“Tough, but soft at the same time. Senior used to call her his Tootsie Pop—hard on the outside but soft on the inside. Now, if you ever meet her, don’t tell her I told you this.”
She giggles, sniffling. “Why not?”
“‘Cause she don’t think she have any soft in her, but I guess it makes sense. Growing up in Senior’s house, you don’t have a choice but to be hard, and if you ain’t, you pretend to be.”
“Right, because he throws sweet puppies out in the rain.” She pulls my head into her neck, stroking her fingers against my ear while I chuckle. “Keep going. I want to hear more about Arnez.”
“Y’all both have smart mouths…and see too much good in stupid men.”
She laughs, swiping at her eyes.
“You give them chances they don’t deserve, give them special things you should protect…” I sneak my hand under the loose wife beater, placing it over her heart. “Like this.”
It beats against my hand wildly.
“Arnez had an AJ too. His name was Jamari.”
It’s the first time I’ve said Jamari’s name out loud since that first and last fight we had in my backyard, but saying it doesn’t make me feel any type of way. It’s just another word shooting out of my mouth and into the night air. It’ll tickle Slim’s ears for a second, then she’ll forget all about it like she’s supposed to.
I curl my arm under her legs, scooping her up and holding her like the baby I’m always telling her she is.
“Was he a wolf in sheep’s clothing, too?” she asks.
“Nah. He wasn’t even a wolf. He was really just a boy tryna be a man, and lil’ boys can’t take care of babies. You know that, right?”
She lets out a soft hum, staring up at me like I’m the end for her, and there’s a small part of me that hates it.
“So what happened? Did she leave him?”
I can tell her the truth about Arnez and all the lies she told me and Senior to protect a boy that still haunts us, but all that comes out is a soft choke from the back of my throat.
I press my mouth to her forehead with a grim smile. “Heleft her. Me and him talked and decided that it was best for him togo back to where he came from. So they broke up, and he went to be with his grandma and his mama in Dallas. It was the best for everybody because of how crazy shit had gotten between them.”
“Do you think he’ll come back one day? Remember, you said that men like him don’t let women like us walk away?”
I stare up into the starless sky. “Yeah…I remember. They usually come back when you’re at your highest and they’re at their lowest. They’re selfish like that, you know?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
LOVIE
Rich Lovelace sawanother part of me he wasn’t supposed to see, and hestillwon’t look at me any differently. I never even told AJ the truth about how Mama and Tony died…but Rich knows.
He grips his steering wheel and stares straight ahead while the city’s skyline glitters behind his head. Sparkling lights dance from the skyscrapers and decorate the sky as his truck glides across the layer of wetness that blankets the streets. We’re supposed to be driving to Chantilly, but we’re taking the long way, and I don’t even care.
The evening rain came and went, and the temperature settled into a nice, breezy seventy-five degrees, just like my Uber driver said it would, but I’m not even experiencing it in my denim mini.
I glance at Rich’s Nike sweats I rolled down to fit my waist and his matching slides that swallowed my feet. When I complained about the bottom of his sweats dragging against the wet grass on our walk to his truck, he picked me up with ease and carried me the rest of the way.
I’ve successfully stayed with him long enough to catch the slow jams playing on Majic After Dark, and if it were up to me, I’d stay longer, but I’m not supposed to be here on a Sunday, anyway.
“I gotta get you home so you can get some sleep,” Rich had muttered, running away from my wet mouth on his back porch after our confessions settled in the comfortable silence between us.
He drags the back of his hand over his heavy eyes.
He hasn’t slept, eaten anything (besides me), or done anything for himself since I’ve been with him. He didn’t even have a post-fight ritual he followed. AJ had meltdowns if I didn’t follow his post-game ritual to a T. I had to make sure his chef cooked a carb-less dinner, make sure we had passionless sex, and he needed at least six hours of undisturbed sleep if he took a loss.
