan, stopping whenever something caught my attention. It was probably childish as hell, but I was having fun.
Eventually, we made our way toward the actual pumpkins, where I quickly discovered that picking one was apparently supposed to be a lot simpler than I was making it.
“That one ugly.”
Van looked down at the pumpkin I had just rejected. “What the hell makes a pumpkin ugly?”
“It got a dent.”
“You’re cutting it up.”
“I still gotta take it home first.”
“Lee, you’ve been looking at pumpkins for ten minutes.”
“Don’t rush me.”
He stared at me for a second before looking toward the pavilion. “Stay right here. I’m getting a wagon before you decide we need twelve of these motherfuckers.”
“I only need one!”
Van waved me off and kept walking.
I took another bite of my caramel apple and wandered farther down the row, looking over the pumpkins while I waited on him. I had just bent down to turn one around when somebody called a name from somewhere behind me.
“Jabari!”
My head came up before I could stop it.
Plenty of niggas were named Jabari. Still, I turned.
It took me a few seconds to find him through all the people moving around, but once I did, I knew that walk, those shoulders, the back of that damn head.
JB.
For half a second, I was confused more than anything. He had just told me he wouldn’t be back until Sunday night, maybe Monday morning, but there he was standing near one of the snack stands like he hadn’t been hundreds of miles away the last time I talked to him.
Then a woman stepped into view beside him, and it took me a second to place her.
Hannah.