I shook my head and walked away before I laughed. Couldn’t have him thinking his insides were safe.
I wasn’t a poet. The things I knew were different. I knew money, fighting, guns, pain… and murder. That, I knew well. I understood danger and what it meant to be hard. But Theory made me want to understand softer things. I could never be soft for everybody. Fuck everybody. But for her?
Yeah, somehow, I knew I had to learn to be soft for her. So, I went to my office, closed the door, opened a blank document… and tried not to feel stupid.
(Friday, June20)
Friday evening, Theory gave me hell before she even got in the car.
Naturally. That was my girl.
“Where are we going?” she asked from the doorway of our bedroom.
I looked up from fastening my watch and almost forgot the question. She wore a black dress that made me reconsider leaving the house. The front was deceptive, high at the neck and stopping just above her knees. Then she turned a little, and I saw the back of the dress beneath her bra line was mostly gone, nothing but thin straps crossing the soft golden-brown skin I wanted my mouth on.
My shorty was a menace. She knew it, too, because she watched my face and smiled like she hadn’t done a damn thing.
“A private party,” I answered.
Her nose turned up, wrinkling the little gold chain crossing it. “What private party?”
I shrugged. “The private kind.”
“Targen.”
“Theory.”
She narrowed her eyes. “One day, I’m gon’ ask you a question and you gon’ answer it like a normal human being.”
“I answer you.”
“No. You give me little mafia riddles, then kiss me so I stop asking follow-up questions.”
I walked toward her. “Does it work?”
“Unfortunately,” she muttered.
“Then why would I stop?”
She kissed her teeth, but she let me pull her close. That was new. I didn’t mean the touching part—despite what I had initially said, we touched plenty. Nah, I meant the letting me part. She still fought me on principle. I’d heard every day that she had not forgotten a single thing I had done wrong. But she came to me easier now. I dipped my head and brushed my lips over hers. She kissed me back.
That kiss made everything right in my world.
“Trust me tonight,milaya.”
“I trust you to be sneaky.”
“That's a start.”
“It is not.”
“It is for us.”
She laughed softly, then pushed at my chest. “Move. And wherever we going, don’t have me out here overdressed.”
I let my eyes drag down her body and back up. “That shit is impossible.”
Her cheeks reddened.
