Page 81 of Buy Back My Love

Van moved closer but didn’t touch me or start asking questions. He just stayed there while I cried like somebody had died.

Maybe somebody had. Not JB or me, but whatever the fuck I thought we were.

When the worst of it finally passed, my face was wet, my nose was running, and I felt stupid as hell standing in the middle of a parking lot falling apart. Van handed me a napkin from his pocket, and I took it without looking at him.

“Thank you.”

“Are you okay to walk?”

I nodded, even though we both knew I wasn’t okay, and he didn’t point it out.

We made it to his truck, and Van opened the passenger door for me. I climbed inside and stared through the windshield while he walked around to the driver’s side. When he got in, he didn’t ask questions, tell me JB was a piece of shit, or try to tell me what I needed to do next. He just sat there and gave me enough quiet to pull myself together.

I wiped underneath my eyes and looked out the windshield. “Take me home.”

Van started the truck and pulled away from the parking lot before the words really settled over me.

Take me home.

I didn’t have one anymore.

JB

Iain’t say shit until we were in the car and pulling out of that parking lot. Too many phones had been out back there, and too many people had seen my hand go to my piece. I damn sure wasn’t sticking around to find out if somebody had called the police. All it took was one scared-ass parent telling them some Black man had a gun at the pumpkin patch, and the whole situation was finna turn into something else.

I checked the rearview mirror as I turned onto the road. JJ was strapped into his car seat, cheeks still wet from crying, while Hannah sat beside me staring straight ahead.

“But Daddy, we ain’t get our pumpkin,” JJ said from the back.

I looked at him through the mirror. “We’ll get you another one, lil’ man.”

He frowned and turned toward the window, and guilt twisted through me because my boy didn’t know shit about what had just happened. All he knew was we had dragged him out of a pumpkin patch before he got his damn pumpkin.

Once we were farther down the road, I looked over at Hannah. “Who the fuck was that nigga?”

She slowly turned her head toward me. “You cannot be fucking serious.”

“I asked you a question. You know that nigga?”

“How the fuck I’m supposed to know him, JB?”

“I know them hoes at your shop talk.”

“Talk about what? Don’t nobody even know Lee out for real.”

I glanced over at her. “What you mean don’t nobody know?”

“Exactly what I said. She ain’t posted no pictures of herself. Ain’t been out to no clubs. Ain’t been back to the hood. Shit, half the people that know her probably don’t even know she home yet.” Hannah folded her arms and turned toward the window. “So no, I ain’t got no damn tea on Leona. Whoever that nigga is, your guess is as good as mine.”

My hands tightened around the steering wheel because that ain’t make me feel no fucking better. “Clearly she know his ass from somewhere.”

Hannah sucked her teeth. “And here your dumb ass go.”

I looked over at her. “What?”

“Your whole shit just blew up. She found out about me, JJ, this baby, you damn near pulled a gun at a pumpkin patch, and you sitting here worried about how Leona know another man.”

“I ain’t worried about shit.”