“None taken.” He smiles goofily. “Dad can’t even leave it to me in his will anymore.”
“Well, in the Church of Lovelace, you supposed to take care of your people because there might be a day where they gotta take care of you. C’mere,” I say.
She shuffles closer to me, eyeing the inch of space between our arms.
Donovan drops his finger on the list of names. “These are all the people who have tabs here at Lucky’s. Pops keeps their name, number, address, and the amount they owe.”
She chews on her bottom lip, glancing at the list and then up at me. “What’s this got to do with you?”
“He settles them,” Donovan chirps before I can blurt out some silly lie to appease Slim’s nosiness.
She gives him an “Oh, really?” look. “I still don’t understand.”
“You know how sometimes folks leave their change at the counter for the next person that might need it?” I ask.
She nods, resting her head in her hands.
I shrug. “It’s kind of the same thing.”
“People usually leave nickels and dimes—not hundred dollar bills.” She raises her eyebrows with a smile and nudges the “tithe stack.”
“You know, with great power comes great responsibility,” Donovan blurts.
“Did you just quote Spider-Man?” She snorts out a chuckle, looking from him to me. “Did he just insinuate that you’re like Spider-Man?”
Redness crawls across Donovan’s face and he shrugs. “Sorry. I’m a Webhead and I thought we were still doing the whole movie reference thing.”
They smile at each other and his eyes run away from hers.
Donovan is a square. When he turned eighteen, Lucky started letting him drive from their house in Cypress four days a week to work in the store when he wasn’t taking classes at the community college. I like that Donovan’s a square, though. Senior said there ain’t enough of them in the neighborhood so I need to respect the ones we have—but for the first time I don’t wanna treat Donovan like anything other than the nigga he is because of the way he keeps blushing when Slim talks.
I shouldn’t be like that, though.
Him and Slim look like they fit together. Not because they’re both nerds, but because Donovan is easy. Senior would say he’s what Slim needs in this lifetime—an easy man she can walk all over until they’re old and grey.
I push the stack of money toward her. “You got five hundred dollars to work with.”
She reaches out, thumbing through the bills with her head cocked. “This wouldn’t happen to have come from that jar you keep in your kitchen cabinet, would it?”
“Don’t matter where it came from—all that matters is what you decide to do with it.”
“Can I at least know why they owe Lucky?”
“Sur—”
“Nah.” I cut off Donovan with my eyebrow raised. “That ain’t none of our business.”
“I mean, it should be your business if you’re spending your money on their debts, but what do I know?” She blows out a raspberry, eyeing the names and tapping her bandaged nail against one. “What the hell did somebody spend two hundred dollars on at a gas station?”
Me and Donovan glance at each other and then at the eight-liners in the back of the store, shrugging at the same time.
“I should probably pick the women and kids, right? I mean, it’s the right thing to do.” She looks up at me.
“Whatever you want.”
“But it’s your money, you should have some say?—”
I reach out, brushing back that same wild, curly piece of baby hair the wind kept blowing when she was at my house last week. Her dimples sink deeper into her cheeks as she frowns harder and lets me rake my fingers through the rest of her tangled curls. The brief contact satisfies the rest of those childish tingles I had leftover from the fourth grade.
