And did she know he lied sometimes, too? He said he wasn’t strict, but he wouldn’t even let me watch him wash the paintand dirt from his body even though I begged him with my eyes because I’ve decided that bayou boysmightbe my type despite what Terrica proclaimed.
I cock my head to the side.
His lat muscles flex as he dusts a few crumbs of weed from his fingers and screws the lid back onto his new mason jar. “You heard me? They feed you over there?”
“I could’ve bought that jar, you know?” I blurt. “I have the money in my purse.”
He glances over his shoulder, bringing the open tobacco leaf to his mouth with a smirk. “Mhmm. That’s nice, baby, but I asked if you ate, not if you could afford a jar from the dollar store. I know you got money in your purse. You told me you needed it and I put it there like I’m supposed to.”
See what I mean?
There’s a big possibility that bayou boysaremy type.
No other men rolled blunts like they did, built stuff, or called me “baby” so easily that it felt like they simply hummed out my name. Maybe the term of endearment came out of his mouth by mistake again? After fighting at Lucky’s and messing around with Smitty and that ramp, his words came out slower, his movements were more sluggish, and there was no way he meant to say such a soft thing again.
His tongue sneaks from between his lips, wetting the edges of the tobacco leaf.
I snort to myself.
Bayou boys even make rolling a blunt look posh with their furrowed eyebrows, pinky finger hanging in the air, and quick tucking and folding.
“You gon’ answer my question? Them folks feed you, baby?” he asks, yanking a drawer open, pulling a lighter out, and sparking the blunt with so much ease that it makes me squeeze my thighs to quell that pounding between my legs.
Yeah…that “baby” was on purpose.
“I cooked spaghetti for Uncle Kenny and Aunt Faye.”
He takes a toke of the blunt with his eyebrow raised. “But did you eat any of it?”
“No,” I rasp, looking away.
“‘Kay. Then we gonna eat.”
“We?”
“Yeah. Me…and you. What, you don’t wanna eat with me?”
“No…it’s just—it kind of hurts when I do that,” I babble out for the first time since I came home.
It hurt so bad that I couldn’t even remember the last meal I ate in its entirety, and Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny were too caught up in that “biological thing” to ask why I had thrown away an entire bowl of spaghetti.
Rich pushes off the counter and saunters toward the refrigerator. “It ain’t gon’ hurt when you do it with me.”
It’s a perfect answer that lingers on top of the hot layer of want floating between us. It kisses my confession and quells the silly shame that tries to push its way out of that clusterfuck in the pit of my stomach because Rich despises shame. He’d probably beat its ass if he could.
He yanks open the refrigerator and pulls out a foil-covered plate. Whatever’s hiding underneath the foil smells better than any spaghetti I could throw together, and the plate is packed with care like it was made with him in mind.
I smirk. “Beatrice?”
“Nah.Pup.I’m self-sufficient. B ain’t thinking about me as much as you think she is,” he murmurs, pulling the foil off the salmon and asparagus, yanking the microwave door open and sticking it inside.
“Well, if she isn’t, then why’d you take care of that problem she had so easily last weekend?”
I tiptoe around Wendell’s name this time while he closes the microwave door and presses its buttons.
“Because it ain’t no man of the house at B’s or most of the other houses around here. It’s just women tryna make it.” He shrugs. “And my ole’ man always said if they call I better answer, but I better not stay on the line for too long. So she called, I answered, and I got my ass off that line.”
That soft groan I held in the first time we met in his kitchen tries to bellow out.
