by BB Easton
I nodded, feeling my cheeks turn scarlet with shame, and gave my mom a painful, grateful sideways hug. “I’m just gonna stop by work and pick up my check on the way home, okay?”
My mom said, “Okay,” and reminded me not to do too much. She wanted me home by dinner.
I shuffled over to my beloved and spent five minutes trying to figure out how to climb inside without it feeling like I was being stabbed in the side with an ice pick. As I flailed, my purse began to sing.
Doodleoodleoodleoodleoo.
I landed in the driver’s seat with a yelp, then dug my phone out of my bag. The caller ID showed Harley’s home phone number.
What the…
I answered on the second ring, “Hello?”
“’Sup, BB?”
“Dave?”
“The one and only. Hey, whatcha doin’ right now?”
“Uh…nothing? Why?”
“I was wonderin’ if you wanted to come over here and help me throw Angel’s shit out on the lawn. I’m kickin’ her crazy ass out.”
I knew that I was on painkillers and had had a rough couple of days, but Dave wasn’t making a goddamn bit of sense.
“Wait. What? Start over. You’re kicking somebody out, and you want my help? Dave, I got in a car accident with your brother. You know that, right? I literally haven’t even left the hospital yet.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I thought you’d want to come help me kick out the bitch who’s been livin’ with him.”
I stared out my windshield for a solid five seconds, waiting for a thought or a feeling to surface. I had nothing. I was one hundred percent unable to process that sentence. I just blinked at it, admiring the way the syllables sounded in my ears.
“BB?”
“I’m sorry. What did you say her name was?”
“Angel, but the bitch acts more like a ghetto swamp demon if you ask me.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Dave answered the door in a surprisingly good mood for a guy whose brother might be going to jail for life. He was wearing a white wifebeater, tight Wranglers, and had that navy-blue baseball cap with the fishing hook in the bill pulled down over his pretty eyes.
“Good to see you, girl. Get in here.” Dave went to give me a hug but stopped when I put my hands up defensively. “Oh, right. I forgot. You doin’ okay?”
I nodded and tried to return his smile despite the acidic ocean of dread churning in my gut. “Thanks for calling.”
Dave stepped aside to let me in. “I miss havin’ you around, girl. You’re way fuckin’ cooler than that other bitch. I figured she’d leave once Harley got locked up, but she just keeps showin’ up. Last night she even tried to fuck me to let her stay. Now, I’m not one to turn down free ass, but ass don’t pay my rent.”
“How long has she been living here?” I asked, looking around for some evidence I might have missed.
How have I been so blind?
“I dunno. She kinda came and went for a while, but she’s been livin’ here full-time ever since you stopped coming around. I just figured you musta found out about her and broke up with Harley. But then when I saw you with him at Empty Pockets, I knew that motherfucker was playin’ you.”
Dave pulled two beers out of the fridge, popped the tabs on both cans, and handed one to me. I knew I shouldn’t mix alcohol and painkillers, but fuck it, I needed a drink. Bad.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the beer with a small smile and wandering aimlessly into the living room.
I thought about the last time I’d seen Angel—at the track. How weird I’d thought it was that she was there. How weird it was the way that Harley had yelled at her. How weird it was that her brother’s gangster friends had just stood by like they were on Harley’s side.
It all made sense now. She was his fucking side chick, and everybody had known it but me.
“Sorry, B,” Dave said, following me into the living room. “I love him, but Harley’s a motherfucker. Always has been.”
Turning around, I took three long steps toward Dave and wrapped my arms around his waist. He lifted his hands, afraid to touch me at first, then gently held me while I gritted my teeth and tried not to cry.
“Thank you for telling me,” I murmured into his tank top. “I feel so fucking stupid.”
“I know what’ll make you feel better,” Dave said, humping me a little.
“Not that.” I giggled.
“Damn it,” Dave said with a chuckle. “Well, how ’bout we throw this bitch’s shit out on the lawn instead?”
