Your Attention
“CHICKEN AND WAFFLES.”
“Dude, are you crazy? No chick is gonna want you making her chicken and waffles.”
“I’m makin’ her chicken and waffles. Everyone likes chicken and waffles.”
“Yeah, and your bitch probably likes ’em too. The thing is, she’ll never want you to know she likes ’em or that she likes any food at all.”
At that, I stopped us all on a skid.
“If you call a woman a bitch one more time, Sniff, I’m gonna clock you back to the seventeenth century,” I warned.
Me and my boys were standing in the floral section of King Soopers.
This was because Sniff and I had been warned the day before that we had to skedaddle from the house for the night because Roam was bringing over one of his bitches (and I was an adult, I could think that and say it) to make her dinner.
So we were shopping for said dinner and for everything else it took to raise two teenage boys, this last necessitating me being at the damned grocery store at least three times a week.
Case in point, I’d seen Roam eat an entire pack of Oreos in one sitting, open a second and hoover through a whole row.
Not an ounce of fat on the boy though.
As an aside, why was the world so unfair? A woman did that her ass would follow her into a room three weeks after she entered it.
And by the by, I mentally asked about the world being unfair a lot.
I never got an answer.
Though I shouldn’t ask, because I knew the answer.
It was partly about people doing stupid shit their own damned selves, me included.
It was also that the world was just unfair.
Needless to say, raising two teenage boys meant most of the store would be in my Navigator in about an hour.
It should be noted that they weren’t exactly my boys, in the sense I didn’t birth either of them, and that was only obvious with one—the white one.
I was their foster mother.
They were still my boys.
Sniff, as usual, acted like he hadn’t heard my warning.
He said, “Shirleen, tell him. No girl is gonna want him to make chicken and waffles for dinner, because she’ll want him to make chicken and waffles for dinner and it’ll be torture pretending she doesn’t want to snarf down chicken and waffles at dinner.”
I studied Sniff, eighteen and long-since having grown out of his skinny, acne-ridden early teens.
Now the boy was six foot of lean muscle, not skin and bones, and although he had a couple of acne scars, which only made his face look interesting, the excellent insurance plan I was enrolled in at work and a good dermatologist had taken care of the rest.
In other words, now he was hot.
It made me throw up a little in my mouth to think that about my boy, but the evidence was standing right in front of me wearing jeans that every mother in the country would declare illegal and a cream, short-sleeved thermal that molded to various features of his developed chest, narrowing ribs, and flat stomach.
The power that package had over teenage-girl pussy I blamed on the Hot Bunch. It was them that took the boys under their wing, this including physical training, but also the inescapable soaking up of general badassness. So it was them that had honed the bods my boys now had, including Roam’s, who was a lot bulkier, taller, and a different brand of hot.
Chocolate hot.
Effective chocolate hot.
As evidenced by his serial dating.
Leading to chicken and waffles.
Sniff didn’t serial date.
He serial banged.
Due to an uncomfortable conversation Hank and I had some time ago—one that put me in my bed with the vapors for two days, and one that made Hank look like he might expire from trying not to bust a gut laughing after I’d talked him into having “the talk” with the boys—Hank kept them in condoms.
They could buy their own, of course. They not only got an allowance from me for keeping their rooms clean, taking out the trash and looking after the house, they were paid interns for Nightingale Investigations.
They didn’t do any of the dangerous stuff. They did stuff in the control room and stuff on the computers.
Or at least they didn’t tell me if they did the dangerous stuff. On that I just had to trust Liam Nightingale and his band of merry badasses would do the right thing with my boys.
I was all about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” With two teenage boys in my crib, who I loved beyond reason but who were Hot Bunch in the making, this was my new life motto and my only hold on sane.
But Hank made sure they were supplied so I didn’t have to take up residence in Babies ’R’ Us or factor child support into their allowances.
Thus Hank had taken me aside not two weeks ago to share that Sniff, particularly, might want to get a second job to keep him at the necessary level of prophylactics, and that I might want to buy stock in Trojan.
It was a warning.
I requested Hank engage in another conversation with both boys, roping in Roam just to make sure.
Then I took to my bed with the vapors.
“If he wants to make his girl chicken and waffles, he’s gonna make his girl chicken and waffles,” I decreed.
I did this even though Sniff was right, no girl was going to show she loved chicken and waffles in front of a boy.
