He eyes my engagement ring again. “He still a boxer, though. That punch still pack some power now.”
He talks about Uncle Kenny like everybody else does—like he’s some neighborhood legend. It’s different hearing it from a guy as young as Rich, though. He talks like him and Uncle Kenny were sparring partners in a past life.
I shift to the side and stare at his lush grass.
The twenty dollars I was supposed to toss at him to replace his cheap mason jar burns a hole in my pocket while I hang on to every word he says like some desperate girl.
I huff to myself.
I went through so much to get this damn twenty dollars. First, I asked Uncle Kenny, and he told me to ask Aunt Faye because he didn’t have it. But she stopped keeping money in her nightstand last summer because somebody broke into Old Man Hester’s house, so we had to stop and use Lucky’s ATM that she hated. Now I’ve lost all of my momentum because Rich has probably said more to me in the past two days than he’s ever said to Uncle Kenny, and that makes my palms sweat because Rich wasn’t supposed to want to talk to me. He was supposed to accept the money and the boundary I set, and we were supposed to move on.
He swipes a bead of sweat off his scarred cheek, and I think I need him to touch me again. Maybe if he does, I’ll remember all the ways I used to brush off all the other guys from Worthing when they tried to get my attention.
“You clean up that mess you left in there?” he asks, nodding toward his house.
A faint thump rocks between my legs, and I thrust my hip to the side to quell it.
I nod because I have this odd inkling to play along, but I can’t give Rich any clever flirtatious banter to hold on to. It doesn’t matter to him, though. He’s satisfied with my lackluster nod.
“C’mon then.” He waves his hand, walking toward the back of his truck.
He pats the truck’s tailgate, then hops onto it. “Come take a break from cleaning up and explain to me why you was gon’ stab me up with my fork and take off with my shit.”
I hesitate, looking around his backyard instead of moving.
A part of me searches for AJ, but all I hear is Yesenia reminding me I don’t need permission from a man to do anything anymore. She’d say I can do whatever I want.
Rich doesn’t rush me to move. He doesn’t even side-eye the way I stare around his backyard. Instead, he picks up the blunt he had waiting and pulls a lighter out of his pocket while I teeter back and forth like a loser. He doesn’t even make any gruff smartass comments, so I ignore my tender side and pull myself up onto the truck, doing my best to ignore every sore muscle in my abdomen. He side-eyes me when I let out a tiny gasp and grip the side of his truck before turning around and settling next to him.
As soon as I sit still, he pops open the smoothie’s lid and holds it toward me as smoke billows from the blunt between his fingers. “Faye feed you this morning?”
It’s another question that makes my treacherous middle throb.
“She did,” I mutter back.
He takes the cup back and puts it to his wet lips while I try not to stare at them. Instead, I narrow my eyes at the aggressive way his Adam’s apple bounces as he swallows. I even try concentrating on the yellowing leaf falling from the tree behind him, but my eyes still find their way back to his round lips.
He swipes his tongue against them and sets the cup down, taking another pull from the blunt.
Smoking is such a disgusting habit, but the tart, skunky scent makes me nostalgic for a time in my life that seems impossible to get back to, and his face reminds me of how far away I finally am from New York.
A heavy cloud of smoke flows from his nose as he eyes me again. “Why was you digging in my kitchen cabinets yesterday? I put up all the dishes before you came. There wasn’t nothing in there for you to clean.”
“I…I wasn’t digging,” I turn to look straight ahead. “I was looking for a cup.”
“For what?”
“To get something to drink. That’s what cups are for.”
When I don’t hear his deep voice belting out a comeback, I pull my eyes off the blade of grass and turn to glance back at him but he’s already staring at me—not at my face—but at the side of my abdomen where AJ’s bruise lives.
His fingers linger next to his mouth with the blunt dangling between them, like he stopped right as he was about to take a pull.
Finally, he blinks and moistens his already moist lips. “Don’t dig in my shit unless you want me to dig in yours. It seems like you found what you was looking for, right?”
I don’t think it’s a threat because threats don’t usually make my breasts feel heavy. I almost utter out a faint “right” just to hear what he’ll say back, but a pathetic “sorry” falls out of my mouth instead.
“You good.” He puts the blunt back to his lips and wrinkles his eyebrows as if he has more things he needs to scold me about, but he keeps it all buried inside his head with everything else he refuses to say out loud.
