She pinches her eyes shut, and for the first time in my life, I don’t see “Aunt Faye,” I see Fayanna.
“I know he calls you Faye-baby.”
She smiles with her eyes closed. The wind picks up around us, and I think I see that time in her life she never talks about.
“He had this…this thing,” she whispers. “He’d make me feel like I was in charge of everything—the kids, the house, him. He’d tell Junior and Nez that at ‘2308 Joliet, Fayanna knows best and if they don’t like it, they can buy their own goddamn house.’”
She sputters out a laugh with her eyes still closed. “Nez hated it, but Rich loved it because he’s just like his damn daddy—always trying to make a woman feel something in a world that just wants her numb, even though he wasn’t even born for that.”
I glance back over at Rich. He’s shoulder to shoulder with D on his truck’s tailgate. His hands flail in the air while he talks, and D stares at him in the same way Ky did—like he’s a real-life superhero. But knowing D, he’d say Rich is more like Spider-Man.
“He was just born to carry on Senior’s legacy, huh?” I gulp, still staring at Rich and the setting sun hitting the diamonds in the paw pendant around his neck.
“Mama used to say their bloodlines were cursed—especially the Lovelaces. Generation after generation of loveless men. She always said any woman that got involved with them was stupid, and I thought so too…until I met Rich Lovelace Sr.”
Uncle Kenny’s voice bellows above the blues Chico’s playing now, but she doesn’t turn to look for him like she normally does when she hears him. I think she’s with Senior right now, and there’s nothing Uncle Kenny can do about it.
“It was the summer of ‘99. Mama had died, Tony had gotten a new job at Shell, and convinced your mama they should buy that house in Pearland for a fresh start, and I…just…”
“Felt alone?”
Her eyes pop open and bore into mine, and I think we see each other for the first time in eighteen years. People bustle around us—laughing and talking and dancing and eating, but we’re stuck in ‘99.
“I remember I walked into Lucky’s one day and saw him at the counter talking to Lucky with a busted lip. I knew exactly what he was, and he knew exactly what I was as soon as he saw me. He paid for my gas and told me, ‘If I ever wanted to get rid of that loneliness sitting on me, I could come to 2308 Joliet and he’d take care of it….’” She smiles.
I see that mucky feeling sitting on her and slithering around her body. I see all the times she contemplated this life with me and Uncle Kenny in the bags under her eyes. I even see all the times her heart beat back and forth between love and some other emotion she held for Uncle Kenny.
“Senior was bitter about love and women when I met him,” I murmur. “And I’m starting to understand why.”
“One thing I’ve learned about Lovelace men is that their heart doesn’t look the same as other men’s,” she says, picking up my hand and sitting Rich’s plate in it. “I always imagine it looks like a lump of coal in their chest until they find us tough girls—the ones that are brave enough to take care of them while they take care of everybody else. We give them something to hold on to for the short time they’re here, and in return, they give us those ugly lumps of coal in their chests that are supposed to be hearts.”
She brushes at my edges that wouldn’t lay down no matter how much edge control I slathered on this morning, and that placid smile on her face disappears. “Those Lovelace men are everything you need until they can’t be anymore. One day you’ll be drowning in their love, then they’ll come home and hold you while you’re washing dishes and tell you how they met some man playing the machines in the back of Lucky’s—a safe, decent man who said he went to Wesley with you when your name came up while we talked and gambled,” she chokes out. “And then later on that night, he’ll be holding you in bed and he’ll just blurt it out. ‘I think Kenny Fairchild would take real good care of you, baby. He’s safe and a lil’ boring, but he’ll give you what I can’t. He’ll give you normalcy.’ That’s what he said to me. That’s what Rich Lovelace Sr. said to me inourbed inourhouse.”
“Aunt Faye…” I choke out, moving Rich’s plate toward the table.
She pushes it back toward me.
“By then the tremors had gotten so bad that he struggled to brush his teeth and I…I would’ve done it if I had to, Lovie. God, I would’ve bathed him if I had to, but he said he’d rather go down to Beatrice’s and let her and her mama do it because I still had too much life to live. I was young—we both were. So, I didwhat he wanted, and I left. A few months later, I found Kenny gambling in the back of Lucky’s right where Senior said he’d be, and…and when he asked me out after I told him me and Senior broke up, I said ‘yes.’”
She pushes the plate even further into my chest.
“You just be careful with whatever this is you got going on with Rich because a man like him ain’t the type of man you have a fling with to get over an ex. He’s…he’s…” her words trail off. “Listen, you’re grown and I can’t tell you what to do. All I’m saying is that you’re barely out of that relationship with AJ. You should slow down.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
RICH
Beingfriends with Slim did something to my brain, but I can’t figure out what. Something just feels…different. Questions I’d never entertain in the past dance around up there now. They pop up while I do all the boring shit she says she likes for me to do until I answer them with my own stupid assumptions.
Like sometimes, I wonder how she feels about Vegas whileOzarkplays in the background. Then I assume she’s probably been more times than she can count. Sometimes when I’m cooking I wonder how she might feel about us living there in the hot ass desert in a cheap ass apartment while I chase a boxing career I never entertained before all this shit happened with Arnez. She’ll probably hate it. She’s used to living in nice places. Last night, I even wondered if the half a mill Ms. Beaufort convinced me to save over the years and the money I’d get from selling the house would be enough to throw at Melo to get us away from here. Shit, how would she feel if she knew none of this crazy shit I’m fantasizing about can never happen?
All I know is whatever she did to my brain makes me do corny shit like pop up at Worthing Gym’s 10th Annual FamilyFun Day when I’ve never been to the last nine because she’s that solace Smitty told me to find.
“How do you do it, man?” Donovan asks from beside me on the back of my truck’s tailgate.
“Do what?”
