I ignore the call and amble towards the porch, climbing up the steps. Before I can sit in one of the chairs, the loud crunching of gravel makes me whip my head toward the street. A red Nissan Altima creeps toward the house and pulls into Rich’s driveway. There’s a girl behind the wheel who doesn’t look familiar.
I curl my hand around my phone as she kills the engine and gets out of the car. Her wavy ponytail blows in the wind as she stares at me with a twinkle of familiarity in her honey-brown eyes while walking through Rich’s grass. I try to pinpoint a time when I might’ve come across her, but I can’t.
She climbs up the porch, brushing past me and leaving the dank smell of cigarettes and musk floating behind her.
“Rich ain’t here,” she mumbles, shoving a key into the front door.
“I…I know.”
“Then why’re you here?” She twists the key and pushes the front door open in a way that screams “I live here!” and now I’m more nauseous than I was before.
“I’m sorry. Who are you?” I ask.
“You’re standing on my brother’s porch like a lost puppy and have the nerve to ask whoIam?” She chuckles, stepping inside and letting the door swing behind her.
I push my hand out and catch it before it slams in my face. She doesn’t even look behind her as she waltzes through the foyer and into the house.
Thisis Arnez.
This is the big sister who used to beat up Rich and swaddle him while it rained.
This is Senior’s Tootsie Pop.
And her and Rich look and feel nothing alike.
She didn’t embrace me, and the potential of our relationship didn’t glow in her eyes when she looked at me. She’s cold.
I scrape my fingernails against the door, and Rich’s scent floats out of the house, beckoning me inside. So I step into the foyer and close the front door behind me. I follow the sounds of her opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.
“You’re not good at taking hints, are you, Lovie?” she asks, squatting in front of the cabinets below the kitchen sink.
“You know my name?”
“Not because I want to. Believe me, I don’t keep up with every pussy that Pup sticks his dick in.”
I jerk my head back. “Excuse me?”
She yanks the cabinet doors open by their gold handles. “Look, we’re all grownups here. No need to play coy.”
Her casual description of me and Rich’s friendship makes the hair on my arms stand.
This isreallyArnez.
She’s no longer the jumble of stories I heard from Rich and Aunt Faye. She’s a real person with cold eyes that burned every part of my body she looked at.
She sticks her arm under the sink, pulling out a roll of tape. “What do you want? You can’t stay here. Pup doesn’t like folks in his house when he’s not here.”
After all the accusations Blake hurled at me, Arnez’s bitter words that equate me to a stranger are the ones that make my knees knock and hot tears cloud my vision. Or maybe it’s just the pinnacle of all the fucked-up things that’s happened to me today.
“I’m not some random person,” I rasp, grabbing the edge of the island.
“You seem random to me. If you weren’t, you would’ve had a key, don’t you think?”
I gulp down the ball in my throat. “I need to talk to Rich.”
She scoffs. “Yeah…you and everybody else around this shitty place. If you know him like you claim you do, then you should know you can’t talk to him right now. He fights today.”
“I…I understand. I just got caught up in my head and before I knew it, I was here and…”
