Holding It Tight
Shirleen
“WHEN THE TIME comes, sweetheart, you won’t have to worry about condoms. That’s the man’s domain.”
It was later that night.
The Rock Chicks had gone.
The boys were down in their space.
And I’d repoofed my duvet so I could unpoof it my own damned self by lying on it to talk to Moses.
Obviously, I’d told him about the Rock Chick visit.
Yes.
Even the uncomfortable parts about it.
“Great,” I murmured.
“Though it would be funny to find out how Lee Nightingale or Kai Mason would react to being asked to buy you condoms,” he went on, sounding like he thought it was funny just to think about it.
And hearing that in his voice, it got funny instead of being mortifying.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“We’re out to your girls.”
His tone was entirely different when he said that.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“You talk me up?” he teased.
“I talked me down.”
After I said that, I could actually feel his pissed-off vibe coming at me over the phone.
“Don’t worry, honey,” I assured. “They don’t like it any more than you do and didn’t mind sharing that.”
“I hope so,” he stated shortly.
I changed the subject. “Had the talk with the boys about school.”
“How’d that go?”
“Told ’em to think on it. I’ll give them time to do that and we’ll have another chat.”
“You get a sense of where they’re leaning?”
“Didn’t get that shot seeing as the Rock Chicks broke into my house before we could formally end discussions.”
I heard him chuckle.
“But that’s probably good. They tend to do better when I give them space to sort stuff out on their own,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You have a good night with your girls?” I asked.
“We always do. They’re good girls. For them, they’re just home. For me, it’s like a reunion every time they come home. My daughters, their ages, biweekly reunions instead of them just bein’ with me every night.”
His tone was again different. And not a good different.
“Darlin’,” I whispered.
“It is what it is. But what that is doesn’t get better no matter how much time goes by.”
“Wish it was different.”
There was a silence he didn’t fill before he cleared his throat. “Haven’t shared that with anyone. Not a friend. Not even my momma.”
“Glad you felt safe sharin’ it with me.”
“Feels good to have you to share it with.”
It sure did.
Just like it felt good to have him to text when I was worried about what would happen about Roam at school, then when I was thrilled with what happened about Roam.
I’d never had anything like that with Leon. I’d learned early never to share a fear or a sorrow, and there weren’t any triumphs worth sharing. He catalogued any weakness and had a specific skill where he’d time it just right to use them against you when he could make the most damage.
“What’re you thinkin’?” Moses asked.
“I was thinkin’ that Leon used vulnerabilities against you, so I learned not to share them.”
He said nothing to that.
So I spoke.
“I’m sorry, Moses. I get use to this, there’ll come a time when I don’t compare him to you.”
“I wasn’t quiet because of that, baby. I was quiet because I was trying to get a rein on bein’ pissed he was such a humongous jackass and you had to live for years with that.”
That didn’t make it any better.
“Maybe we should be a Leon Free Zone,” I suggested.
“Why?”
“It messes with me and pisses you off.”
“How you gonna work through what he did to you if you don’t get it out?”
Good question.
“Might be time to make somethin’ else clear about the us I want us to build, Shirleen,” he declared. “And that’s the fact we gotta be real. We gotta talk. We gotta share. We gotta be there to help the other work shit out and we gotta be open to talk so we can get on working our own shit out.”
And here we were.
Again.
“This is where it gets scary because I got more shit to work out than you do,” I pointed out.
“If you think I got the job I got lookin’ after the kids I see every day and I don’t take that home with me and need somewhere to unload it, you’re wrong. I been doing that job a long time, and most of the time I can handle it. Sometimes, some kids, it gets under your skin and I need to work it out.”
“Who do you work it out with now?” I asked curiously.
“Who do you work Leon out with now?” he returned.
“Mm,” I hummed.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
And there it was.
Alone was alone in the way we’d both been alone, even having people in our lives.
And it could suck for anyone.
“Never had this,” I said softly. “Even with all my girls, who would listen, I didn’t wanna bog them down with it. So I never had this.”
“Me either,” he replied. “Even when I had my wife, I didn’t give this to her because she wasn’t real interested, and then we had our babies and I didn’t bring it home. But it didn’t matter. I’d learned by then she wasn’t real interested.”
One could say I would not have been a big fan of the woman who cheated on Moses Richardson and broke his heart.
But seriously.
She was sounding like a real asshole.