It was ludicrous, at that age or any age. I had long since learned the only way to live in order not to do your own head in was to let it all hang out.
It was also the way of the world.
Until you learned.
Although I tried to teach my boys other practical knowledge the Hot Bunch would never be able to transfer on them—like the importance of keeping a house, laundering your clothes and being able to cook—Roam was hopeless in the kitchen.
The kid could grill a mean burger.
But other than that, frying some chicken and manning a waffle maker were the only culinary skills he’d mastered.
Sniff, on the other hand, was a savant in the kitchen. All he had to do was watch some show on Food Network, look up the recipe online, go out and get the stuff, and boom! There it was on a plate in front of his brother-from-another-mother and me.
He had the touch.
Good kid.
In a lot of ways.
If he’d quit trying to make up for being scrawny and pimple-faced when he was younger by tagging every piece of ass who glanced his way and would not have glanced his way two years ago.
“It’s gonna be a bust,” Sniff muttered.
“It’s gonna be awesome,” Roam returned.
“It’s gonna . . .” I trailed off when something that felt like a finger traced lightly down the back of my neck.
For some reason, maybe instinct after being around the Hot Bunch for so long, this made me turn my attention to the rose section.
And there stood a man with an empty cart, not moving, his eyes locked on me.
And oh sweet Lord, he was beautiful.
Tall as Roam, had to be, at least six-two. Close cropped hair, close cropped beard that was thicker around his mouth, scanter but not sparse on his cheeks. Both were sprinkled very minimally with a little white.
He had wide set, big, deep-brown eyes and a beautiful brother’s nose, thick and strong. Making that better, at the bridge there were a couple of creases. There were some creases in his forehead that were interesting as well, and with the white in his beard, they were the only things on his burly, wide-shouldered frame that told tale of his age.
He was just . . . perfect.
Even the shape of his skull sitting on the column of his neck was divine.
As I stared at him, his gaze unlocked on me to drop to my hands on the cart then it went to the boys, and a slash of white formed between his beautiful full lips, exposing strong, white teeth.
He gave us a group scan then turned to the display of roses.
“Is that brother seriously checkin’ you out in front of us?” Roam asked, not happy about the possibility and not hiding it in his tone.
I turned my attention to him to see him scowling at Idris Hottie at the roses.
“No,” I answered.
“He fuckin’ was,” Sniff rumbled, and I looked to him to see him glowering at the beautiful black man now examining a bouquet of beautiful orange roses.
“If you say fuck in front of me one more time, or at all, I’m knockin’ you back to ancient Egypt,” I promised.
Sniff ignored me, still busy frowning at the hottie at the roses.
Right, there were groceries to buy, I was hungry and I wasn’t going to get to eat until they were bought, taken home, put away and Sniff and I left Roam to hopefully make his girl chicken and waffles then do nothing more than hold her hand while watching TV.
So we needed to get shit done.
“You boys are going to Walgreens,” I announced.
Slowly, they both turned to me.
“Say what?” Roam asked.
“You work my nerves in a grocery store, I got things I need from the drugstore and we don’t have a lot of time. I got a list,” I stated, opening my raisin Artsy MM LV bag and yanking out my drugstore list, a pen and my wallet. In order for them to get the right stuff, I scrawled some words on the list before I shoved it with some cash at Sniff. “Go. Get that stuff. Come back and get me.” I dug for my keys, got those and handed them to Roam. “Be good to my baby. You break it, I break you.”
Sniff stared down at the list a beat then looked at me. “They got all this stuff at King Soopers.”
“They do not have my nail varnish at King Soopers,” I retorted.
Sniff looked back to the list then to me. “I am not buyin’ nail polish called Clothing Optional.”
I crossed my arms on my chest. “Tell me, boy, one day when you done notched so many marks on your bedpost you got no bedpost anymore and you want yourself an Indy . . .” No reaction. “A Jet . . .” None there either. “Roxie . . .” Nope. “Jules . . .” Surprisingly, since they were both tight with Jules and I thought they both crushed on her, that didn’t hit it either. “Stella . . .” Hmm, nothing. “Sadie . . .”
His eyes flared.
So he went for the fairy princess bitches.
If they were white.
Though I’d noted my boy had a thing for the sisters.
Then again, those were the fairy princess ones too. I’d seen him with more Brandys and Gabrielles than I could shake a stick at.
“Right, you want yourself a Sadie someday, boy, you’re gonna be findin’ yourself buyin’ a lot more than nail polish to make her happy. You think Hector blinks at nail polish?”