“Deal,” I said, making a beeline for the bathroom. I might not have been able to lift much in my injured condition, but I could throw a purple toothbrush like nobody’s business.
Once all of Angel’s clothes and toiletries were scattered in Dave’s front yard, we sat in the lawn chairs under his oak tree and admired our work. The kiddie pool was full of mildew, and the inflatable palm tree had long since blown away, but it still felt good to sit and have a beer with my pervy friend Dave. The painkillers were nice, too.
“So what happened?” I asked. “At the pool hall?”
“Fuckin’ Smoke got paroled, that’s what happened.” Dave spat on the ground. “Smoke had the gun market on lockdown ‘til he got busted on some bullshit possession charge last year. While he was out of the picture, a few entrepreneurs—like m’self—saw an opportunity to make a few bucks. Supply and demand, you know?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t even nod like I knew.
“Well, as soon as he got out he went around deliverin’ messages to everybody sellin’ on his turf. That drive-by was just Smoke’s way of lettin’ us know that he’ll be takin’ his business back now.” Dave rolled his eyes and took a swig from his beer.
“You’re not worried?”
He shrugged. “I guess I was ‘bout ready to retire anyway.” A glimmer of sadness crept into his voice.
“Are you worried about Harley?” I asked, studying Dave’s profile.
“Harley?” Dave snapped, looking over at me. “Fuck no. That asshole lives like a king in jail. On the outside you gotta have a job and shit, but on the inside, hustlin’s your job. And there ain’t no better hustler than Harley.”
“Jesus,” I choked on my beer. “How many times has he been to jail?”
Dave snorted. “Prob’ly more times than you got fingers and toes to count ‘em on. This was actually the longest he’s been out since he was a kid. Used to get busted for boostin’ cars all the damn time.”
Oh my God, I’m such a fucking idiot! That’s it!
“Is that how Harley got the Boss?”
I knew I should shut up. I was asking way too many questions about shit I had no business being involved in, but that question had been plaguing me since the day I met Harley James—the twenty-one-year-old mechanic with the hundred-thousand-dollar car. I could have just come out and asked him how he got it, but I was afraid. Afraid that he would lie to me.
Afraid that he would tell me the truth.
“Actually,” Dave’s face fell. “Harley rebuilt that damn thing from the ground up. Our old man wasn’t really a part of our lives, but when he died Harley and I each inherited one of the old rust buckets they found in his garage. We weren’t even old enough to drive yet, but Mama let us keep ‘em in a shed out behind her house. I got the truck. Harley got the Boss.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. How did I not know that? How had I been in a relationship with a man for almost a year without finding out that his father had passed away? It’s not like he wouldn’t have told me.
I never found out because I never bothered to ask.
Dave took a sip from his can and gazed off into the woods. “Harley was obsessed with fixin’ up those damn cars. Fucker even started skippin’ school so that he could go steal car parts from the junk yard and teach himself how they worked. By the time he turned sixteen, he had both vehicles up and runnin’. ‘Course, he’
d also been to juvie at least three times by then too. Even after Mama kicked his ass out, she let him keep the Boss in her shed because she knew how much it meant to him.”
Well, I sure felt like a giant asshole.
“Damn, Dave. I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”
“It’s all right,” Dave interrupted. “Like I said, we weren’t real close.”
Somehow, I got the sense that that wasn’t true.
Not knowing what else to say, Dave and I sat in an awkward silence for the next few minutes, finishing off our beers and admiring the sea of purple bullshit scattered about us on the lawn. Maybe it was the mixture of Vicodin and cheap beer, but I felt…numb. I knew on an intellectual level that I should feel enraged about being cheated on, sad about Dave losing his dad and now his brother, conflicted about Harley going back to jail, worried about Knight’s weird, distant behavior, and freaked out about the final exams and graduation speech I needed to prepare for, but…I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything.
Until a beat-up, off-white, Buick Regal lowrider pulled into the driveway, that is. Then I felt all of it at once, doused in fear and lit with a match called jealousy.
Dave clapped his hands and stood up to greet our unwelcome guest. “Ha! Here’s the bitch now!”
