Shit, he should be just as obsessed with pleasing her too. She came with Faye. They were a package deal.
Her name sits at the tip of my tongue and all the questions I couldn’t ask her in front of Donovan when we were at Lucky’s the other day come barreling up my throat. I hold them in even though I need to know if she found that ballplayer yet or if she finally felt brave enough to tell Kenny and Faye what he did to her. It doesn’t feel like she’s done either.
“How ‘bout it?” Kenny asks. “We’ll meet back here next Saturday and try again. How about you hang out here for a while and keep an eye on the boys? Just lock the place up when you’re ready to leave.”
His eyes flutter down to my clenched fist that hangs at my side. “Maybe next month we’ll talk about getting you in some gloves.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
LOVIE
“There’sother tiles that need to be mopped,” Aunt Faye utters, breezing past me in Ms. Vera’s kitchen.
I glance down at the one sparkling tile I’ve been dragging the mop across. “I know. This…this one just has one of those stubborn stains in the grout that you hate.”
“Mhmm. I bet it does. But it’s so shiny I can see my reflection in it now. I think you can move on.”
I fling the mop back into the bucket, wringing it. Afterward, I plop it back down onto the other tiles I neglected while she gossiped with Ms. Vera and “straightened up” the sunroom that she straightened up when we came on Monday. Every now and then when I walked past the doorway to check on the laundry, I’d hear their low murmurs.
“Maybe, her and the boy decided on an amicable breakup, Faye,” Ms. Vera said in her gravelly voice. “I mean, we’ve had some bad breakups back in our day that we ain’t wanna tell the world about. Shoot, you of all people should know that. I remember when you couldn’t even get up out of bed. I swear the pain just sat on you and wrapped you in its clutches.”
I shudder, dragging the mop across another tile.
There’s this nasty, bone-chilling feeling that came with me from New York. I don’t know why it’s on me or where it came from. All I know is that it clings to me like muck, and it even woke me up out of my sleep last night. I stumbled into the bathroom to hurl it into the toilet, but it’s so stubborn that it festers like the hot bruise on my side.
Aunt Faye leans against the wet counter and pulls her phone out of her pants pocket. She looks down at it with those same bags still sitting underneath her eyes.
She lied to Uncle Kenny again today. She told him she didn’t have any money for our lunch even though I gave her the wad of money Rich told me was hers. I’m not our family accountant, but I know that Aunt Faye has never been responsible for anything except her phone bill for all twenty-four years of my life, and now she says she’s broke.
She squints down at her phone with a smile. “Rich wants a cake for his birthday.”
She muttered the words to herself, but I heard them—I heardhim. I heard Rich after not hearing him for days after our run-in at Lucky’s. Uncle Kenny didn’t bring him up when we met him for lunch at Luby’s earlier, and Aunt Faye didn’t talk about him when we worked.
“What was that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow and looking up at her.
“Nothing. I was talking to myself. You never talk to yourself?”
“Not in front of other people.”
She rolls her eyes. “You got a mouth like your mama. You know that?”
“You’ve been telling me that since I could talk.”
“‘Cause it’s the truth. Sonia had a mouth so smart, Mama used to pop her right on the lips, and then I’d ask if I could pop her too. I should of did the same to you.”
I huff. “Whatever.”
Hearing Mama’s name again makes that nasty, mucky feeling cling tighter to my chest. It’s been so long since I heard it this often, it almost sounds like another language. It’s not that it’s a unique name, but somehow during the time I was in New York, I only ever heard it once in the hallway outside of Yesenia’s cubicle after not hearing it at all for so long.
“So, what kind of cake does he want?” I mutter.
“Who?”
“Rich.”
I hate that his name soothes my dry throat as soon as I say it.
