Page 52 of Omar

"It wasn't your money. It was my profit share."

"Your profit share comes after you pay us back, Dwayne. That's how the deal works." I stood up from the chair slowly. Dwayne's eyes followed me upward. "You pay us first. Then you do whatever you want with the rest. You don't get to invest our principal in a Flatbush flip and then tell Devon the car wash is struggling."

"The building sold last week. I'm getting my cut in about ten days. I can pay Kadeem everything I owe plus interest."

"Ten days."

"Maybe less. The escrow company said..."

"I don't care about escrow companies." I walked around the desk to where Dwayne was sitting. He pushed his chair back but there was nowhere to go, the wall was right behind him. I put one hand on the desk, the other on the back of his chair, and leaned down until my face was close enough to see the sweat forming on his forehead.

"One week. Seven days. You bring twelve hundred times three, that's thirty-six hundred, to Devon at APEX. Cash. If the money's there, we're good. The payment schedule resets and we forget this conversation happened."

"And if the escrow takes longer than a week?"

"Then I come back. And next time I won't be sitting in that chair asking questions." I let the silence do work for a second. "Next time J'Quell walks through that door, he won't find us having a conversation. You understand what I'm telling you?"

Dwayne nodded. His forehead was beading with sweat despite the air conditioning rattling in the window behind him.

"One week," I repeated. "Don't make me come back, Dwayne."

"You won't have to. I'll have it. I promise."

I straightened up, adjusted my jacket, and walked to the door. I stopped with my hand on the handle.

"The BMW," I said without turning around. "Turn that in. Get something reasonable. You're a car wash owner, not a Wall Street broker. Start acting like it."

"Yeah. Yeah, I will."

I opened the door and walked out into the lot. The sun was bright on the wet sidewalk, the hoses running in the first bay, the employees working like nothing was happening in the back office. James pushed off the fence and fell into step beside me as we crossed the street to the car.

"How'd it go?" James asked.

"He'll pay."

"You sure?"

"He was sweating before I finished talking. He'll pay."

James unlocked the car and we got in. He pulled out onto Atlantic heading back toward Bed-Stuy. The traffic was light, the city moving around us in its usual rhythm, people going about their business without any awareness of the conversations happening in back offices across Brooklyn.

"Can I ask you something?" James said after a while.

"Go ahead."

"This girl you been seeing."

My hands stayed where they were. My face stayed where it was. "What about her?"

"Nothing. Just... you been different lately. Looser. Like something changed."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aight." James kept his eyes on the road. "I'm just saying. Whatever it is, it looks good on you. You used to come to work every day like you were carrying something heavy. Last couple weeks it's like someone took some of the weight off."

I didn't respond. James didn't push it. He drove and I sat in the passenger seat looking out the window at Atlantic Avenue passing by, the storefronts and the traffic and the people on the sidewalks.

He wasn't wrong. Something had changed. Asha had come back into my life. The ground underneath me had moved. I'd spent fourteen years walking around with a hole in my chest where she used to be. Now she was here, in the same city, the same borough. Texting me from bathrooms, meeting me in coffee shops, looking at me with those eyes that hadn't changed since we were sixteen.