30. JB
JB
By Monday morning, Lee still hadn’t called me.
I had spent most of the weekend checking my phone like a damn fool, waiting on a text, a missed call, something.
Hannah’s engagement post had done numbers.
Mine too. Everybody and they mama had been in the comments congratulating us, throwing rings and champagne emojis everywhere and talking about how beautiful our family was.
Lee ain’t like the post, leave a comment, or call me cussing. She ain’t react at all, and that wasn’t how I pictured the shit going.
I knew she was gonna see it. Half the reason I made sure those pictures went up Valentine’s night was because I knew somebody would send them to her even if she wasn’t following me anymore.
Lee had spent the last few months walking around like whatever I did didn’t bother her.
She didn’t want me, didn’t need me, and I needed to accept that we were over.
Cool. I wanted to see how much of that shit she really meant.
By Sunday night, I had even checked to see if she watched my story. When her name never showed up, I finally called her and got sent straight to voicemail. I tried one more time, got the same thing, and that was when I realized she had blocked me.
I sat there staring at my phone, pissed off even though getting blocked should’ve told me the proposal bothered her at least a little.
Still, that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted Lee to call me.
I wanted her mad enough to ask how the fuck I could spend all that time talking about us being a family and then turn around and put a ring on Hannah’s finger.
I already knew exactly what I was gonna tell her. You the one said we were done. You the one kept telling me to move on. What you mad for? I had the whole argument ready, but Lee never gave me the chance to use it.
“Which one you like?”
I looked up from my phone and found Hannah watching me from across the kitchen table.
Her laptop was open in front of her with about fifteen tabs across the top, and she had a notebook beside it full of shit she’d been writing down all morning.
Our daughter was asleep in the bassinet next to her, finally home where she belonged.
“What?”
“The venues, Jabari.” Hannah turned the laptop around so I could see it. “I sent you these two yesterday and you never told me which one you liked.”
I barely glanced at the pictures. “Whichever one you want.”
Her face changed. “This your wedding too.”
There went that word again. Wedding. Hannah had been saying it every chance she got since Friday night.
Our wedding. My fiancé. When we get married.
At first, I liked hearing it. She had been happy as hell since the proposal, and after everything we had just gone through with Jaliyah coming early and spending weeks in the NICU, seeing her happy felt good.
Truth was, I just hadn’t thought much past getting down on one knee. I bought the ring, set everything up, and asked the question. I hadn’t sat around thinking about venues, dates, flowers, guest lists, or none of the shit that came after a woman said yes.
Hannah clearly had.
“I like the one on the water,” she said, turning the computer back toward herself. “But their Saturdays book up almost a year ahead. If we want something this fall, we probably need to put a deposit down.”
“This fall?”
She looked at me like I had said something stupid. “When did you think we were getting married?”
“I don’t know. We just got engaged.”
“Exactly. Now we plan.”
I leaned back in the chair while she started talking about how she didn’t want some long engagement. Jaliyah made a little noise in the bassinet, and both of us looked over at the same time. Hannah was out of her chair before I could move, bending over to check on her.
Seeing my daughter home still did something to me.
She had been so damn small when she came that I was scared to touch her.
Every tube and wire they hooked to her in that NICU pissed me off because there wasn’t shit I could do about any of it.
Money didn’t fix it. Knowing people didn’t fix it.
I had to sit there just like everybody else and wait for somebody in scrubs to tell me whether my baby was getting stronger.
Now she was home, gaining weight, and sleeping in the bassinet beside our bed. That should’ve been enough to keep my attention, but my eyes still went right back to the phone beside my hand.
Still nothing from Lee.
When Hannah sat back down, she caught me looking at it. “Who you waiting on?”
“Nobody.”
“You keep checking your phone.”
“Work.”
The lie came out too easy, and Hannah accepted it just as easy. Work had always been one of the simplest excuses I could give her.
“I need you to look at the guest list tonight,” she said, picking her pen back up. “Your mama already sent me names, and I know you got a million cousins. We need to figure out who you want as your best man too.”
“Aight.”
She stopped writing. “You listening?”
“Yeah.”
“What I just say?”
I smiled. “Best man.”
That satisfied her enough to go back to her notebook. I watched her for a second, and Hannah really looked like she thought everything had finally fallen into place. Maybe for her it had.
I pushed my chair back. “I gotta get to the office.”
“You coming straight home?”
“Should be.”
The look she gave me told me she didn’t like that answer, but I wasn’t getting into another conversation about it. I leaned down, kissed her forehead, and told her I’d call before I left the office.
By the time I got to the trucking company, most of my drivers were already out. Somebody was arguing with dispatch about a load, one of the mechanics had called about another truck needing a part, and payroll was sitting on my desk waiting on me.
It was regular, legit work, the kind I had spent the last few years convincing myself was all I needed. I made it through maybe an hour before I picked my phone up again.
Lee still had me blocked.
“Man, fuck her.”
I tossed the phone onto my desk just as somebody knocked on my office door.
“Yeah.”
The door opened, and the second I saw Boone step through it, Lee went straight out of my head. I hadn’t seen that nigga face-to-face in years.
