“Your grandmother? I see.” Now I’m too curious not to ask. “What about your parents? What was up with them? Were they on drugs or something? Was that why they kept moving?”
“Not really,” she says. And then she says something heartbreaking. “They just didn’t want to be bothered with me.”
She’s so matter-of-fact about such an awful fact that it throws me a little. Nobody’s that strong. “Why wouldn’t they want to be bothered with you? Because you took away the sunshine?”
She laughs. “I guess so,” she says as if it doesn’t bother her at all. “I don’t know why I turned them off. I guess I wasn’t what they were hoping for,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
I can tell she doesn’t want to say, but I’m in it now. I baited her and I’m not letting her off the hook.
And, like always, I stay silent and she talks. “It’s a colorism thing,” she says.
I look at her. “A what?” What the fuck is colorism?
“Both of my parents were very what we call high-yellow, okay? Very light-skinned. They thought they were going to have this baby in their own image, or color, I guess, but then my black ass pops out.”
I laugh.
“And my dad spends most of my childhood insisting that my mom stepped out with some dark dude they call Black, and my mom’s insisting I was some cruel joke to get my dad to stop loving her. It was craziness on top of craziness on top of lunacy. But that was my childhood. They eventually broke up, and went their separate ways. Neither wanted me, but my mama had no choice. Pop was gone. And then my grandma rescued me from my mother, and I started living with her. I saw my mother during the summers, but it never went very well.”
“It’s a terrible story,” I say. “And I know what it’s like to have a terrible mother. But at least I had a great father.”
“He’s the guy they call Big Daddy around here?”
I smile. “That’s Pop.”
“I hate to tell you this, but I’ve been hearing nothing but horror stories about your father. They say I never wanna rent any of his properties because he’ll kick you out for no reason.”
“They’re lying. He’ll kick you off of his properties, now. That part is true. But it’s always for a reason. They just don’t like the fact that he doesn’t let them get away with their bullshit. And he doesn’t. Doesn’t let me or my siblings get away with ours either.”
She smiles. “Haters are gonna hate, aren’t they?”
“You know it.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. I’ll bet he tune their asses out. Because that’s always how gossip goes. Most of it’s bullshit.”
I like this girl. She’s smart. Not that she has degrees or anything highbrow like that: I saw her resume. But she comes across as self-taught. As somebody who got what she needed from books without bragging about it. And she’s Street-smart too? The world may see her as some poor, pathetic statistic with nothing going for herself. But I see her differently. She’s got a lot going on. “Was your grandmother good to you?” I ask her. I’m still worried about that little girl who wasn’t loved.
Rain nods, but I can tell she’s not a hundred percent about that either. “She was aw’ight,” she finally says. “She was just really old and not able to raise a hyper kid like me. But she kept me in church, and taught me right from wrong. She did the best she could.”
“And after that?”
“After that, I grew up. Thought I was grown and got pregnant when I was seventeen. Had my share of struggles but tried to make the best out of the hand I was dealt. Ayden helps. That’s my son.”
“Ayden. Okay. He seems like a very precocious young man.”
She didn’t appear certain what precocious meant, and I was immediately sorry for using that word. But then I realize she knows exactly what the word means. That’s not why she’s hesitating.
“Yeah,” she says, “he’s like a little man he’s so advanced for his age.”
That’s what I like about her. She doesn’t flaunt her intellect. She doesn’t flaunt anything! She let people believe whatever they want to believe about her, and just keep her head down and do what she has to do. I’ve never, not ever, met a woman quite like her.
But there’s a sadness in her eyes when she talks about her boy. And I’m wondering if it’s because of what I saw in the Hub the other day.
I decide to go there. “He walks with a limp,” I say to her.
She looks at me as if I just accused him of something bad. But that seems to be a reflex. Maybe people are just always picking on the kid or something because that look leaves as fast as it came. And she nods her head. “Yes,” she says.
