“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Lorenzo,” he rushes out, staring at Rich’s gun. “I been watching Pup fight since I was a boy.”
“Okay…it’s okay.” I turn toward Rich, looking into his eyes that are that knee-buckling coal-black color again. “You hear that? He’s been watching you fight…since…since he was a boy.”
“Yeah…” Lorenzo butts in, pushing the arm of his hoodie up and exposing a cast on his left hand. “I wanna get in the pit since I’m sixteen now. I got a fracture the other day sparring with Joel’s son down on Pine. You should see that nigga’s face. I beat his ass even with my hand all twisted up like they say you did to Benny back in the day—you know back when Lucky used to let y’all get it in before the big boys fought—before everything got fucked up.”
I lay my hand on top of Rich’s, peeling his finger from the gun’s trigger while my heart gallops. He lets me slide it from under his hand and sit it on top of the middle console.
I turn, brushing my hand across his cheek as he swallows while staring at Lorenzo drop his arms. “He’s a boy, Rich. He’s only sixteen. That’s it. He doesn’t need you to see him as anything else but a boy right now. It was an accident.”
His dark eyes finally soften.
“She sayin I shouldn’t bust your ass for driving through here like that just because you a lil’ boy.” His deep voice vibrates against my back.
Lorenzo smacks his lips. “No offense, Miss, but I came out the womb with big nuts. Ain’t no lil’ boy in me—never been.”
Rich laughs, then LaTanya laughs, but I can’t because I see too much innocence left in his green eyes—I see too much of Rich in them.
“So you saying I’mma see you in the pit before I hit the dirt?” Rich asks.
Lorenzo’s cheeks bunch up and he nods. “Hell yeah. I might even be the one to put you in the dirt.”
Rich belts out a laugh that makes him pull me closer and wrap his arm around my neck. “I want you to remember that shit when you see me down at Lucky’s, nigga.”
“I’m puttin belt to ass, unc!” Lorenzo laughs nervously, lowering his shoulders and taking a step back.
“And I put fists to mouths,nephew.”
Lorenzo flashes a relieved smile at me before turning and walking the last few steps back to his running car.
“Hey, Lorenzo!” Rich calls out.
He looks over his shoulder with his fingers dangling from the driver’s side door handle.
“You can’t put me in the dirt if you beat me to it. Go home.”
“I got you, Pup.”
He flings the door open and gets back into the car, pulling away from the intersection at a snail’s pace until he’s so far down Bayou Bend that his car’s lights disappear.
“They gon’ kill somebody at this intersection one of these days,” LaTanya rasps.
Her voice sounds as if it can soothe the deepest cut. Hearing it makes me glance down at Rich’s clothes I’m wearing, and my mouth twists at the way I’m sitting in the center of his lap while my smell lingers in the short hairs of his goatee.
God, what an uncouth way to meet his mama for the first time.
I look back up at her, even though I don’t want to.
Her dark eyes stroke my face and she smiles, exposing a mouth full of teeth that are almost as straight and white as Rich’s.
“Hi, sweet-face,” she says.
“Hi…” I murmur with hot cheeks.
She smirks, looking over at Rich. “Finally made a friend, huh?”
“Yeah…after weeks of chasing and begging, she finally said I can be her friend. Ain’t that some shit, La?”