“Yes,” he declared.
So they hadn’t learned all they could learn from the Hot Bunch.
“You’d be wrong, ’cause I might not’ve seen him buy nail polish, but I sure as shit saw him snatching up some o.b.s and he did it like he was grabbin’ a six-pack. In other words, it made no never mind to Hector Chavez he was gettin’ his woman her o.b.s.”
Sniff looked at Roam. “What are o.b.s?”
Roam started to look sick.
“Tampons,” I educated.
Sniff started to look sick.
I could not talk about my boys having sex and the necessity of condoms.
I could sure as shit talk about this.
“You do know the menstrual cycle is a fact of life and unless there’s some sad reason that makes a woman not have them, all women do,” I shared. “It’s entirely natural. And something you both are gonna have to deal with on a hopefully normal and healthy occasion, that is, when you settle down in a monogamous relationship with a woman you love more than your own life.”
Both boys looked ready to hurl.
I heard a chuckle, and it wasn’t only my eyes that went in that direction as Rose Hottie wandered into the fruit and veg section with that big bouquet of orange roses having been wrapped in pretty paper at the floral station sitting in the child seat at the top of his cart.
He had a woman.
Again, why was the world so unfair?
Sure, he looked my age and it would stand to reason that man with that face and that bod (and that deep chuckle) at his age would have a woman in his bed.
Still.
I watched him disappear around the chill case filled with Odwalla.
“Sniff can go get your nail polish. I’m stayin’ with you,” Roam decreed.
I turned to him. “What?”
“That guy’s gonna pounce,” he told me.
“He’s got flowers in his cart,” I told him.
“He’s gonna pounce,” he repeated.
“He’s got flowers, boy. Means he’s got a woman,” I returned.
“He’s. Gonna. Pounce.”
I shut up.
Roam did not like repeating himself.
I hadn’t had them long. Both boys had been fifteen when I took them on, now they were both eighteen and nearing on graduating high school.
But even back then, after all he’d been through, all he’d seen, all that had been done to him, all he’d lost, Roam had honed that edge of steel that made him, and it was the kind you never lost. It didn’t matter what love you found in your life—and Jules had led both those boys to a lot of love, case in point, me—that kind of steel never went away.
Steel like that replaced the marrow in your bones.
It was just what happened.
When he and his bud, Park, had taken Sniff under their wing, they’d protected Sniff from a lot of what they’d endured.
And when both he and Sniff had lost Park to bad dope, Roam hadn’t been able to protect Sniff from it, or protect Jules, and it was my feeling that loss, and also the fact he hadn’t been able to prevent it, had changed him irrevocably.
He did not waste time.
He did not suffer fools gladly.
And he did not let anyone harm someone he loved.
He’d taken a bullet to prove that to Jules.
There were grown men who didn’t have it in them to make that kind of sacrifice.
Roam had done it at the age of fifteen.
“Got no need for a man in my life, baby,” I said softly. “Got the only two men I need right now, and I’m seein’ to them, and only them, until they start seein’ to themselves. So don’t you worry, Roam. You can go to Walgreens with Sniff and I’ll make sure I got enough Double Stufs to last you the week. Now you get my varnish and don’t forget the lip gloss. Smoldering Eclipse.”
Roam kept scowling, and this had nothing to do with him imminently having to find lip gloss in the shade of Smoldering Eclipse.
Sniff huffed out a sigh.
I endured this until eventually Sniff tagged Roam’s arm and muttered, “Let’s go. She won’t back down. You know it. Faster we get her girlie crap, faster we can get back.”
“You need us, you call,” Roam ordered.
I did not inform him I was a fifty-three-year-old woman and could take care of myself.
I just rolled my eyes.
They took off.
I watched them go, thinking there was more to what I said to Roam and it wasn’t the fact that man with his flowers clearly had a woman in his life.
It was that I was not going to take on another man for the rest of mine.
I’d had one and he’d changed me irrevocably, and not a bit of it was in a good way.
He hadn’t left steel in the marrow of my bones.
He’d left dust.
After he was whacked, I’d gone on to make stupid decisions that affected not only me.
I had a history—an ugly one—that no man would want to take on.
And I couldn’t imagine anything on this earth worse (for me) than maybe getting the attention of a beautiful man who chuckled like humor bubbled up from his soul and having to watch his face as he learned who I was and what I’d done.
