Chapter
Seventeen
Gina
“Gina, baby, you want breakfast?” Ms. Nadine called from the front room.
Sleeping on my boss’s couch wasn’t the most ideal place to live, but the older, Black woman refused to take no for an answer. She reminded me of my grandmother, who was, in the short time I got to spend with her, one of the nicest people I’d ever known.
I’d been living with my boss since the day she hired me. She didn’t have to offer me a place to stay, but when she realized I was staying out of my rental car, she had no problem with it. Still, I had no plans of staying long. I’d been depending on my parents my whole life, and as I started to take on the role of adult independence, I needed to do so on my own.
Ms. Nadine assured me that she would not hold me back whenever I saved enough and was ready to move out, but allowing me to stay in my car was a no-go. She was a tough cookie to crack, especially when it came to people she cared about.
Wandering into Mississippi showed me how much complete strangers could care about you more than the people who weresupposed to. Ms. Nadine had been the perfect example of that. Before her, it was Ramel.
It had been a week since I talked to Ramel. He’d been calling my phone and stopping by the diner, but every time he came by, I’d tell Ms. Nadine to let him know that I wasn’t in. I would stay in the back until he was gone, which sometimes took hours, so she loved flirting with him. Still, no matter how much Ms. Nadine loved Ramel, she never sold me out to him.
I loved it when a woman stuck beside another woman just because she said so. Ms. Nadine didn’t need an explanation; she simply followed woman code. If I said I didn’t want to talk to him, she didn’t force me to. That didn’t stop her from smiling in his face, though. That woman was a trip when it came to Ramel.
“I’ll leave it out for you!” she yelled again as I tried to hurry my shower. I’d been moving a lot slower than normally, especially since I didn’t have much else to look forward to beyond work. Ramel’s absence from my life was beginning to take its toll on me. The familiar feeling of abandonment was creeping in, as it always did when I missed my parents.
“I’ll be at the diner if you need me,” was the last thing she said before I heard the door open and close behind her.
Ms. Nadine literally stayed in the apartment right above her diner. The upstairs part was her home, and the downstairs part was her diner, which made walking down to work the easiest thing I had to do, but still, it was taking everything in me just to get dressed.
I was finishing up my morning routine, and all I needed to do was wash my face thoroughly because I didn’t play about my skincare. I hated for a pimple to pop up out of nowhere and then leave a black mark.
By the time I made it outside, I saw Ramel right outside the diner, standing on the side of a car I’d never seen before. He had one of his legs crossed over the other as he stood with his backup against the car and his arms folded across his chest. I must have looked like a deer caught in headlights when I walked out the door because that satisfied smirk on his face let me know that he’d been planning this for a while.
This man was persistent. If nothing else, I was getting at least three or four phone calls a day, and now there he was, popping up just to see what I’d been doing. I was still stuck. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to turn around and go back into the house, but I knew Ramel would just follow me inside. There was no way I could avoid this conversation. We had to have it.
“What’s up? What are you doing here?” I asked, walking over slowly.
“Well, I can’t get you to answer the phone.” He shrugged his shoulders like it was absolutely logical for him to pop up, even though it was clear I was avoiding him on purpose.
“Because I don’t want to talk to you.”
“And why not?”
“Please don’t stand here and act like what happened at your house the other day didn’t happen.”
“I’m not acting like it didn’t happen, but at least give me a chance to explain.”
“What is there to explain, Ramel? Your mother and fiancée walked in on us having sex. A fiancée that you didn’t even tell me you had. What more of an explanation do I need?”
“First of all, Lacy is not my fiancée. I am not marrying that woman. I’ve told my parents that multiple times. It’s just not getting through.”
“Regardless, they’ve both seen me naked. I don’t even know where we can go from here.”
“Why in the fuck would I care about somebody else seeing you naked? Every part of you is mine. I don’t care what somebody else thinks.”
“Ramel.” I threw my hands up, unable to even find the words to finish the sentence. Surrendering to my own silence, I folded my arms across my chest because I didn’t know how I was going to escape this man. No matter what I said, he found a way around it, which made anything I could have thought of irrelevant.
“Come take a ride with me.”
“I have to go to work.”
“Ms. Nadine said you can take the day off. I told her we had some business to take care of.”
