I nod.
He drops the fork, dragging me closer by my belt loop again. “They shouldn’t do that. I don’t like that.”
“They were arguing about what you wanted…and Aunt Faye told Uncle Kenny you wanted it. She said you wanted a boxing career.” Our eyes meet, and he gives my body another tug. “She was lying, though.”
He looks away from me.
“She does that a lot now.”
“Does what?”
“Lies.”
He lets go of my belt loop and picks the fork back up. “C’mere. Come, finish eat?—”
“Her and Senior had a life together before me and Uncle Kenny, huh?” I glance around his kitchen. “He called her Faye-baby. I’ve never heard anybody call her that.”
“Slim…”
“Uncle Kenny brought him up when they were arguing and I thought she was gonna lose her shit. I’ve only ever seen her get that crazy about me and Mama.”
I look back at him and the deep gash I’ve been eyeing. This time I reach out, dragging my fingers across the raised flesh. Its roughness helps quell a tiny part of my yearning.
He follows my finger and swallows. I see the answer to my question in his red-rimmed eyes while he lets me put the pieces together myself.
“They were never random classmates like she told me. They dated before me and Uncle Kenny came along.”
“Yeah…and then he made her leave him and settle down with Kenny.”
A faint grunt climbs up my throat. “Why would he do that?”
He reaches down, pulling an ashtray out of a drawer, sitting it on the island, then dropping his blunt in it.
He crooks his finger. “C’mere.”
I scoot closer and he lays his hands on my thighs. “You know, once we teach you baby birds how to fly, we gotta make sure you end up with a decent mate—a safe, easy, slow one that’s gonna want you more than you want him.”
“Shouldn’t both people want each other equally, though?”
He shakes his head, chuckling. “That’s some fairytale-type shit, and ain’t no such thing as fairytale-type love. In the real world, if a man who claims to love you even breathes wrong, youshouldn’t feel an ounce of regret for getting up and walking away because he was always just an option. He was never the end for you. You can have whoever and whatever you want in life.”
“I should be selfish, right?”
“Alwaysbe selfish, baby—never polite. Especially when a man you barely even know is smiling at you.”
That soft “baby” comes out in a rasp that makes me scoot closer to him, but he grabs my waist and holds me at arms length like he knows I’m dying to crawl into his arms one more time to make sense of everything I just learned—about him, about myself as a woman and about Aunt Faye.
I swallow a choke. “You think Uncle Kenny loves Aunt Faye more than she loves him?”
“I don’t know. I know she hated Senior for a while after what happened between them—for a long time she wouldn’t even bring him up when we ran into each other. It ain’t no room in a fighter’s life for love, anyway.”
“But there’s room for kids? Aren’t kids the epitome of love? Senior has kids.”
He swipes his hand across my forehead while smiling. “Your head don’t hurt from all of this deep thinking you doing?”
I shake my head, staring at his plump lips, waiting for whatever comes out next.
“He says Arnez was his best mistake. That’s his babygirl.”
