He holds his hands up as if I’ll really ball my fist up and sock him with it. “Don’t nobody call him that but Faye and his mama.”
“LaTanya?”
“What you know about LaTanya, girl?”
“Well, now I know she calls him Rich.”
He belts out a raspy laugh, pulling a cigarette out of his crumpled Newport box. “I like you.”
Warmth spreads across my cheeks. “What’s he building?”
“A wheelchair ramp for all those decrepit niggas down at Beatrice’s.” He sticks the Newport between his lips, then pats the pockets on his worn Levi’s.
“You know, you could easily become one of those ‘decrepit niggas?’ Time doesn’t stop for anyone.”
He cuts his eyes at me with a smirk. “Girl, do you know what I am?”
I eye the puckered scar above his lip and his crooked middle finger as he pulls his hand out of his pocket after not finding what he was searching for. I glance over at Rich walking across the yard, then back at Smitty while his eyes scour the porch, even though what I think he’s looking for is right next to him on the banister.
“You’re the same as Rich…and Senior…and all the guys at Beatrice’s.” I reach out and pick up the red BIC. “You’re a fighter.”
“Mhmm,” he hums, glancing up at me, smirking at his lighter in my hand, then tugging it from my grasp. “So then you should know it’s two types of fighters in this world then, right?”
I shake my head while he lights his cigarette and takes a deep drag. “There’s the type that clings onto ‘what if,’ and then there’s the hell-raisers. The type that live fast and die even faster—the ones that ride solo all the way to the end.”
Rich tosses a block of wood off to the side and swipes his tattooed forearm across his wet face. Smitty eyes me while I eye him.
“Oh yeah? So which one is Rich?”
“Shit, I like to think he’s the last hell-raiser around here. The rest of these niggas been running with their tails tucked.”
“Maybe they want different. There’s nothing wrong with wanting something different…something outside of a life they didn’t plan for themselves.”
He throws his head back, howling out a loud laugh. “Oh. I see what this is.”
“Wha…what do you mean?”
“I’m interrupting a pussy appointment. That must be all the shit you tell Pup when y’all in bed, huh?—”
Rich’s heavy footsteps make Smitty’s mouth close mid-sentence while heat swallows my body.
“Didn’t I tell you not to talk like that in front of her?” he asks.
Smitty holds his hands up again, shrugging.
The rain had soaked through Rich’s white T-shirt, making it cling to his hard chest. He eyes Smitty up and down, then reaches around me and grabs his phone from the banister.
“Hm…” he hums, pushing it into my hands.
All of my smart-aleck comments get lodged somewhere in my throat as he brushes his thumb against my chin while I look at his pristine black iPhone like it’s a bar of gold.
“What’s wrong? I know you know how to work it,” he huffs under his breath, waiting for me to show him I still know how to put my number in a man’s phone.
“I do,” I mutter.
“Well…work it.”
I gingerly tap the screen.
