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“Finance?”
“Maybe. Something where I could take money and make it multiply.”
“What about you?” I took a sip of wine. “You wake up one day and decide you wanted to spend your life reading contracts?”
“Hell nah. I wanted money.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“My mama was a teacher, and my dad worked construction. We weren’t poor, but I knew exactly what we could and couldn’t afford. I was one of those kids that noticed everything.”
“So you became a lawyer.”
“I became obsessed with having options. Law gave me options.”
“Corporate?”
“That’s where I started originally. I realized that I didn’t enjoy making already powerful corporations more powerful.”
“So you left?”
“Yeah, I started taking private clients, business owners and real estate investors. People who had built something and needed somebody to make sure they didn’t lose it because they signed the wrong paperwork.”
“That’s how you met Rah?”
He nodded. “He came to me over a property deal. He didn’t trust me at first.” Lloyd laughed. “He told me at our first meeting that I looked like the nigga that would charge five hundred dollars to give him advice on some shit he could’ve googled.”
I covered my mouth laughing.
“That sounds just like him.”
“I told him he could walk his ass out and google the shit, but don’t call when his ass got locked up. From that day on we were locked in.”
Our food came before the conversation could get heavier, and I was glad for the interruption. We changed the subject and ended up talking about traveling, music, and the city. By dessert, I realized that I had been sitting in the restaurant for almost two hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Lloyd hadn’t tried to touch me or turn the conversation into something it wasn’t. We just talked like friends. The waitress came and placed the check down on the table. Before I could reach for it, Lloyd grabbed it.
“Don’t make me mad. I told you I was paying,” I said.
“I know what you said, Kyenna. I’m also a man.”
“So all that fair shit earlier was you lying?”
“I prefer to call it delaying the disagreement until after we ate.”
“This is crazy,” I said.
“You invited me to dinner because you thought you owed me.”
“Of course, you’ve done a lot for me. So, I do owe you.”
“I don’t need repayment for answering your phone calls and giving advice, Kyenna. I just wanted to spend some time with you.”
“Lloyd.”
“Don’t make it more than what I said, Kyenna. I respect your boundaries.”
The waitress came and took the card and then returned for Lloyd to sign the receipt. We walked out to valet, and I expected the energy between us to be weird, but it wasn’t.
“I had a good time,” he said.
