Page 26 of Buy Back My Love

“I’m good.” I took his hand and let him pull me up. Once I was standing, I brushed off the back of my leggings and looked down at Snoop. “I think.”

The man laughed. “I’m really sorry. He love people a little too much.”

Snoop sat there with his tongue hanging out and that little nub of a tail moving so hard his whole back end was shaking. Looking at him now, you would’ve thought I imagined the attack.

“It’s okay.” I reached down and scratched behind his ears. “Honestly, it was kinda nice.”

“Nice?” The man looked at me like I had lost my mind. “He just knocked you on the ground.”

“I know, but friendly dogs ain’t really been a part of my life lately.”

The words slipped out before I thought about how they sounded. My hand slowed against Snoop’s head, and for a second, I wondered if the man was about to ask what the hell that meant, but he didn’t.

“So, I guess I should thank him for the welcome,” I added.

That got another laugh out of him. “I’m Evander.” He nodded toward the dog sitting between us. “And this hardheaded joker is Snoop.”

“I’m Leona.”

“Leona,” he repeated. “You must be new around here.”

I glanced around the complex. “Is it that obvious?”

“Kinda.” He smiled. “Ain’t a whole lot of Black folks over here and I definitely would’ve remembered seeing you walking around.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you would’ve?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “You kinda hard to miss.”

Well damn. I looked down for a second, trying not to smile too hard. JB had been looking at me like he wanted me since the second I got home, but that was JB. He’d known me since I was fourteen. This man didn’t know me from a can of paint, chipped tooth and all, and apparently I was still enough to catch his attention.

“Is that right?” I asked, looking back at him.

He smiled. “Yeah, that’s right.”

I shook my head, still smiling, and looked down at Snoop.

He let me off the hook. “You getting your workout in?”

“Not really. I’m just walking around trying to get familiar with the neighborhood.”

He looked down at Snoop, who had somehow turned into the most well-behaved dog in Alabama now that his daddy was standing there. “You mind if me and Snoop walk with you?”

For a second, I almost said yes. He seemed cool, Snoop had already introduced himself whether I wanted him to or not, and I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get back to an empty apartment.

But before I could answer, JB popped into my head, which irritated me all by itself. If he happened to drive through the complex and saw me walking around with some man I’d met five minutes ago, I already knew he wasn’t gonna like that shit. After the way he’d left me last night, I wasn’t even sure why that mattered to me, but it did.

“Maybe next time,” I told him. “I actually need to get back and finish unpacking.” That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that.

He nodded without pushing it. “Fair enough. It was nice meeting you, Leona.”

“You too...” I paused, realizing I’d already forgotten his name.

He laughed. “Van.”

“Right. Van.” I smiled. “It was nice meeting you too.”

I headed back toward my apartment, and by the time I turned the corner, I was laughing to myself. If my life was one of them urban books I used to read, JB would’ve pulled up right when I was standing there talking to Van, lost his damn mind, and dragged me home to remind me who I belonged to.