Before hitting the doors, Roam stopped, turned and stared at me and years of life on the streets before I got him under my roof meant I’d have to be more badass than Lee Nightingale himself to hide anything from that boy.
But it wasn’t about being badass.
It was that I didn’t hide shit from my boys. They’d led lives given no reason to trust, and it had been hell teaching them they could trust me and taking that further in showing them how to find others with whom they could do the same.
I didn’t blow him a kiss, send him a smile or give him a nod.
You didn’t do that with Roam.
He wasn’t about displays of affection.
You earned his by being real and being solid.
So I just held his gaze and looked impatient.
He turned and followed his brother out the door.
I swung my cart around and braced at the thought of facing Rose Hottie in the fruit and veg section.
He probably had a sister at home that rivaled Naomi or Halle or Taraji or Angela or Tyra.
He was nowhere to be seen.
“Lord have mercy on me,” I whispered to myself as I perused apples, oranges, bananas, kiwis, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli and carrots, throwing it all in my cart even knowing I’d eat that shit myself as the boys dipped their Oreos in full-fat milk and decimated party-size bags of ranch-flavored Doritos.
Which was what I was reaching for (times three) several aisles later when I heard, “Hello.”
I turned my head and looked into dark-brown eyes separated by an interestingly creased bridge of a nose in a handsome face.
Then I did something so anti-Shirleen Jackson, it was like I’d immediately formed a split personality.
I bolted.
Shit, Roam was right.
No man called attention to himself by greeting some woman reaching for Doritos.
Unless he wanted to pounce.
Goddamn!
I was halfway through the next aisle when I realized I hadn’t nabbed the cheddar cheese Ruffles for Roam, or the Pringles smorgasbord for both of them. So I motored down the aisle, swung wide to the next one, motored down that one, caught Rose Hottie studying the water selection (which, with those shoulders, he probably drank while lifting weights) in the aisle that stood between me and the boys’ Pringles.
I boogied as fast as my Louboutin Konstantina pompom flats would take me (which was fast, and that was good since I had to go fast, but it was bad since I wished being in that man’s presence I’d been wearing a pair of heels, specifically my new Alexander Wang black Rina beaded slingbacks, though I wasn’t sure they went with my LV, still they were hot).
I circled back into the snack aisle and got the Pringles, Ruffles and Chex Mix on the trot, making sure to nab the cheesy crackers both boys loved (times four).
Rose Hottie was out of the water and soda aisle, thankfully, as I had stocking up to do there. But as I hit the cleaning supplies section, he was perusing fabric softener.
I also needed fabric softener.
His head came around.
So I did a U-ey with my cart and hightailed my ass out of there, liberally (as usual) stocking up on paper towels (sorry environment, but I had two teenage boys, they didn’t understand global warming or the concept of reusable rags, no matter how much I drilled that shit in their heads) and Charmin.
I circled back when the coast was clear for fabric softener.
It happened in the three-aisle freezer section.
I had to get tater tots and crinkle cuts. Not to mention a hefty supply of DiGiornos. Roam might starve to death if he couldn’t bake a frozen pizza when I was out, and I was a Rock Chick so I was out a lot. I also had two teenage boys who obsessively maintained social lives and their badass training so they weren’t home all that much, but when they got home, they were hungry. The entire freezer in the garage was taken up with DiGiornos and we were running low.
But Rose Hottie was now on a mission. His fine black ass (and yes, I’d caught a glimpse and yes, it almost sent me into vapors) had speeded up and every time he saw me, him and his cart made a beeline to me.
I lost him when I was doing my usual Hail Mary with the frozen peas (I’d eat all those too), and as I trucked out of the frozen food section and loaded up with milk and creamer, as well as hit the cheese aisle, he was gone.
Bad.
Good.
Bad.
No, good.
But it felt bad.
Since it felt bad, it was not the boys, but me who scored an entire birthday cake (but in the end the boys would eat most of it) and I thought of my girl, Daisy, and her lover man, Marcus. I also thought of Indy and how deeply she was adored by Lee. And Jet, who was practically worshipped by Eddie. And then there was Roxie, who was beloved to Hank. Jules and Vance. Ava and Luke. Stella and Mace. Sadie and Hector. Ally and Ren. Tod and Stevie. Ralphie and Buddy. Tex and Nancy.
I was staring at the bagels and fresh rolls in the bakery section, close to tears . . .
