Page 22 of Touch of Smoke
“Well, you still ain’t got no job. Did that bougie ass Ro talk you into this? Is he funding this new business for you and you pay him back by sleeping with him?”
If she were anyone else. A stranger on the street, an acquaintance, a friend, Sariya would’ve smacked the taste out of her mouth. But since she couldn’t do that and expect to get into heaven, she clenched her fists at her sides.
“It’s none of your concern who I sleep with or how I plan to start my business. I haven’t asked you for a dime since I graduated high school and Lord willing, I won’t have to in the future.” She took the first steps to leave but Kim quickly jumped in her path.
“You think that boy wants you?” She sucked her teeth. “You better think again, they only want you as long as they think your kitty’s good and when that’s over, so is everything else.”
“I’m not doing this with you,” Sariya said.
“And you think those Simmons’ are like the Cosbys. Well, I got news for you, the Cosbys were fake and they sent Bill’s perverted ass to jail. So there,” Kim said as if her words had really proven a point.
Well, they had. They proved that her mother was out of her mind. She was bitter and resentful and she’d been that way for so long she didn’t know how else to be.
“I’m leaving,” Sariya said. “Get out of my way.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that. I’m your mother!”
Sariya gave a wry laugh. “You can’t even convince yourself of that.” She rolled her eyes and walked all the way around the coffee table that had been in front of the couch, so that she could get to the open part of the floor and make her way up the steps.
“When he leaves you hanging like your daddy did me and like he did Larry all those years ago, don’t you come back here crying to me,” Kim yelled up the stairs.
“I won’t,” Sariya replied in a quiet voice. “You can count on that.”
ro
. . .
It wasafter seven when the alarm beeped and he heard his front door open. The smile that immediately covered his face as he said in his mind, ‘there’s my baby’, was probably big and goofy, but there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen with him to see it. At least not yet. And by the time Sariya made it into the kitchen, he’d erased the smile and turned to greet her.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said and watched her jean-clad legs walk toward him.
She wore a gray sweatshirt with UMES in huge letters across the chest and gray tennis shoes. “Hey,” she said her tone not nearly as excited as he wanted it to be.
He watched her walk toward the refrigerator, open it and pull out the pitcher of lemonade. Before she could take another step, he went to the cabinet where she’d told him the glasses should be kept, retrieved one and took it to her where she stood at the island.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he eased the handle of the pitcher out of her hand and poured the drink for her.
“Will I go to hell if I say my mother gets on all of my nerves?”
He really didn’t want to answer that question. Parent/child relationships were a delicate topic, specifically because everybody didn’t have the same type of parents. That meant whatever bad thing you thought your parent had done, might actually look like a good thing to another person with a different type of parent. And in this case, Ro knew that Kim Abbott was a piece of work. He’d always tried to respect the woman because that’s what his mother had taught him, but the way he’d seen her come at his mother over something nice his mother had done for Sariya hadn’t sat right with him in all the years since it happened. Kim hadn’t wanted anything to do with his family and didn’t want his family to have anything to do with Sariya. But Sariya had refused to stay away and eventually, Kim had stopped putting so much effort into keeping her away. The woman had actually seemed to stop giving a damn about her only child.
“What happened?” he asked her instead and handed her the glass.
She accepted it. “Thanks,” she said and then sipped. “I shouldn’t be this upset. It’s the same every time. Nothing new, so my reaction should be void by now.”
“Whatever your reaction to what she did today is valid, Sariya.” He really needed her to hurry up and tell him what Kim had done so he could decide whether he needed to send Donyell over there to curse the woman out. He wouldn’t do it because he was a man and his father had taught him better. But Donyell didn’t give two fucks on a good day, where Kim was concerned his sister never considered it a good day.
“It’s just her attitude. She hates everything and everybody. When I told her about my business, she said I must be repaying you in sex and that you’ll get tired of that eventually.”
His teeth clenched at her words and he prayed Sariya didn’t notice. Now he needed a drink, but he needed something much stronger than lemonade.
“I mean, I’m not turning down any sex you wish to throw my way,” he said with a shrug and laughed when she swatted a hand at him.
“You and your sister never know what to say out of y’all mouths,” she said, but the corners of her mouth lifted into a smile and for Ro, that was all that mattered.
He eased an arm around her waist then and stepped in front of her so that her back was to the island. “So she wasn’t happy about your business venture,” he said. “Did you really expect her to be?”
“No,” she said with a pout as she played with one of the buttons on the pale pink dress shirt he still wore. “But she could surprise me once in a while.”
