“Wendell. What did he have to sa?—”
“I ain’t ask. I ain’t the judge or the jury or nothing like that, you know what I’m sayin? I’m ju?—”
“Just a stupid man. I know,” I garble out, twisting around in his lap and finally reaching out to touch a part of him.
I drop my fingers on his head, raking them across his coarse waves, being careful not to disturb their pattern as the water in the creek ripples toward Crestwood Bayou.
“Is it my turn now?” he asks.
“For?”
“You asked me so many questions I lost count. This is reciprocal, remember?”
“Yeah.” I snort. “I remember.”
He taps my bruised side. “So how’d he do it?”
I sigh. “He did exactly what you said I should never let a man do.”
The words tumble out of my mouth with ease and the low hum he lets out makes me scoot closer into him until he grabs my sides to hold me still.
“It happened in our closet.”
My body grows stiff as if I’m back in our closet in New York, stumbling into AJ’s coats as he stalks toward me. I hold my breath, waiting for Rich to say something. Instead, his head lolls to the side, and he stares at me while my fingers slide against his hair.
No man has ever been this quiet after asking me a question. They always have a rebuttal, a disinterested gaze, or did their best to contort my words to make them fit their own agenda, but they’ve never given me the space to just keep talking.
“It was my fault. I knew what would set him off, and I did it anyway. I asked him why he was coming home at three in the morning when I could only leave the apartment to do the things he felt I needed to do to keep him satisfied with me—like get my nails done because he hates them bare, get a wax because a bush disgusts him, or a silk press because my curls are too much.” My eyes glaze over with more tears that won’t fall. “I think people have it in their heads that it’s always something complicated that starts it, but it’s always the tiniest thing—a look, a comment, the wrong move, the wrong question. After that, it’s like a chain reaction, and before you know it, you’re picking yourself up off the floor wondering how you learned to take a foot to the rib from a grown man.”
He hums softly in response.
“I feel stupid for what I’m about to say…but that kick was the last straw. I left a week later. I walked right out of our front door with just the clothes on my back.”
Crickets chirp and the water ripples while my ugly confession hangs in the air.
“Are you gonna say anything?” I ask.
He blinks at me with a smirk, shaking his head.
“Why not?”
“Why you care what I have to say? It’s your story.”
“I…I don’t know. It just feels weird recounting it all to you and not hearing a response.”
He glances at my hand, covering it with his and squeezing my fingers into a ball. “The next time you ball your fist up, don’t stop to ask a man what he’s thinking before you hit him—just lift it up and bury the motherfucka. Bury it right in his mouth so he’ll never make you assume you should stop telling your story to hear his. Be selfish and make him pay.”
“But what if I want to hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Hear what this man thinks about my life before he found me in his kitchen?”
He chuckles, flashing his bloody teeth. “Shit, I think it was beautiful—even the ugly parts. But what do I know? I’m just a stupid ass man that hates another stupid ass man for teaching you how to take a foot to the rib.”
He folds his bottom lip under his teeth.
It’s twice the size it was when we were at Worthing, and now I want to taste it more than I want to taste his gums. His mouth relaxes and it pops from under his teeth like it knows what I’m thinking.