Me.
Shirleen Jackson.
Widow of the lowdown, good-for-nothin’ Leon Jackson.
Ex-drug dealer.
I was tough.
I’d lived through hell.
And there I was, near tears in the bakery section of King Soopers.
Because I wanted a badass.
I wanted to be adored, beloved, worshipped by a good man who saw nothing but good in me.
I’d wanted that for as long as I could remember.
And it wasn’t going to happen.
Not for me.
Never for me.
Because life was unfair.
But the worst of it was . . .
I’d made it that way.
CRASH!
I jumped back as my cart slammed into the bagel display, toilet paper packs and Bounty wobbling, full-fat milk glugging, chips rustling, boxes of DiGiornos nearly toppling, cart ending up jammed against the shelves under the bagels, caged there by another cart that was nearly as full as mine.
I turned my head to see Rose Hottie, hands still on the cart that had plowed into my own.
“Now that I have your attention.”
Oo . . .
Wee.
His voice was honey.
Warm, sweet, deep, delicious honey.
Hell’s fire.
“Uh . . .” I forced out.
“I’m Moses,” he declared.
Oh Lord.
Good name.
Great name.
Goddamn.
“Um . . .” I mumbled.
“Moses Richardson.”
I got kinda lost in watching his lips moving.
They moved again.
“Now’s the time you tell me your name,” he ordered.
My eyes lifted to his.
Bad idea.
He had fabulous eyes. Open, amused and curious.
“I’m grocery shopping,” I shared.
His eyes turned more amused.
“Is that your name?” he asked.
“No.”
“I hadn’t really missed that,” he told me, tipping his head to my cart.
I decided not to say anything more.
He didn’t take the hint and unjack my cart from the bakery display.
He gave my cart a thorough examination before looking again at me and inquiring, “Those your boys?”
“Uh . . . what?”
“At the entrance. Those boys you were with. Ten frozen pizzas in your cart. They yours?”
“Yep.”
Expressive eyebrows went up.
“Both of them?” he pushed.
“Yep,” I pushed out.
“You got a brother?” he asked.
“As in the sibling kind?” I asked back.
“No,” he answered.
“No,” I answered.
“Hard to make that white one with a brother,” he decreed.
“Uh . . . yeah,” I agreed.
“Adopted?” he kept at me.
“Foster,” I shared.
That’s when it happened.
We were in the bakery section and it felt like the ovens had all been dialed up, doors open, warming the place with bakery-oven goodness.
“You’re a foster momma?” he queried softly.
“Just . . . just them.”
“How long they been with you?”
“Three years.”
“So they’re yours,” he pressed.
My chin lifted half an inch. “They’re mine.”
More warmth, not from the ovens, coming direct from him.
Moses Richardson.
Damn.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
It was time to pull my shit together.
I tried to unwedge my cart, muttering, “I gotta go.”
He shoved my cart in farther, damaging the bagged, cardboard trays of Hawaiian rolls on the shelves under the bagels.
I looked back to him.
“They’ll like me,” he announced.
I stared.
Was this brother seriously jumping that far ahead?
“Because I like you,” he explained.
“You don’t know me,” I pointed out.
“Yeah I do.”
That felt nice.
I still shook my head.
For his sake.
And mine.
“You don’t and you won’t.”
“I do and I will.”
It was time to snap back to Shirleen.
“Listen, my man, you need to move your cart. I got shit to do. My boys’ll be back soon and Roam’s got a girl comin’ over tonight, and we gotta get him set up before Sniff and I hit Jerusalem.”
He looked impressed. “Combo platter?”
You were either vegetarian or not from Denver if you didn’t get the combo (or meat) platter at Jerusalem.
“Absolutely.”
More warmth and then, “Roam?”
“The black one.”
“I mean the name,” he clarified.
“Street name. Same with Sniff.”
Another brow lift. “You let them go by their street names?”
“There were battles to wage when they hit my crib, that wasn’t one of them.”
“I can imagine,” he murmured.
I took him in. Dark-wash jeans. Pressed button-down. Discreet, but attractive, curb-chained gold bracelet peeking from his cuff. Good boots.
He had no fucking clue.
“No, you can’t,” I snapped.
His eyes stared right into mine.
“Work at Gilliam. Corrections officer. I can.”
Gilliam.
Gilliam Youth Services Center.
Denver juvie.
Well . . . shit.
