I lean in closer to the phone, and right when he turns his head toward the camera, Arnez’s tiny hand smashes against the screen. She presses the side button, and the face goes black.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I grit out. “You lost your mind?”
“Haveyou? You know, I let Faye slide back in because I know you and Daddy always think y’all need her.… but her niece?” She cocks her head back, blinking.
“It ain’t like that.”
“If it ain’t then why’re you looking for her fiancé? You never make time to watch football on a Sunday.”
I try to gulp down that nausea and find Slim’s taste again.
“If it ain’t like that, then why the fuck you brought her with you to the place where Daddy lays his head? Huh? You’ve never brought a woman around Daddy.”
Itwasn’tlike that.
Even Slim knew it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have agreed again when I reminded her not to be silly and look for me anymore after I walked her to Kenny and Faye’s front door.
“I…I won’t,” she murmured, sticking her key in the front door and looking back at me.
Whatever we had was over. It ended right there on Kenny and Faye’s porch as soon as she walked into their house.
“Her fiancé was easy to find. Both of them were,” Arnez says. “There was a whole spread inPeoplemagazine announcing her engagement to that soft-looking nigga with Drake braids and a manicure. She said he was her ‘Prince Charming’ and he called her his ‘number one girl’ or some corny shit like that.”
She snorts. “Her dream wedding is a ceremony in Nice, on the French Riviera. She wants to get married in a gown she designed herself.”
Her fingers curl around the phone like she sees that itch tickling my right hand.
My Slimwas in a magazine with that fuck nigga?
I swipe a bead of sweat from the back of my neck. “How you know all that?”
“Faye’s Facebook…Google…Instagram.” She chuckles, shaking her head. “Oh, that Instagram page of hers was the best part. She’s been all over the world with his money—Paris Fashion Week, Germany, Ibiza. All these nice places your brain can’t even conceive. And she has so much Chanel that Coco herself would be jealous.”
But none of it was hers.
He owned it all.
I swallow her taste again.
“I know you like to live under a goddamn rock, but sometimes I need you to listen to me and exist in the twenty-first century. There’s other technologies outside of the banking apps you use to fund your hoes’ lifestyles. All you had to do was look her up.”
“You done yet?” I ask massaging my jaw.
“No.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t know how or why Faye put her in your orbit, but you need to let her float right on out of it and back to that motherfucka who’s gonna marry her on the French Riviera and keep her locked away from niggas like you. You can’t afford her or whatever problem she brought with her from New York. She ain’t like us. If she finds out what happened…”
Her voice drifts off, and she shakes her head. “End that shit.”
I want to, but instead of plotting on how I plan to keep us apart all I can focus on is the fact thatAJ Boydcouldn’t keep his grimy football catching hands to himself so Slim could spend his money and get her perfect wedding on the French Riviera—wherever the fuck that was.
“When Mayor Julian approached me about this place a couple years ago, my business partner told me it was a waste of my time and money. An unsanctioned fighting ring full of niggas who were bred and born with no real purpose but to fight for my neighborhood’s entertainment and, most importantly, to keep its economy afloat.” Melo Barnes paces back and forth in the middle of the pit, dressed in grey slacks and draped in diamonds like a ghetto ass peacock.
He’s probably the only man who’s ever worn a pair of loafers in here. Leftover motor oil coats their red bottoms as he turns on his heel and stops. The loud, impatient murmurs from the crowd sneak through the gap underneath the rusted back door that keeps them outside. Lucky leans against it, staring at the wall behind us with his lips folded under his teeth while Melo’s entourage lingers beside him just in case he tries to interrupt Melo’s cockamamie rambling. Rasheeda holds Melo’s phone close to her chest, and his Chief of Staff, Chubbie, keeps his hooded eyes on all forty-five of us fighters.
Melo chuckles under his breath. “Most of y’all don’t know shit else but fighting and being day laborers.”
He kicks a lone rock that had found its way into his path. It rolls toward me, landing at my feet, and his sunken eyes brush my fat lip for a second before he looks away.
“My partner said, ‘It’s a shit-hole, Mel. Let the city shut it down for good this time. Let them ship the bastards off to the county jail.’ He says this place is messy—even messier than my ranching business, and it’s not worth saving. Shit, he said I was stupid for even moving back into the neighborhood.” He snorts. “But what did I expect a white kid from Scottsdale to know aboutwhat we like to do in the Bottoms? It’s some folks who have lived in Bayou Crest their whole lives who don’t know shit about what goes on down here.”
