Page 19 of Church Girl
“Say what?” Chelle leans back, dragging her gaze up and down my body. “Hold up, hold up.” She pops up her hand. “You let Dolly drive your precious F-150? You don’t even let me sit my ass in the driver’s seat. And you’ve known her, what? All of five minutes?”
“Yep,” Malcolm throws in.
“The fuck happened to Von Howard and when is he phoning home? ’Cause some muthafucking body snatchers had to beam down here and grab his ass.”
Flipping her off, I stalk back toward the desk. “I don’t have time for this. I got a client I need to get back to.”
“This ain’t over,” Chelle calls after me.
The fuck it ain’t. I don’t have anything else to say.
I also don’t have an explanation. Nothing either of them would accept. And the one I gave Aaliyah is true but even in my head falls flat when they’re absolutely right. No one drives my baby but me. I can’t make it make sense.
So I don’t bother.
As I pass the display case, I slow my steps. And peer through the glass to where Gia had been hard at work. A smile spreads across my face and I chuckle. She really had started organizing the pieces from prettiest to ugliest, in her opinion. The butterfly, flower, and diamond-crusted studs and loops lined up along the front while the plain bells, bars and skulls are shoved to the back.
“Malcolm, since you don’t have no work and so much free time on your hands, sterilize this jewelry and get it all put back.”
“Damn. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
I don’t answer but keep moving until I’m outside the room where I left Terrel. Pausing a few seconds, I briefly close my eyes and will my body to calm down.
It wouldn’t do to enter back in there with a hard dick.
Shit. Aaliyah is already fucking with me, and she’s only been working for me twenty minutes.
Trouble.
That woman is trouble, just like I said.
Five
“I can’t kill my boss. I can’t kill my boss. But God didn’t say anything about maiming in the Ten Commandments...”
Aaliyah
“Gia, you have ten more minutes in the bath, okay?” I call to Von’s adorable little girl from the other side of her bathroom door.
“Okay!” Then the humming starts back up.
Is that “Bongos,” though? What she know about Cardi B? Shoot,Ibarely know anything about Cardi B.
Shaking my head, I move across Gia’s bedroom, locate her pajamas in the top drawer of her dresser and lay them out on her Bratz-themed bedspread. Then I go about straightening up the room, putting away the games we played after returning home from Sloomoo and finishing her schoolwork from her e-learning day. Who would’ve thought there was a whole place devoted to making slime? There were interactive displays as well, but the main draw was definitely the slime. I smile. Gia had loved it. And truthfully, so had I.
She’s lovely. Funny. Sweet. Talkative and a little bit demanding but not so much she’s rotten. Must take after her mother in personality as well as looks.
In spite of her father’s, uh, rough disposition, I can tell Gia’s well-loved and maybe a wee bit spoiled. Still, I’ve enjoyed my first day. Hopefully, the rest of my time with her goes this smoothly because I need this job. I can’t live off Tamara forever, no matter what she says. I came to Chicago to be independent, to finally discover what it is to stand on my own two feet. I can’t do that leaning on her for something as basic as where I lay my head.
My phone vibrates against my butt, and I pull it from my back pocket. Speak of the devil. This is probably Tamara checking in on me, even though she should be heading to the club by now. When I called her earlier to let her know I wouldn’t be home until after nine, since Von texted earlier to see if I could stay because his last appointment was running late, she hadn’t been happy about me taking a rideshare late at night.
I glance down at the phone’s screen, and my stomach bottoms out. Dread rushes in like the Coosa River during rainy season. I suck in air like my head just broke over those rushing waters, making me lightheaded. I stumble over to Gia’s bed and sink down onto it.
My mother.
It isn’t the first time she or my father or Gregory has called. Oh no. In the first week after I disappeared from the church, they’d called nonstop. Almost as if they could bully me into answering. But they obviously underestimated my fear of talking to them. I’m afraid that if I did, I’d cave and let them convince me into returning home. I’m not foolish enough to believe that just because I’ve been out from under my father’s thumb for a couple of weeks, I’ve suddenly developed a backbone when it comes to him.
No, I’m still weak. Still that daughter desperate to please him. To win his approval.