“Got no reply to that?” Moses asked.
“I’m pleading the fifth before I say anything super ugly about the mother of your children.”
“You know, you aren’t the only one comparing, Shirleen.”
Oh boy.
“I don’t want to make the same mistakes either,” he shared.
I hadn’t thought about that.
But it sure made sense.
And I hoped to God Moses never thought of me as a mistake.
“I hear that, honey,” I murmured.
“Now, I don’t wanna let you go but I’m gonna let you go, because it’s getting late and my girls haven’t gone to sleep yet. I need to see where they’re at. I’ll call you tomorrow. And we’ll set something up if we can this week. If we can’t do that, I want to be on your calendar first chance I got. Next Friday night. Yeah?”
Oh yeah.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Take you out somewhere nice so I can see you in another pretty dress.”
I could totally do that.
“I’ll look forward to that, Moses.”
“Great, baby. You sleep well.”
“You too, darlin’.”
“’Night, Shirleen.”
“Goodnight, Moses.”
We hung up and I looked at my feet in their slippers.
I still didn’t know how this was happening, me sitting on my bed in my slippers talking to a handsome man about life and our kids and our pasts, and what we wanted in our futures.
I just knew it was happening.
And I was beginning to believe I deserved it.
So I quit looking at my feet in their slippers.
And I started smiling at them.
“You got what on your face?” Moses asked.
“Purple goo.”
“Purple goo?”
“A facial. And it’s gettin’ on my phone. Can I call you back in twenty?”
“It takes twenty minutes to wash purple goo off your face?”
It was the next night.
Moses and I were on the phone again.
He’d texted me that morning to say he’d call that night after talking to the girls.
I’d texted him back to say I’d be looking forward to that call.
He’d then texted me with five options of where we could have dinner Friday night.
I’d texted him to share I liked all five options and it was his choice.
He’d then texted me to ask if it was appropriate for a girl to have three drawers full of makeup and still think she needed more.
I texted him back to give him the news it wasn’t only appropriate, it should be encouraged.
He texted to share he wasn’t sure he agreed with that.
It was then, me, Shirleen, texted him a tearing-up-laughing emoji.
He’d texted back a smiley-face emoji.
Shit, we were emoji-ing.
Emoji-ing!
Now it was later and he’d called in the middle of a facial.
So I needed to call him back.
“It takes twenty minutes for it to work its magic and then it takes thirty seconds to wash it off,” I educated him. “You called right after I brushed it on.”
“Just put me on speakerphone.”
Oh.
Right.
That’d be the smart way to play it.
I took the phone from my ear and put him on speakerphone.
“You’re on speaker,” I declared.
Through the speaker, I heard him chuckle.
Boy, a woman could fall in love with that sound.
After he quit doing that, he asked, “Have a good day?”
“You ever tried herding badasses?”
“I spend my days herding kids who think they’re badasses, does that count?”
“I’ll introduce you to Luke Stark. Then you can tell me your guess at how he reacts to me tellin’ him to sit his ass down and write out his time sheets.”
Another chuckle.
Yes, a woman could fall in love with that sound.
Okay.
Would it sound too eager for me to bring it up?
Damn.
I was just going to bring it up.
He wanted us open. Real.
I still tried for casual.
“So did you talk to your girls?”
“Yeah. Though Judith has a study date, here, with her boyfriend Wednesday night, other than that, it’s father-daughter time.”
I was happy for him he had that.
But I found it disappointing.
“We can have phone dates,” he said.
“I’ll take it,” I whispered.
“I’m glad, baby,” he whispered back.
“And just to say, I hear you, my man, about this boy Judith is dating. Roam dates white girls. He dates some sisters, but mostly he dates white girls. Sniff, however, sees black girls. Almost exclusive. There’s a white girl here and there, but I’m sensing the sister is just his type. But I got an issue with Roam when he’s with a white girl, and I don’t got an issue with Sniff, because he sees the beauty of a sister. And I know that’s messed up. It’s just the way I feel.”
“Yeah. And I just want her to be happy. This kid, his name is Jaxon, with an X, by the way.”
“Oh boy,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not there. To him Judith is a pretty girl. She’s his girlfriend. He’s not weird with me. They’re just people.”
“World fucks that up when you get older,” I noted.
“Right. And I don’t wanna be the one who fucks that up. I don’t want to be the one who points it out that he’s dating a black girl and he needs to get her culture, her people, and respect it when that isn’t on his radar.”
