“When was the last time you ate?” he repeated, stepping closer to crowd my personal space. “You got to take care of yourself.”
I sucked my teeth and brushed past him. “I’m fine.”
“You always say that,” he said, following behind me.
Knowing it would do no good to argue, I went straight to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, and grabbed bread and chips, then a pack of lunch meat from the fridge.
I made two sandwiches, one for him and one for me, then went to the living room and sat on the floor. Booda took his seat across from me, and I slid one plate his way without looking at him.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“Do what?” I asked, looking up.
“Take care of me before you take care of yourself.”
I rolled my eyes and took a bite of my sandwich. “It’s just food. Don’t read too much into it.”
He didn’t say anything for a long while. Just watched me eat.
“You remember how bad shit got not long after we met?” he asked.
I kept chewing and didn’t answer.
“The feds hit that shipment,” he went on. “The biggest one I had at the time. Shit was gone in hours.”
He let out a breath through his nose.
“One minute I’m up. Next minute, I’m barely staying afloat.”
I glanced at him but stayed quiet.
“I thought you was gon’ leave,” he admitted. “Swear I did. I had already made peace with it.”
He shook his head, a faint smile pulling at his mouth.
“But you ain’t go nowhere. You stayed. Held me down when I couldn’t even get out of my own head.” His hand fisted in his jeans before relaxing. “That loss fucked with me.”
He leaned back, eyes drifting for a second.
“The plug was on my ass about that money, but I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was thinking about you.”
His gaze came back to me.
“Niggas could’ve killed me, I would’ve been fine with that. But if anybody had touched you…” His words trailed off before he huffed a short laugh. “I was ready to wipe out whole families behind you.”
A beat passed.
“Then you came to me, talking about robbing the city like it was nothing.” He shook his head, a real smile breaking through. “That’s when I knew. I said, yeah… that’s my wife.”
He rubbed his jaw, thinking back.
“Man, we were different when we were broke. We paid attention to everything. Who had it, who didn’t, and nothing got past us.”
“I don’t know what you talking about,” I said, a half-smile creeping in as I let myself drift with him.
“Yeah, you do.” He grinned.
I shook my head and reached for my chips. “You need to let that go. That stuff’s behind us.”
