Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
I reach across and tug the textured ’fro he’s growing.
“And decorate the tree!” Kassim answers with a wide smile.
There’s a small pinch in my chest. We used to make a big deal of choosing the tree together. Usually the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and then we’d head someplace like the Laughing Latte on the Square for hot chocolate with marshmallows. Things have been so fractured the last few years, and it’s one of the traditions we let slip through the cracks.
“You guys got the tree already?” I ask.
“Yeah, Mr. Lancaster brought it over.”
This poor steering wheel. I’m practically choking it when Kassim mentions that man’s name.
“Mark Lancaster?” I ask casually.
“Yeah, Mom’s new boyfriend.”
Boyfriend?
The hell he is. She wasn’t thinking about her boyfriend when I fucked her twice.
The thought rears up before I can whip it back. She made it seem like there was nothing serious between them. Are they more committed than she let on?
My imagination floods with visions of the blond politician leaving our bedroom wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, strolling down the stairs and making himself a cup of coffee in my kitchen with my kids after a night fucking my wife.
She’s not yours.
For one night she was. I haven’t talked to anyone the way we did in Charlotte since Byrd and Henry passed away. Or ever. Maybe therapy made it easier to talk about my shit when before it felt so damn hard. Holding Yasmen like that, being inside of her again, her heart pounding when she was pressed into me, breathing in the scent of vanilla and her unique essence. She was soft, her curves fitting like she was made for me. And me alone. We’ve both stuck to our bargain. It’s like that night never happened. If anything, things are better between us since we cleared the air.
I just have to keep pretending I don’t think about that night all the time, that my body doesn’t crave another and another.
“It’s a good tree?” I ask.
“It’s huge,” Kassim gushes.
Of course it is.
“He owns one of those Christmas tree farms. He asked Mom if we still needed one and brought it over.”
My steering wheel won’t survive any more talk about the wannabe congressman.
“So we keeping it simple today for this haircut?” I ask. “Or you want some of them lines and arrows?”
He laughs like I knew he would and describes a pattern he and Jamal agreed they’d try next time they went to the barber. When we pull up to Preach’s shop, The Cut, I’m proud of how well my friend has done. We both graduated with business degrees and knew what we wanted to do. Well, Byrd and Yasmen conceptualized Grits, but I knew I didn’t want to work for anybody else. Preach cut hair out of his dorm room and then his off-campus apartment all four years. He paid his dues working in other shops and doling out booth fees until he could afford to open The Cut in Castleberry Hill, which, last I checked, has one of the largest concentrations of Black-owned businesses in the country.
“’Sup, fam?” Preach smiles a greeting over the hair he’s cutting. “Look at all that hair, Seem. You been avoiding me, li’l man?”
Kassim grins and leads Otis over to the corner where he always curls up and behaves himself. I take the empty barber’s chair in the station beside Preach’s.
“You up, Seem,” Preach calls, brushing hair from the neck and shoulders of the customer he just finished.
Kassim settles into the seat and describes the pattern he and Jamal came up with. Preach sets the clippers in motion, his smile indulgent.
“Missed you at the gym yesterday,” Preach says.
“Sorry I didn’t call.” I stand to select a magazine from the stack on the counter in the station where I’m sitting. “I was out of town and been catching up ever since. Lot going on.”
“We won…again.” Preach smirks and glances up from Kassim’s hair. “Where’d you go?”
“Uh, we’re reconsidering that Charlotte expansion.” I flip through a few magazines on top, trying to keep my voice casual because this dude’s spidey senses be tingling. “So Yas and I went and scoped a spot.”
The questions and commentary practically pop up in bubbles above his head, but with Kassim in the chair, he settles for a speaking glance that demands details later.
He ain’t getting any.
I need to put what happened in Charlotte behind me, not explore it. I block out the questions in my head and tune in to the customers chopping it up. The conversation skids from the Falcons’ chances this season to the usual GOAT debate: MJ versus LeBron.
“Bruh, you gotta give it to ’Bron,” a customer getting his locs trimmed asserts. “All he do for the community.”
“What the hell that school he set up got to do with that rock?” Rick, the barber beside Preach, asks. “He ain’t got that killer instinct like Mike and Kobe.”