“What happened?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, as if she still can’t pull herself to even think about it. “Wrong place, wrong time,” she says. “He got shot, and the bullet caused damage to his spine. It affects how he walks sometimes.”
I want more from her, but she’s not giving it. So, I don’t press either.
And we talk. About my enormous record collections. About her fear of everything crawling, from spiders to anything else. About why a man like me, a man not forty yet, would want the heavy burden of running an entire city. A small one. But still an entire town. I don’t have answers for her. Just platitudes. Bullshit, in other words, about wanting to help people and do good for a town I love.
But she’s feeling me. She knows I’m bullshitting. “Sure, buddy,” she says, and we both laugh.
And we eat. And we talk some more. And talk some more. But I’m noticing she’s barely touching her meal. She’ll scrape up a fork-full, but then catch herself and eat half of that. And I think I know why. She’s not the type to try to impress me by eating like some bird. That ain’t her. She’s planning to take food home to her kid. Now that’s her. At least that’s the image I have of her.
So, here I come to the rescue again. And it’s strange because I don’t even like rescuing people. I figure you’re an adult: you need to handle your own business. But then why the fuck am I always so willing to rescue her? And she never even asks for it!
But maybe that’s why.
“What do you think your son will like?” I ask her.
She looks at me with those big, cat eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks me.
“Here. On the menu. What do you think he would like to eat?”
She smiles that arresting smile. “Everything,” she says, and we both laugh.
“But seriously, pick something out,” I say to her. “We’ll order him a meal to go and you can take it home with you.”
Now she’s got that look again. That cross between wonderment and suspicion. Like she’s wondering who is this dude to want to help her son. But she’s loving the fact that somebody is looking out for him. Other than herself, of course.
“Thanks,” she says, “but I’ll just save him some of mine. I don’t think I can eat it all anyway.”
“Sure you can,” I say as I’m motioning for the waitress to come over. “And you will,” I add, and give her a hard look. Why I’m so possessive of this woman is strange to both of us. But what I like about Rain is that she’s a practical person. She doesn’t fight it when it makes sense. The waitress comes, she tells me what she thinks her son will like, and I order it for him to go. It’s that simple.
And just as I suspected, after we get that settled, she cleans her plate.
But we linger. Still talking about shit as mundane as the weather. Until it’s all over and we’re heading outside. Neither one of us, it seems, want the date to end.
That’s why I go there. And yes, it’s probably because I want her naked, in my bed, under me. But mostly I just want her with me.
I button my suit coat as we walk across the grass to her car on the side of the road. It’s badly wrecked in the front, but she says it’s still very much drivable. But when she unlocks her door and sit down on the driver seat, behind the wheel, and her door is still open, I crouch
down. “How about coming over to my place, and I show you my collection?” I ask her. My eyes are staring into hers, as if collection has a meaning that has nothing to do with records.
We discussed groups from our respective childhoods. I told her about my different record collections and my compilations. She was impressed. But right now, she’s looking at me like no way I’m asking her something like that. But I know she’s sizing me up too. She’s deciding if I’m a good’un, as some of the locals call it, or just bad. She’s deciding if I’m in it because she owes me, because I want her body, or something entirely different. She’s still got that Street in her, just like I do. Mine has been cleaned up and polished up for years. Hers is just getting scrubbed. But it’s the same feeling. That feeling that no matter what people say, or where they’re coming from, they always got an angle.
But then she surprises the hell out of me, after staring at me long enough. “Why not?” she says.
I smile. She has guts too. She’s willing to give something new a try. “I’ll get my car and come over,” I tell her, “then you follow me.” And I’m like walking on a cloud as I walk to my car. And I’m feeling a feeling I can’t even describe. A kind of goofy, unfiltered, unrehearsed happiness. I feel happy. I haven’t felt happy for a long, long time. It’s even bordering on giddiness. I’m actually giddy like some fucking nerd!
