I cough out a choke. “He told you that?”
She stares down at her sneakers, then looks over at Rich sitting at the domino table with his head next to Lucky’s. Their mouths move at a mile a minute, but their eyes stay focused on the game Lucky’s playing.
“When did he tell you that?” I ask.
She snatches the plate from my hand and finishes scooping the beans onto it, then puts a few wings on the opposite side of the plate. “That doesn’t matter. He told me y’all were just friends. Is that true?”
I nod, doing my best to follow Rich’s lead in this situation, even though I don’t know where he’s taking me.
“We talk sometimes. It happened after we ran into him at Lucky’s.”
“Whathappened after Lucky’s?”
“We started being friends after me and you ran into him at Lucky’s,” I reply.
It didn’t feel like the complete truth. It felt like I was guesstimating—like I’ve been friends with him for so long that I can’t pinpoint the exact moment in time he altered my brain and made me long for him.
She sits his plate next to a 7UP cake and tears a paper towel from the roll sitting at the back of the table. “Rich doesn’t have friends—especially friends that are women. So I’m just gonna be frank—are y’all sleeping together or not?”
She swipes a dollop of barbecue sauce from her finger, avoiding my eyes.
She’s even more different now than she was when I first came home. It’s not just the bags under her eyes anymore; there’s something else floating around her. She’s never outrightquestioned me about my sex life—not even when she saw a hickey AJ left on my neck, but she’s practically begging me to tell her about the ways I let Rich explore me.
I glance behind her at the domino table. Rich pushes up from it and shakes hands with Lucky. He drapes an arm over D, leading him away from Lucky and toward his truck with a red Solo Cup in his hand, and my nipples pucker at the little glimpse I get of the Polo Ralph Lauren logo stitched onto his boxer briefs that sneak from the top of his shorts.
“We haven’t,” I blurt, staring at his muscular arm hanging off D. “We haven’t slept together yet.”
“Yet?” She balls the napkin up, nodding. “Oh, so you plan on doing it then?”
I should’ve said ‘no,’ but Rich had infiltrated my fragile mind and swaddled it in his arms. I tasted his tongue, had his fingers inside of me, and he pried things out of me that nobody else could. My legs are already open for him. I’m just waiting for him to take what’s his.
“I—this doesn’t feel good,” I murmur.
“Neither does finding out about y’all from Rich instead of you when you’remyniece.”
“I…I thought you liked Rich.”
“IloveRich, but this conversation isn’t about that. It’s about what’s going on between you and him.”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t just blurt out to you that we’re…we’re friends. Not with all the tension in the house with Rich and Uncle Kenny and?—”
“The issue with AJ?”
I fold my lips under my teeth, looking away from her piercing eyes.
“What happened in New York?” she asks, picking his plate back up and opening a cooler on the table. “Why’d you leave sosuddenly? You said it wasn’t the cheating. So, what was it? Just tell me the truth. I…I won’t be mad at you for telling the truth.”
Her words hang in the air while she pushes the foil back on a bowl of potato salad and scoops a spoonful onto his plate.
“In New York, I learned I needed to get far away from any man who has eyes like Tony’s.”
She takes a hard swallow. “Lovie…wha…what do you mean?”
I stare at my pink toenails. The words still won’t come out even though I see them in my head.
“Rich said he broke you,” she says.
Broke me?
