“The first step to throwing apunchis to be brave enough to ball your fist up.” He smirks, looking at my hand hanging off the door handle.
He lifts his balled hand higher, and I pull my hand from the door, clenching it into a fist and waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. I don’t feel brave enough to pound it into anybody.
I think he’s prolonging our time together, and I’m falling for it, even though I’m not supposed to, because he’s just like all the other guys Uncle Kenny brought into our lives.
He leans over and hooks his index finger underneath my tucked thumb.
“Thumb goes on the outside,” he says, tugging it. “That generic enough for you?”
I laugh, nodding.
“You tough,” he adds, leaning back into the driver’s seat. “You know that, right?”
“That sounds nice.”
He snorts out a laugh. “Just know this—if you wasn’t tough, you would’ve gave up on leaving when you didn’t get away the first time. Now go.”
This time when I turn to leave, I don’t look back even when my fumbling stomach urges me to. I push out of his truck, slide down and slam the door closed. As soon as I’m alone outside, I gulp in the crisp pre-fall air, glancing around.
The Commons is emptier than I remember it being. In the two years I’ve been gone, a beauty supply store replaced Rawlings Pharmacy, and now the beauty supply store has a “for lease” sign in one of its empty windows. Now Terrica’s shop, Copeland’s Bakery, and the Citi Trends that anchors the shopping center are the only businesses left.
Terrica’s baby blue Beamer is parked in its usual place, three parking spots over in a handicapped space with her mama’s handicapped decal hanging from the rearview mirror. The car still looks as new as it did when we went to pick it up from the dealership Meechie worked at in Upper Kirby. It was Terrica’s first big-girl purchase, and seeing it makes me long for the days we spent joyriding around the city before AJ put a stop to it.
I step underneath the drab beige awning just as the wind blows a ball of napkins and dirt across the empty sidewalk. When I glance over my shoulder, Rich’s truck is still there. I can’t see him through the dark tint on his windows until he leans over the steering wheel and looks right at me. He twirls his finger, signaling me to turn around.
I do it and pull the door handle to her shop, but it jams. Right when I try to give it another yank, Terrica’s thick silhouette appears behind the glass.
She swipes her hands down her leggings, twists the lock, and pulls the door open with a frown. “Lovie?”
Her almond eyes glide over my sneakers first, then brush the rest of my body and stop on my face.
“Hey…” I mutter.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I’m…I’m visiting for a while and figured I’d stop by,” I reply breathlessly.
She looks past me at Rich’s truck and frowns before moving to the side to let me in. As soon as I step inside, she slamsthe door behind me and locks it back, wafting the smell of edge control and developer up my nose.
There’s distance between us that wasn’t there before because AJ stopped trusting her a month after my move to New York, so that meant I had to stop trusting her too. I couldn’t feel the distance from so many miles away, but now my day of reckoning is here and I want to throw up all over her shiny tiled floors.
There’s nobody in her chair, but she has her iPad propped up on her vanity playing some Tyler Perry movie we’ve seen a thousand times.
I idle by the door and wait for the hug that I know won’t come. She doesn’t even dust her chair off for me to sit in so she can inspect my hair and tell me everything I’m doing wrong with it. Instead, she walks back behind the chair and picks up the braiding hair she was separating before I came.
After a beat, she looks up at me, pursing her glossy lips and raising her eyebrows. “Pup? Really?”
“Pup?”
“Rich Lovelace.” She huffs, pointing her thumb toward the parking lot. “That’s who dropped you off, ain’t it? That’s his truck.”
Lovelace?
Dang, even his last name is attractive.
“Oh, yeah—Rich.” I shake my head, tapping my palm against my forehead, remembering the nickname Ky blurted. “You know him?”
“I know enough to stay away from him no matter how fine he is.”