Adrenaline shot out to my extremities, preparing them to flee or fight, but with three broken ribs I couldn’t do either one. I thought about standing up next to Dave to look like a unified front, but I decided to just stay sitting in my lawn chair. Partly because I knew standing up was going to hurt like hell, partly because if I didn’t stand up she couldn’t knock me down, and partly because I thought it would look more badass. Of course, it’s kind of hard to look badass when you have no makeup on, haven’t bathed in a week, have hair like a troll doll, weigh ninety-eight pounds, and are wearing the I heart New York T-shirt your mom brought you to wear home from the hospital.
As Angel threw the car in park, I braced myself for her wrath. I couldn’t believe I was right back where I’d been a year ago—about to get attacked by the bitch who was trying to steal my boyfriend. And it was the same bitch!
“What the fuck is this shit?!” Angel screamed as she came around the front of what I assumed was a hand-me-down hooptie from her brother.
She was wearing baggy Dickies that looked like they might have been Harley’s and a white cropped tank top that barely contained her massive tits. Her long, scraggly black hair spilled out from under a backwards LA Lakers ball cap and reached almost down to her elbows. I felt my cheeks burn and my pulse speed up as I pictured the way that hair had looked dangling from my fist when I’d confronted Harley about it. If I had known I was holding Angel fucking Alvarez’s hair I probably would have wrapped it around his neck and tried to strangle him with it.
Fucking asshole.
“Sorry, sugar,” Dave said with a shrug. “Looks like you just got evicted.” I couldn’t see his face from where he was standing, but I could hear the smugness in his voice.
Angel’s eyes flared as she looked at all of her shit strewn out across the overgrown lawn. Then they landed on me.
“You!” she screamed, pointing a long French-manicured fingernail directly at me. “This is all your fucking fault!” Angel’s voice took on a shrill pitch at the end, signifying that she was about to lose her shit.
Dave took a protective step in front of me, and said, “Home girl, you got five minutes to get your shit and go ‘fore I start burnin’ Kobe Bryant jerseys.”
Angel didn’t even hear him. Her dark brown eyes were trained on me and me alone. “Why do you keep doin’ this to me?” she shrieked. “It’s not fuckin’ fair! You don’t need them! You don’t need fucking anything!”
“What have I ever done to you?!” I snapped back.
Oh shit. I just poked the bear.
Angel cackled and rolled her eyes. “Your life is so fuckin’ perfect. You don’t need nobody protectin’ you. Ain’t nobody pimpin’ you out to gangstas and dealers at your house. Ain’t nobody smackin’ you in the mouth when you try to say no. I need a man who ain’t afraid to throw down for me, and every fuckin’ time I find one, yo ass got there first!”
Dave pretended to yawn and looked at his wrist. “Four minutes, bitch.”
“Angel,” I said, using the slow, soothing voice that usually, kind of, sometimes worked on Knight. “I’m sorry your home life is fucked up. I am. But lots of people have fucked up home lives, and they’re not out trying to fuck all my boyfriends!”
Welp, so much for soothing.
“Fuck you, bitch! Let’s do this!” Angel spread her arms wide and lunged forward, tits first, like she wanted to fight.
Dave blocked her advance with his body, then looked over his shoulder at me and said, “BB, be a doll and go grab my shotgun. It appears as though we got ourselves a trespasser.”
I knew what Dave was doing—he was getting me the fuck out of there, and I loved him for it. I stood up, trying not to let Angel see me wince in pain or shake in fear, gave her a little smirk, and sauntered back into the house with her cursing and lunging at me from behind Dave’s protective stance.
As soon as the door was shut firmly behind me, I leaned against it and burst into tears. My hands were trembling from the adrenaline. My newly-inflated lung burned with every gasp and hiccup. I was so fucking mad, and felt so fucking weak. I hated that I couldn’t just stick up for myself and pummel her face in. If Dave hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened. Angel said I didn’t need a man to protect me, but I did.
From her.