“It’s gotta be partially on his radar, Moses, unless he’s blind.”
“I’m not sure it is. He’s just really into her.”
I couldn’t even stop myself from uttering, “Gulk.”
He totally got me and that was not about the kid being white.
“I know. When’d she stop being seven?” he asked.
“Ten years ago,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he muttered, then went on, “In the end, it doesn’t matter. Unless he’s hurting her or changing her personality in ways that concern me, I just gotta let it play out.”
“Yeah, you just do.”
“You ever talk to the boys about them treating girls now with a mind to how they’d feel having their own girls in the future?”
“Not yet. But I’ll be leveling that Shirleen Lecture on them in between waiting on them getting their Follow Up Shirleen Lecture about going to college.”
That got me another chuckle before he said, “Ever think there’d be a time you’d be scheduling lectures to your teenage boys?”
“Dreamed it every day, but no. Never.”
There was a beat of silence then he asked, “You wanted kids?”
“Wanted a boy. Least one. One I could make into a good man. One who’d take care of his momma.”
“And then God gave you two,” he remarked.
“And then God gave me two,” I repeated. “We shouldn’t bitch, Moses. We’re so lucky. We both got good kids.”
“We are, baby,” he agreed. “Don’t I know that. Damned lucky.”
It was heavy and it went on with the heavy as Moses shared about some of the kids at Gilliam and the obstacles they faced in their lives to get them on the right path.
I took us out of the heavy when I felt he was ready by sharing about the antics of the Rock Chicks (the tamer ones, we were starting out, I didn’t want to scare him) just to try to make him laugh.
We talked and we talked, and we talked some more.
We even talked through me washing my face.
And a whole lot longer.
In fact, I was in bed, my hair twisted up, my silk scarf wrapped around it, under the covers in the dark after we’d talked out his kids, the Rock Chicks, movies we liked, books we’d read, places we’d been, dream vacations we wanted to take, and Moses’s sweet honey voice was in my ear, soothing me like a lullaby.
He didn’t miss it.
“Gonna let you go, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want you to let me go,” I mumbled.
And I really, really didn’t.
“And I don’t wanna let you go, but you sound about ready to pass out.”
I was.
“Okay, you can let me go.”
“Call you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for listening, baby,” he said.
“Thanks for talking, and also thanks for listening,” I replied.
He chuckled.
And hearing it, that was where I wanted to end it.
“’Night, Moses.”
“’Night, baby.”
I pressed my phone to my chest after we disconnected and I did not even care I slept with it there.
Holding him close.
Holding his goodness to me.
His promise.
Holding it tight.
“Say what?” I asked during our phone date Thursday night (we’d had one Wednesday night too, bee T dub).
“I’m reading the Rock Chicks. I’m at the beginning. Indy and Lee.”
Damn.
I didn’t know how I was feeling about this.
“When do you come in?” he queried.
“Uh, the next one. Jet and Eddie.”
“Do you know this Kristen Ashley person who wrote them?”
“It’s a penname. It’s really someone who used to work at Indy’s bookstore.”
“Did she fire them?”
“No. But the books took off so she writes full time now.”
“Goes on book tours?”
“Apparently, unless you sell a bucketload, that doesn’t happen. That is, unless it’s your own dime.”
He sounded confused. “But she has a schedule of appearances on her website.”
Hmm.
He’d checked the website.
“That’s just some woman in Phoenix Jane hired to pretend she’s Kristen Ashley. Jane’s not super social. She’d lose it if she had to go to a book signing.”
“Ah,” he mumbled. Then he asked, “You okay I’m reading these?”
Yikes, but he could read me already.
Even over the phone.
“Well, uh, they met me when, uh . . .”
“Babe,” he clipped.
I shut up and not only at his tone.
He’d called me “babe,” not “baby” not “sweetheart.”
That was totally Hot Bunch.
Toe-tah-lee.
I’d heard Luke Stark call an eighty-three-year-old woman, who’d come into the office to hire the guys because she was concerned her children were slowly poisoning her, “babe.”
She’d blushed like a schoolgirl.
And Moses was getting impatient with me being an idiot.
He was into me.
He called me every night.
We were going out to a nice dinner the first night he was free after his girls went back to their mom’s.
I needed to get over it.
