“Lovie…you need to let me look at you?—”
“You lied to me,” she whispers.
“Lied to you about what? You ain’t give me a chance to get to you.” I gesture toward the building. “I still have bills to pay in the meantime, baby. I…I still have to take care of my family and of…of you?—”
“I know what happened with Jamari.”
My stomach turns in a way that makes my body jerk. There this stupid nigga goes again—haunting me—hauntingus.
“What you talking about?” I mutter.
Her eyes dart around us, then behind my head where a group of folks wander into the back parking lot, laughing and yelling.
She sniffles. “Don’t…don’t play stupid right now. I know what happened in your backyard with you and Jamari. I know you owe Melo Barnes money and why you owe it. I know it all.”
I take another step forward, and she holds out her arm to keep me from taking another.
A hard hiccup rocks her body. “Rich…don’t.”
“But, baby…”
My words trail off, and all our conversations play on a loop in my head. All the different words I strung together to soften herup and keep her from running away from me pound against my skull while Jamari laughs from somewhere in the shadows.
Senior never told me that the epitome of all my pussy problems would make me feel so superhuman that I believe I can outrun everything that haunts me, and I guess Arnez was right when she told me Jamari will never go away no matter how hard I try to make him.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asks.
“How could I tell you that, Lovie? How the fuck could I tell you that? Especially after what you told me about your mama and daddy. How…how could I?”
“You could’ve told me just like you tell me everything else…”
I shake my head. “No…I…no.”
“Do you regret it?” she whispers. “Are you sorry for what you did to him?”
“No, because I’m supposed to protect her, just like I’m supposed to protect you. I told you I was just a?—”
“Stupid ass man…I know.” She pinches her eyes shut, shaking her head.
I let out a bitter snort. “Ain’t no such thing as an inherently good man. I don’t know why you don’t get that.”
The lampposts in the parking lot flicker while she glances at my hands like she can see the way they landed against Jamari’s body. Her mouth falls open as her eyes trace my bloody knuckles, then the veins in my forearms.
“You finally hate me?” I ask.
Her fingers tremble against the wall while she studies my body like she’s seeing it for the first time again. “I told you I can never hate you.”
The color drains from her brown face, and I think it drains from mine. She looks up at the black sky while angry sirens pierce the night air as the city moves around us.
“I came to your house to find you…but I found Arnez instead, and it was clear she was happy I did. She knew who I was before I even realized who she was.”
“Slim—”
“I stayed quiet while she berated me in your kitchen and tried to make me hate you. I took her insults. I let her take her anger and frustration out on me, and I…I tried to empathize with Jamari. I tried, Rich. I tried to feel sorry for this dude she loves, but I…I can’t. I can’t feel sorry for men like him anymore. I can only feel sorry for her because I know what it’s like to love a man who only equates love with pain, even in death.”
“That…that ain’t how I wanted y’all to meet. I didn’t…she shouldn’t have said none of that to you.”
She shrugs with her lips turned down. “It doesn’t matter because now all I can focus on is how bad I feel for you, how he potentially ruined the possibility of you having a normal life. You’re everywhere in my head because Istillwant you. I want you so bad that I…I feel things that God wouldn’t like. I know what you were trying to tell me when we made love. I know exactly where you’re going when you leave this Earth because of what you did, and I’ll go with you.”