I peeked out from between the yellowed plastic blinds on the window next to the front door and watched Angel stomping around the front yard picking up armfuls of her belongings, cursing at Dave the entire time. He just stood there with a smartass smile on his face, pointing out things she’d missed. I could hear every snide little comment he made through those thin walls.
“Don’t forget your toothbrush. Looks like it landed over there in that pile of dog shit. Crazy, right? I mean, we don’t even have a dog.”
“You call yourself a Lakers fan and you don’t have a single Shaquille O’Neal jersey? What the hell? You think you’re too cool for the Shaq Attack?”
“No, I will not run away with you and be your new lover. Gah! Stop askin’, all right. It’s getting’ embarrassin’.”
By the time Angel shoved the last of her belongings into her trunk and peeled out of there my ribs hurt from laughing instead of crying.
Dave gave her a middle-finger salute, then sauntered back toward the house like Captain Big Dick, his chest all puffed up and proud.
I wiped my eyes on my ugly ass souvenir T-shirt and greeted Dave with a smile as soon as he walked through the door.
“Welp,” Dave said, clapping his hands together once for effect. “Looks like I’m in the market for a roommate. You in?”
I smiled. “Not after seeing what happened to the last two.”
After Dave and I said our goodbyes, I drove away a little stronger, a little braver, and with a lot more baggage. Literally. I had a wooden chair with skeleton upholstery riding shotgun and a jackalope wearing a purple bandana buckled into the back seat.
Looking out over the audience, I picked at the corner of my notecard and scanned the bleachers for familiar faces. Luckily, so few high school students graduated through East Atlanta College that my entire graduating class was able to fit on a portable stage in the middle of the basketball gym. If I’d graduated from Peach State High, I’d be giving a speech to a football stadium filled with people. The thought made me a little less nervous. It could have been so much worse.
I spotted Juliet and Goth Girl immediately. They were sitting all the way in the back—too cool, as usual—but they were holding up homemade signs that read, Vote for BB, and, BB for President. They were the world’s least enthusiastic cheerleaders, and I fucking loved them for it.
My parents had arrived late as shit—per their usual—so they were in the back a
s well.
I continued to scan the audience, desperately searching for a pair of scowling gray zombie eyes, but I knew he wasn’t coming. In fact, I had the letter to prove it—tucked away in the center console of my car, right where I’d found it.
I had just begun rereading the note from memory when my psychology professor, Dr. Raines, introduced me. He regaled the crowd with tales of my dedication—how I had come to class early every week to learn advanced therapeutic techniques and aced all of my final exams despite missing the last two weeks of school due to a car accident. What he didn’t tell them—because he didn’t know—was that I’d cheated my ass off during those make-up exams. I was pretty sure I would have done fine on my own, but why risk it? Four-point-oh grade point averages don’t grow on trees.
As I stepped up to the podium, I felt it. A crackle in the air. Notes of warm cinnamon just beyond the edges of my awareness. It was enough to give me hope.
Glancing down at the notecard in my hand, I took a deep breath and looked at my parents.
“When I came to East Atlanta College,” I said, wincing slightly at the sound of my own voice booming over the loud speakers, “I had one goal in mind—to get my six credits and get the hell out of here.”
That got a laugh from the crowd and even one from me when I saw my mom cover her face in embarrassment.
“But I got so much more than that…” I said, looking at Juliet and Goth Girl.
They shouted a lackluster, “Woohoo,” and held their signs up.
“I got an education.” I looked over at Dr. Raines, who smiled and pushed his glasses up his sweaty nose.
“Not just a list of names and dates to regurgitate for a test. Not just a few algebraic formulas that I will literally never use in my adult life. Ever.”
That got another chuckle from the crowd.
“See? Y’all know what I’m talking about.” I smiled at my dad, who seemed to agree with me the most. “No, I got a real education. I learned things that weren’t on the syllabus. That would never appear on any pop quiz. I learned about life.”
And near-death experiences. And dumpster burial techniques for imaginary death experiences.