A lump as nasty as that mucky feeling forms in my throat.
Go?
I blink up at him.
I know I look like that lost puppy Mr. Copeland described when he talked about a baby Rich following his daddy around, because I didn’t plan anything further than this. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? There’s no “me and Terrica” anymore, and I don’t know how to explain that to Aunt Faye either.
Rich looks from me to the man hanging outside his truck’s window, tapping his fingers against the driver’s side door.
He huffs. “C’mere real quick. Lemme get rid of him.”
I shuffle behind him with sweaty palms while he totes all of our stuff in his hands. When we approach the truck, he leans into the window, holding on tight to the cake.
The man glances down at the cake box, then reaches out, turning the volume down to the blues he has playing. “I ain’t mean to interrupt.”
“You good.” Rich cuts his hard eyes at me, but I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me.
“Who you is?” the man asks, following Rich’s gaze and looking over at me.
“Lov—”
“What’s up, man? What you need?” Rich cuts in.
My breezy smile falters at the hard stare Rich gives him while bitter cigarette smoke filters from the lit cigarette burning in the ashtray in his cupholder.
Rich leans closer into the truck, easing his forearm on the ledge of the window, forcing me out of the frame. The low hum of the blues and the truck’s engine fills the silence between the three of us.
Rich blinks at the man until he flashes that gap-toothed smile again.
“Beatrice sent me around here to look for you,” he says.
“What she doing that for?”
“She say you usually be over there by now to see your daddy and she was getting worried.”
Rich twists his lips, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye like he’s thinking about each of his words before he says them in front of me.
I lean forward to listen more closely.
The man picks up his cigarette and takes a drag. “You still plan on stopping by?”
Rich shrugs.
He blows a big cloud of hazy smoke through his wide nostrils. “Well, she say she got something she need your help with.”
“Something like what?”
He sits the cigarette back in the ashtray. “You know she ain’t gon’ tell me much about what’s going on at that house. She told me to come down here to look for you, so I came.”
Afterward, he leans forward and pushes the truck’s gearshift up, making Rich step back with the cake. He tugs the side of my dress to pull me with him.
The man doesn’t give any parting words before he turns the music back up and speeds off, leaving a trail of smoke from his truck’s exhaust pipe swirling behind him.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
RICH