What the fuck is this?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He drives a Mercedes. Why am I not surprised? I’m actually in my hoopdee, following behind a man who drives a Mercedes, going to wherever his house might be. Why I agreed to do it still don’t make no sense to me. But I looked at him, when he asked me, and there was something about his eyes. I’ve always been a sucker for big, beautiful eyes. But it was even more than that. Up close, his eyes looked so kind!
But it’s not just that. I can’t even lie. My saying yes has a lot to do with the fact that he helped me out of that jam when I wrecked that man’s car. And helped me get my job. And thought about Ayden, and bought him a to-go meal. I can count on my hand how many men in my life ever gave a damn about Ayden. I don’t even need a hand to count, because it’s zero!
Not that this man gives a damn. But at least he thought about Ayden. At least he did help me out of that jam the other day. And all he’s asking is for me to go home with him and check out his record collection. How am I gonna tell a guy no who came through for me to the tune of hundreds of dollars in repair cost? And yeah, he’s the mayor and all that. And maybe it makes him look good helping some poor woman in distress. But he still didn’t have to do it.
And he said I only have to pay him back twenty-five dollars a month until I can make more money? Wow. That’s saying something right there. And I’m no naïve simpleton. I know it could be mainly saying he just wanna get in my panties. I’ve never met a man who didn’t. And I mean that’s all they wanted! Did they want to get to know me as a person and not just my ass and my breasts and what’s between my legs? Did they ever love me for me, and care for me? Hell no. Like never. What makes him so different?
As I’m driving, as I’m following that big, beautiful, powerful man in his big, beautiful Mercedes, I’m figuring he’s no different either. They never are. He’ just got the money to pretend he is.
That feeling of dread comes over me again, and I’m feeling bad again. Why do some people get everything, and people like me don’t get shit? I’m not a bad person. I don’t go around trying to hurt people or make people feel bad about themselves. I don’t tear people down to build myself up. I’m not that girl and never will be. Because I know that shit will boomerang and comes back on me. And the love of a man? What’s that? I’ve fallen for plenty men in my thirty years on this earth. Some good looking. Some not so good looking. Some smart. Some not so smart. Some with a good job and decent money. Some always asking me to help cover their rent, or their light bill, or can they hold a twenty to get some gas. But not one of them ever loved me back. They used me for my body. For what they could get from my little paycheck. But never just because I’m me and they like me just the way I am.
And that history, that long, painful history, caused me to lower my standards. And I mean to the bottom low. I went from wanting a man who would love me and give me the world, to any man will do. They didn’t even have to love me. If they liked me a little, and showed it sometimes, that, I thought, was enough.
But it wasn’t. Because I was taking all their cheating bullshit and verbal abusive bullshit and stealing from me bullshit. And I was thinking are you nuts? I got out of all of those relationships. I left all of those guys. But I left with a lot less than what I came with every time.
I’m wiping tears away now, as I’m driving, because I know I’m about to get more of the same. He’s not taking me to his house to show me no damn record collection. He knows it, and I know it too. He wants to show me that big-ass dick he’s got, and I’m gonna show him my skills that all those men before him claim I’ve got. That’s what this is about.
And I’m wishing I was one of those women who can just say fuck it and go with the flow. At least he looks like he knows his way around a woman’s body, and will probably give me the fuck of my life because I ain’t never been with no rich boy before. And good looking? And big and muscular too? I should be getting wet just thinking about what that man can do to me.
But I’m not that kind of woman. Because my heart always gets in the way and I’ll start feeling some kind of way about him. But if history is my guide, he’s not gonna feel shit about me. He just wants to fuck. And I very well might give in. Because of those low standards again. But I’ll leave his bed, just like I left all those other beds, a little lesser than when I first got in it.
I keep letting life chip away at me like this, what’s gonna be left of me?
I angrily wipe those tears away because I feel like a fool crying. What am I crying about? All I got to do is turn my ass around. He ain’t got no gun to my head.