“Actually, I’m pretty funny in those books,” I told him. “It’s just that, in the early ones, I was drug-dealing, poker-game-running funny.”
“This isn’t going to surprise me, Shirleen,” he reminded me.
“Right,” I muttered. “Uh,” I went on, “have you thought, you know, if this works with us—”
Moses cut me off. “If it does?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You don’t think it’s working?”
“It is now.”
“You think it’s going to quit working?”
“I hope not.”
“So how ’bout we use the word ‘when’ this works.”
This was not a suggestion.
“It doesn’t fit in my question,” I explained.
“What’s your question?”
“Okay, when this works and I meet your girls, and then I got a question after that. Do you think that fits?”
“It could be when we’re confident this is working and you meet my girls.”
It was safe to say Shirleen was getting irritated.
“My man, are you honestly tellin’ me what to say?”
“I’m telling you not to say or think negatively that it might not work.”
“I can tell you right about now I’m thinkin’ negative thoughts about a man telling me which word to use.”
I knew what he thought about that.
He thought that was funny, and I knew he did because I heard him laughing.
“You think I’m being funny?” I asked.
“No. I think it’s all kinds of good you got no problem tellin’ me like it is when I’m being a jackass.”
“Well . . . humph.”
Yep.
I humphed.
But the situation warranted it.
“So, what was the question you wanted to ask about when we know this is working and you meet my girls,” he prompted.
“I know this girl’s nerves are getting worked by her man.”
“Yeah,” he whispered, that honey pouring right in my ear. “Like that. ‘Her man.’”
I shut up.
But I liked it too.
Legs-getting-restless-while-I-was-lying-on-my-bed liked it.
“Baby, you were gonna ask me a question?” he pushed.
“What are you gonna tell them about the woman their daddy’s datin’ being an ex-poker-game-running drug-dealer.”
After I asked that, I held my breath.
I didn’t have to hold it long because Moses answered immediately.
“When the time is right, which will be when they’re older, I’m gonna tell them you used to run games and deal drugs.”
“Say what?” I whispered.
“By then they’ll know you, Shirleen. They’ll know you’re good for me. They’ll know Roam and Sniff and what you did for them. They’ll have met your friends and know how much they love you. And I don’t keep anything from my girls, not anything that big. It’s disrespect. So they’re too young now. But when they can get it, they’ll know.”
I didn’t know what to think about that either.
“I know my girls, baby,” he went on. “And when you do, you’ll get that’s the right way to play it.”
“That scares me.”
“I bet,” he said gently. “Sadly, that’s the penance you have to keep paying after you do shit in your life that affected other lives in bad ways that you regret.”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“It’ll be okay,” he assured.
I hoped so.
“It’ll be okay, Shirleen,” he repeated.
“I hope so,” I replied.
“Baby, listen to me,” he urged.
I was listening but I listened harder.
“Do you think I’d be with you if I didn’t think they’d see in you what I see in you?” he asked.
That made sense.
“No,” I whispered.
“I wouldn’t do them like that and I wouldn’t do you like that,” he continued.
“Okay, Moses.”
“So don’t worry about it.”
That might not be possible.
“Okay, Moses,” I lied.
“My beautiful woman is totally lying,” he muttered.
“Humph.”
Yep.
Even though he called me his beautiful woman, I humphed again.
He chuckled again.
Then he got serious. “We had our bad, Shirleen. It’s time for our good. I’m committed to giving you that. Now what I need from you is for you to believe in it. But don’t worry. I’m okay with taking that slow too. Just as long as we’re moving forward.”
“You’re annoying when you’ve been annoying and then you’re all sweet.”
“Wish right now I could be a different kind of sweet,” he murmured.
I shivered.
“Please tell me your boys have plans tomorrow night so I can make out in the car with you for at least an hour after I take you out to dinner,” he stated.
Another shiver.
“They got plans,” I promised.
“Good,” he said low.
And . . .
Another shiver.
It was time to change the subject.
“I will state, in my defense, as you read those books, that I told Ava it was a bad idea to go to Vito’s house prior to her nearly flipping her SUV over onto I-25 with me in it.”
“I’m sorry?” he asked quietly.
Perhaps I picked the wrong subject.
“Uh, spoiler alert,” I mumbled.
“You were in an SUV that nearly flipped onto I-25?”
“It didn’t.”
“You were in an SUV that nearly flipped onto I-25?”
“We were being chased. By an, um, mobster.”
