“I don’t put anything past you. You got the balls to fuck—” She stops as soon as she notices me and Ky walking up on them.
I try to hand Ky to her, but she recoils as if he doesn’t deserve to be touched so delicately. Rich grabs him instead and presses his mouth to his cheek until Ky lets out another raspy laugh as if he’s forgotten all about Jeremy’s silly little insult.
Rich plops him back down next to his mama and stoops to his level. “What you gon’ do when you go back to school, lil’ man?”
Ky looks at him with wide eyes as if he’s looking at a real-life superhero. “Walk with my head up.”
“That’s right.” Rich swipes the top of his head.
That anecdote doesn’t satisfy his mama. She smacks her lips and balls her mouth up.
She wants revenge on little Jeremy, and I think I do too, but I don’t think Rich would have that because he’s a man and men don’t internalize all the innocuous little crap that women do.
She narrows her eyes at Rich. “So you’re gonna let me bring him to Lucky’s on Sunday and get him around some grown men, right?”
He pushes up and swipes his hand across Ky’s head, massaging his identical waves. “Lucky’s ain’t no place for a baby. You of all people should know that. Take him up to the rec and sign him up for basketball like I told you to do last month.”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
RICH
Lovie staresat Ky like she wants to keep him while Rasheeda walks him out of my backyard.
Lovie.
That’swhat Faye said her name was in that voice message.
“I know you’re headed over to Doctor Borrowitz’s office to get that mouth handled!” she yelled over the loud buzzing from their washing machine. “But I’m sending my niece, Lovie, to take care of the house while I go run a few errands and check on your daddy at Beatrice’s. Just so you know—Ken is trippin about her being over there…”
She never finished what she had to say, but she didn’t have to. Any man with a baby that looked like Lovie would trip over her roaming around some random man’s house by herself, whether she was cleaning it or not.
The wind blows a curly piece of her baby hair. She reaches up and smooths it back with her bandaged fingers while I inhale her scent that the wind picked up. She smells fresh, like she rolled in a field of lavender.
Lovie is an ironic ass name for her to have because she doesn’t look loved at all. She looks lost more than anything, and even though she ain’t some random woman anymore, she’s still “Slim” to me—little bitty, whiskey-eyed, and younger than me. I hear it in her light voice. It bounces from proper to twangy in a natural rhythm. And she has a stutter that makesmyheart stutter a little. All of it reminds me that she’s off-limits unless I wanna start some shit between Faye and Kenny.
Rasheeda’s car engine hums to life in my driveway, and Slim scoffs. “Well, wasn’t she just a ray of sunshine and…ass.”
Afterward, she turns around with a frown. “What does she mean, ‘take him to Lucky’s?’ Take him to Lucky’s and do what? Get gas?”
Her nosy questions make me forget any smartass comebacks because Faye’s obviously been keeping her under lock and key. I get it, though. Slim is too soft to know about a hard place like Lucky’s, and Faye lives over on Chantilly now. Folks over there look at Lucky’s like it’s Bayou Crest’s dirty little open secret and they treat fighters like we’re pariahs.
“She just talking,” I reply, waving my hand. “Go get in my truck.”
“Huh?”
I point to the front passenger door. “Go get in.”
“Why? What’d I do?”
She doesn’t even wanna know where I’m taking her, but she wants to know what she did wrong.
I shake my head. “You ain’t do nothing at all. Just go get in.”
She stands stock-still and stares at me until I turn around and walk toward the passenger side of my truck. I pull the door open, letting the music that’s playing spill out.
She stares back at my house and then at my truck like she doesn’t want whatever we just did to end, even though it wasn’t supposed to have happened. I shouldn’t have let Smitty’s ass getin my head, and I shouldn’t have let her hang around here long enough for her to feel like she’s not supposed to leave.