“Three years, those boys. You took them in at what, sixteen? Seventeen? There are about negative two hundred good foster mommas in Denver who’d take in boys that age, that size, with street names and a hundred years they never should have lived on their faces. But then there was you,” he decreed.
I started to feel goose bumps forming all over my skin.
“They were fifteen,” I said quietly.
“Same shit, different age,” he replied.
He was so right about that.
“Listen, Moses—”
“I want to take you to dinner.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“You’re the most beautiful sister I’ve seen in ten years, and I thought that before I knew what you were to those boys,” he went on.
Oh Lord.
That felt nice.
“I—”
“Don’t say no,” he whispered.
I swallowed.
“I got two teenage daughters, which might not be good with those two boys, but we’ll tackle that when we face it,” he kept at me. “And I got an ex-wife who didn’t make it easy in the beginning, but we got a flow now and we been ridin’ that for seven years, divorced for eleven, so we got it down and she’s not a problem. You’re not wearing a ring, you got an ex?”
“My man’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
“I’m not,” I returned.
At that, he studied me.
And as it seemed was his way, he threw it right out there.
“Didn’t do you right?” he asked.
“We’re not talking about this,” I told him.
He gave one nod of that perfectly-formed skull. “Right. Good call. We’ll talk about it over dinner.”
I had to escape this.
Now.
For him.
And me.
“Listen, Moses—”
“Please God, woman, don’t say no.”
I shut my mouth again.
I opened it to warn, “Trust me, you do not want to take this on.”
He shook his head at that. “I do.”
“You really don’t.”
“I absolutely do.”
It was then, I looked right into his eyes.
“You absolutely do not.”
He was not deterred.
Damn it.
“How about you let me decide that.”
“How about you move your cart so I can keep on keepin’ on.”
His head tipped to the side. “You not into me?”
Was he seriously living in that body, having that face, that voice, those crinkles on his nose and that manner and asking that shit?
I decided a question that stupid wasn’t worthy of an answer.
Amusement lit his eyes again. “You’re into me.”
“I got a job herding badasses, and I got two badasses hoovering through Oreos and Doritos at my house. I don’t need another badass on my hands.”
He bent into his forearms on the bar of his cart, making his shoulders ripple under his shirt that tightened on them, which made something ripple in one specific part of me, him doing this like we were going to crack open a bottle of wine and stay awhile in the bakery section as he asked, “What’s your job that you herd badasses?”
I started jimmying my cart to try to disengage it, muttering, “We’re not doin’ this.”
“Stop,” he demanded.
I looked at him again.
“Move,” I demanded.
He did.
He moved from the handle of his cart toward me, one arm behind his back.
I froze.
He pulled out his wallet.
“Got a pen?” he asked.
“Uh . . .” I mumbled because he was close and he smelled good.
Like . . .
Real good.
He stopped even closer. So close, I had to tip my head to look into those brown eyes.
“Baby, I asked, you got a pen in that classy bag of yours?” he murmured.
After Leon got whacked, I decided in my life I was not ever doing anything I didn’t want to do.
And one could not say that I didn’t want to look down to my bag, open it, pull out a pen and hand it to Moses Richardson.
What one could say, that one being me, was that I had no control over my actions.
Him that close, looking that good, smelling that amazing, if he asked me if I had a honey-baked ham in my bag, I would have rushed to the deli, grabbed one, sprinted back, shoved it in my LV (no matter that broke all the laws of my universe) so I could pull it out and hand it to him.
In other words, I gave him my pen.
He wrote on a white card on the back of his wallet then he returned his wallet to his jeans, offering the pen and card to me.
“My card. My cell number on the back. And your call. You think on it, you want dinner, you call me. Then you buy a nice dress. Because no way, when you call me, I’m not doin’ it up right.”
Slowly, my hand lifted and took the card and pen.
He didn’t let it go.
At first.
“What’s your name?” he whispered.
“Shirleen,” I whispered back, staring in those eyes.
Those eyes warmed and that warmth warmed me.
Straight to my bones.
Where I’d been cold a really, really long time.
“It was nice to meet you, Shirleen,” he said softly.
He let go of the card only to stroll the three feet in order drop his hand to the roses that I now saw had a receipt stapled to the paper so I could walk right out with them. He came back and rested them on my LV in the child seat.
After he pulled that class move, I watched him go back to the handle of his cart.
He pulled his cart from mine, and looking over his shoulder to shoot me a white smile, he walked away.