He looked older, but not by much. More gray had worked its way into his beard, and his stomach was a little thicker under his coat, but everything else was the same.
Same calm face, same slow way he moved, same habit of walking into somebody else’s space like he had already decided he belonged there.
He closed my office door behind him.
“Damn,” he said, looking around. “Look at you.”
I stayed behind my desk. “What you doing here?”
Boone ignored me and looked through the window toward the yard. “You really built something.”
“What you want?”
That finally got his attention.
He smiled and took the chair across from me without being invited. “Can’t come check on you?”
“No.”
Boone chuckled under his breath.
I hadn’t missed that shit about him. He could sit across from you smiling like y’all were old friends while making your whole stomach tighten.
“What you want, Boone?”
He leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee. “Got something moving next week.”
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t even know what I was finna say.”
“I know enough.”
“Do you?”
“I’m out.”
The smile stayed on his face, but something behind it changed.
“Ain’t no out.”
I leaned forward. “I told you that shit years ago.”
“No. You told me you needed to sit down for a while.”
“I said I was done.”
“And I let you believe that.”
I stared at him, but Boone had already looked back through the window, watching one of my trucks pull through the gate like he was taking inventory.
“How many you got now?”
“Enough.”
“Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Don’t worry about how many trucks I got.”
“I ain’t worried about shit. I’m impressed.” He nodded toward the yard. “You took care of yourself.”
“I built this shit legit.”
That made him look back at me.
“Legit?”
“Yeah.”
Boone smiled again, and that shit irritated me more than if he had laughed in my face.
“The trucks don’t move nothing but freight,” I told him.
“Everything move freight, Jabari. Depends on what kind.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“You keep saying that like it matter.”
I pushed away from the desk and stood. “We done.”
Boone stayed exactly where he was.
“Sit down.”
I looked at him. “This my office.”
“And?”
The room went quiet, and I stared at him. I hadn’t been some young nigga working under Boone in a long time, and I damn sure wasn’t about to let him walk into my business talking to me like I still was. He must’ve seen that on my face because he leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees.
“You think I left you alone all these years because I respected your retirement?”
“I don’t give a fuck why you left me alone.”
“You should.”
Something about the way he said it made me stop.
“I let you lay low because your name was hot,” Boone continued. “Feds hit that nail shop and your girl took the charge. After that, everybody started asking who she was protecting. Ain’t nobody believe that little girl woke up one day and started moving that kind of weight by herself.”
“Leave Lee out of this.”
“I ain’t put her in it.”
“Then don’t bring her up.”
His eyes stayed on mine for a long second. “Still sensitive about that, huh?”
“Watch yourself.”
“Nah. You need to watch yourself.”
Boone never raised his voice, but he didn’t have to.
He settled back in the chair and rubbed a hand over his beard.
“Lee eating that case bought you time. That’s what you ain’t understanding.
Your name was too hot, so I let you sit down.
Let things cool off. Let you play businessman for a few years. ”
“Play?”
“You heard me.”
I stepped around my desk. “Ain’t nobody playing with shit. This company mine.”
“And it can stay yours.”
“Then get the fuck out my office.”
Boone finally stood, smoothing the front of his coat like we hadn’t just been two seconds from having a whole different kind of conversation.
“You got a good life now,” he said. “Company doing well. House. Kids. Just got engaged, from what I seen.”
I stared at him. Of course that nigga had seen it.
“Congratulations, by the way.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed. “See? That’s that temper.”
I should’ve left it there.
Instead, I asked, “What you want moved?”
The question came out before I could stop it, and Boone’s smile told me he noticed.
“That’s better.”
“I didn’t say I was doing shit. I asked what you want.”
“And somebody will tell you when you need to know.”
“Nah. Fuck that.”
“You wanted out, remember? Out means you don’t need all the details.”
I took another step toward him. “Find somebody else.”
“I got somebody else.”
“Then use them.”
“I am.”
Boone looked toward the yard one more time.
“I’m using you too.”
My hands curled at my sides, and he noticed.
“Don’t do nothing stupid,” he said. “You got too much to lose now.”
That one landed because he was right. I had Hannah and the kids, Lee and the son she was carrying, my company, everything I had spent years building.
Boone walked toward the door while I stood there trying to figure out how the fuck a man I hadn’t seen in years had walked into my office and made all of it feel temporary.
He put his hand on the knob. “Somebody gon’ call you.”
“I ain’t answering.”
Boone glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, you are.”
Then he opened the door, but before he walked out, he stopped.
“And Jabari?”
“What?”
“You ought to thank Lee next time you see her.”
My whole body went tight.
Boone looked right at me.
“That girl gave you five years.”
Then he walked out, and I stayed standing in the middle of my office long after the door shut behind him.
Five years.
The exact same five years Lee had lost. I looked through the window at the trucks moving through the yard, drivers coming and going with my company name stretched across every cab in big letters. I had built all this while Lee sat in federal prison for something I put in motion.
According to Boone, I hadn’t gotten out of shit. Lee had just bought me time.