She folds her lips under her teeth, nodding. “Yes, you beautiful psychopath…and I’m still signed into my Uber account on that phone, but keep it cute. I don’t got New York Knights money,heffa.”
I chuckle and she sighs, tilting her head and eyeing me as if she knows it’ll be a very long time before I can stomach anything that reminds me of New York again—even her.
“Go put yourself back together, Lovie. That’s what my stupid,blanquitatherapist says I’m doing. It’s kind of like callingyourself a survivor instead of a victim. It’s supposed to unfuck your mind, I guess.”
“I thought we hated therapy speak?”
She laughs. “We do, but for some reason, when she told me that last week, I thought of you.”
CHAPTER
TWO
Lucky’s Auto & Food Mart
Bayou Crest
Houston, Texas
RICH
I can’t hear.
After the secondthumpto my face, a high-pitched ring echoes through my eardrums and drowns out the yelling around me. Now all I see are mouths moving every time my face gets knocked to the left and to the right.
I choke out a grunt, fighting through the stinging pain in my jaw after another jab lands on the side of my face.
My head flies back.
I stumble until it stops spinning, but I don’t fall.
This is the part where darkness is supposed to come, but it never happens. I never understand what folks mean when they say they “black out” at Lucky’s. Shit, if anything, my world gets brighter here.
Crimson red blood dribbles down the side of Darryl's head in a slow crawl as he throws a jab at my nose.
I duck it.
The white crust around his lips cracks as he opens his mouth, flashing his deep maroon gums and missing front tooth.
He throws a right hook.
It lands on the area of my jaw that Dr. Borrowitz says I need to baby.
Another hardthumprocks my skull, and Darryl calls me a “bitch” under his breath—at least I think he did. All I know is that his floppy lips moved and spit trickled out.
All of my comebacks float around in my head, but never come out. Arnez always says only a weak motherfucka got time to pillow talk in the pit and it ain’t like I can talk anyway.
“Stop playin around, Pup!” she yells.
The bitter taste of metal seeps through the wires in my mouth when I step forward, bend, and take a body shot at Darryl. My knuckles crack from being sandwiched between the pressure of the punch and the part of his body where Senior says a man holds all of his breath. It’s like landing a jab on a brick wall with nothing but tape to absorb the impact.
He stumbles into me.
His eyes balloon into big yellow circles while he tries to hold himself up with my body.
I push him off and bury my fist into his scarred face. It’s a lot softer than his chest, so I feel all the little details that come with sinking my fist into it, like his front tooth cracking and the soft tissue of his nose caving under the pressure.
“Yeah, he ain’t talking no more!” Arnez hollers, breaking through the silence in my head. “Put his ass on the floor so we can go home, Pup. We need that. The bills is due.”