Moses fell silent.
“You might want to get into the frame of mind of me and all my friends as fictional characters before you get any deeper in those books,” I advised.
“Lee told me his wife was kidnapped three times.”
“Um . . .”
“Were you ever kidnapped?”
“No,” I said swiftly.
“Did anything of yours explode?” he asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Why was there an ‘uh’ before that ‘no?’”
“Just that, you know, I don’t want you to get overly concerned when you read about the fact I shot someone in my living room when they broke into my house ’cause a bad guy didn’t want Mace, Lee, Eddie, Hank and the boys to keep doing what Mace, Lee, Eddie, Hank and the boys were doing. Primarily, trying to get him incarcerated.”
“Why didn’t you call nine one one?”
“There wasn’t time. Seein’ as I had my boys with me, I had to look out for them and he shot first.”
More silence.
Scary silence.
“It’s all good now,” I said quickly.
“Are there any more of them left?” he asked.
“More of what?”
“Rock Chicks.”
“Only me.”
“You’re not getting kidnapped and shot at on my watch.”
I grinned. “Good to know.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Maybe you shouldn’t read those books,” I suggested.
“Are you in danger working for Lee Nightingale now?” he asked.
Hmm.
“Shirleen,” he growled when I didn’t respond immediately.
“Define your concept of danger.”
That got another growl, just one that didn’t come with words associated with it.
It was hot.
Before my legs got restless again, I told him, “Lee and the boys try to keep the action out of the office.”
“Try?”
“Sometimes they fail,” I admitted.
“Fucking hell,” he whispered.
“It isn’t their fault,” I defended. “Obviously they don’t want bad guys to storm through the front door and shoot up the joint.”
“Holy fuck,” he bit off.
“But that hasn’t happened for a while,” I shared.
“When this works, we might need to have a conversation about your employment.”
“Baby,” I said softly, “I love my job. I love those boys. We have protocols should anything like that happen, one such protocol being put in place when that Balducci brother invaded. I was under lock and key with the police en route, a skilled, armed man between the bad guys and me, and Lee and Luke sprinting up the steps. We have tight security. No one even gets in that building without us knowing, and if they were a threat, I’d be protected. Swear.”
He didn’t share he was appeased by this explanation.
“Each one of those men would take a bullet for me, make no mistake about that, Moses.”
“That, I know,” he replied.
I drew in breath and let it out, saying, “And I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”
“Mm,” he murmured.
“But can I tell you how sweet it is you’re worried?” I asked.
“You can tell me that,” he said.
I grinned.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to live through all that shit with you,” he noted. “I foresee a kidnapping if I did, that being me kidnapping you.”
That got him another grin as I said, “Talk to any Hot Bunch member. They’ll share just how much unfun they were having when it was happening.”
“Hot Bunch?”
He hadn’t gotten to that part in the books yet, obviously.
“The men.”
“And the women are the Rock Chicks.”
“Yeah.”
“And the Rock Chicks?”
I didn’t know what he was asking.
“What about them?”
“Did they think it was unfun?”
Hmm again.
“They didn’t think all of it was fun,” I hedged.
“Say, the explosions,” he started to break it down.
“That there’s a good example, because we all thought it was pretty funny Tex exploded that warehouse where he’d been taken after he was kidnapped. But we didn’t think it was funny at all when Stella’s apartment got blown up.”
“Maybe we should quit talking about this.”
“I hear that,” I said quietly. “And maybe you should give those books a miss.”
“I am absolutely reading those books.”
“Moses—”
“I need to know what I’m getting into.”
“Maybe that’s a good call,” I mumbled. “But, remember, it’s been years and I’ve got no ill effects after I got conked on the head when Slick and his boys shot up my poker game.”
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
I couldn’t help it.
I grinned again.
“You’re totally gonna love the Rock Chicks,” I told him.
“I thought I would. Not sure now if that’s true.”
“They love me straight to their souls.”
“Then you’re right, sweetheart. I’ll love them.”
And that made me grin again.
We talked a lot longer.
And I grinned a lot more.
We ended our conversation with me lulled half asleep with Moses’s sweet voice sounding in my ear.
I fell totally asleep yet again with my phone held to my chest.
But this time it was different.
This time, everything was different.
Because tomorrow, for the first time in a long time, I had something amazing and beautiful and exciting to look forward to.
Tomorrow, I was going to see Moses again.