Her car idles on the street until I turn away and walk up Rich’s porch. The stray she shooed off yesterday lies curled between the two metal folding chairs. He whines as soon as my foot touches the top step.
“Shhh.” I frown at him, keeping my distance. “You stay on your side of the porch and I’ll stay on mine.”
His ribs don’t poke through his skin like the other strays roaming around the Bottoms.
“You must be the neighborhood dog,” I mutter, sticking Aunt Faye’s key in the front door. “You’ve got everybody feeding you their kitchen scraps, huh?”
His clipped ears perk up and he lifts his head, tilting it just enough to give me a glimpse of the perfect circle around his right eye that looks just like the bruise around Rich’s. I shudder anytime I think about his eyes, his chest, or the V that disappeared into his shorts, even though I shouldn’t be thinking about any man in that way, no matter how many packs he had on his stomach.
“Jesus. Get it together, Lovie. He’s just a man.” I twist the key, pushing the front door open.
It squeals out a bone-chilling creak and I feel like I’m sneaking back into Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny’s after a night out with Terrica.
I nudge the door closed and flick on the light in the foyer, preparing myself for the “mess” Rich says I left. But his muddy sneakers are gone and somebody even mopped with Pine-Sol. The fresh scent tickles my nose.
Damn, this isn’t good.
The further I walk inside his house, the more my stomach rumbles.
I inspect each baseboard around the living room, the kitchen, the guest bedrooms, and inside Rich’s room. They’re all still dustless and stark white. The “laundry” I left in his basket is gone. Whoever washed it didn’t even leave the clean clothes out for me to fold.
I pull my head out of his bedroom doorway before I get carried away and accidentally bury my nose into something I had no business in again. As soon as I yank his bedroom door closed, loud music blasts from outside.
“Guess the neighbors are up,” I mumble to myself, spinning around and searching for something to say, “Hey, I’ve been here—again.”
It’s hard because Rich is an impossible client, and I don’t exactly know what his endgame is. I know what mine is, though, and if I have to sit in his house staring at his blank walls until he comes back home, I will.
I waltz into his living room and flop on his leather couch until the realization hits me—Teddy Pendergrass isn’t playing today.
I cock my head to the side and try to listen closer to the music blasting from his backyard, but I’m too far away. So I push up from the couch, walk to the back door, and curl my fingers through the blinds. My eyes rove around through the tiny slit until I get a glimpse of the top of those same waves I saw every time I closed my eyes last night.
I groan and pull my face back.
I can’t lose the momentum I built up last night because of Rich’s stupid games. I need to tell him to go “fuck himself” like Yesenia always says to any man who has more audacity than he should. It’s not the polished way her therapist says she should set boundaries, but she’s still working on it.
I grip the knob, pull the back door open, and patter out onto his back porch, but I stop in my tracks as soon as I get to the steps.
His backyard overlooks the creek that runs along Joliet and merges with Crestwood Bayou. I can even see the downtown skyline from where I’m standing, but what’s even better is that I can seehim. He doesn’t even look up at me, but maybe he can’t hear me over the loud music.
He pounds his taped fist into a giant tire hanging off the oak tree in his backyard. If Uncle Kenny were here, he’d have a fit because Rich is doing bag work all wrong.
The sun’s rays beam on his glistening back while the music beats from a haphazardly parked truck that looks like it belongs to him. It’s big, obnoxious, and midnight black with tint so dark I can see the trees’ reflections in its windows. And it’s playing the music I missed while living in New York—the type I danced to on those drunken college nights when I was still free. It’s slow, raunchy and cocky and makes me want to chase after that freedom I had back then.
I take off down the steps before I lose my newfound momentum.
I even practiced the different ways I’d try to set those boundaries Yesenia told me about while I tossed and turned in bed last night trying to forget about Rich.
“You lied on me. I don’t appreciate that,” I babbled to myself, staring at the old popcorn ceiling in my bedroom. “I wasn’t even gonna stab you. Here’s the money to replace your stupid jar…”
My sneakers sink into his soft grass, and I patter toward him with my head up until he opens his mouth with his fist hanging in the air.
“Back again?” he asks, burying another punch into the tires without looking over at me.
The metal chains holding them up clank together, and my mouth grows dry.
Maybe I was being too much of a smartass when I told Aunt Faye that all of Uncle Kenny’s fighters had the same right hook because Rich’s right hook definitely doesn’t look like Zaire’s or Legend’s. My memory from that time at Worthing is fuzzy, but I don’t remember them having the force or form that Rich has. Rich’s fist connecting with the tire sounded like a boulder crashing into concrete.
He lifts his arm to take another blow but pauses with his fist in the air. It takes every muscle in my body to stop myself from flinching.