But I keep driving as we turn into this huge building. A condominium high rise. Where the rich people live, I’m figuring. Where the mayor of the town lives. The odds are it’s gonna be sex and nothing more. And I’ll get out of his bed of luxury and go back to my pitiful motel room. He might not even bother to walk me to my car. I’ve had that happen to me more times that I wanna admit too.
But as we drive up to the front entrance, I don’t turn around. The odds are stacked against it, but there’s always that small, slither of hope that this time will be different. That this guy will be different. That me, Rain Hopson, may just have finally found her knight in shining armor. That makes it worth the try.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I pull up to the front my condo building and she pulls up behind me. The valets all rush to assist me, and none of them are assisting her, which pisses me off. But when I get out, and they’re trying to muscle each other to take control of my vehicle, I button my suit coat and walk behind my car to Rain’s car. The remaining valets, stunned, rush to Rain’s car too. One of them want to open her car door for her, but I give him a hard look. His ass wasn’t giving her the time of day before he realized she was with me. He backs his ass up. I open the door for her.
“Valets, hun?” she says to me.
I smile. “Yup.”
“Why are they swarming us like this? They’re very dedicated.”
“Not really,” I say. “I own the building. They know I can fire their asses. That’s the only reason they’re overdoing it, trust me.”
She looks at me. “Are you for real?” she asks me.
“That I can fire them?”
“No, Bobby! That you own this whole building. Are you serious?”
I smile. “I’m serious.”
“You own all this?”
“All this shit,” I say, and she laughs. And then her serious look returns. And I’m glad. Because me telling her that I own the building doesn’t excite her at all. If anything, it makes her less excited and uncomfortable. Not because she�
�s intimidated. She’s not that type. But because she figures I probably got some rich daddy (which I do), who probably turned me on to this piece of property (which he did), and I’m just a lucky son-of-a-bitch (which I am). But another reason she’s not all excited is because, again, in my uninformed opinion, that that’s the kind of good, moral woman she is.
“Give me the food,” I say to her as I take the bag of food from her, take her hand, and assist her getting out. She seems happy that I thought of her son’s food, as if she thought she would have to leave it in the car while we . . .
While we what?
Visit with each other?
Fuck?
Both?
I don’t even know at this point, because I really don’t want to fuck this up. I keep feeling that if I don’t get this one right, my giddy days may be over as quickly as they began.
As we enter the lobby of the building, I have the tray of food, in a plastic bag, in one hand, and my other hand resting gently on the small of her back. And I’m feeling powerfully possessive touching her, like she’s all mine, when she isn’t.
The night manager, standing behind the desk, hurries to me when he sees me, the way he usually does, and starts talking to me about a tenant problem on the sixth floor. He ignores Rain entirely, as if she’s just another chick I’m taking to my bed, and it annoys me. When he finishes talking, I make my displeasure known.
“This is Renita Hopson,” I say to him.
And it’s all I have to say, because his round face turns beet red. “Oh, I do apologize,” he says more to me than to the woman he just offended. Then he looks at Rain. “Nice to meet you, Miss Hopson.” Then he looks at me again, like he’s shocked that I bothered to introduce her. Never introduced any of the other women I brought home with me. Why would I introduce this one?
The short answer? Hell if I know. The long answer? Hell if I know.
And when he walks us to the elevator, and he reaches in and press button 19, which is the floor below the penthouse, and I press the penthouse button, instead, he looks at me again. Who is this guy, his look is saying? He knows I own the building. He knows I’m his boss. But I’ve never shown this kind of respect for any of my other ladies. Never took them up to the penthouse before, not ever. That’s why I have number 19. It’s my fuck condo, the condo where I take my dates to do my thing. But I’m taking Rain up to my penthouse?
Bobby Sinatra: In All the Wrong Places (The Rags to Romance Series Book 1) Page 11
