Saturday
Alex
I’d been sitting on that shit for four days.
Not because I was mad.
I wasn’t.
At least I didn’t think I was.
Something about Saturday night just hadn’t sat all the way down yet.
Little pieces kept floating back up.
Lidia.
Baptiste.
His pops.
Roe.
Especially Roe.
I hadn’t asked her about any of it.
She’d been busy all week anyway.
After damn near two months of me telling her she needed somewhere to conduct business that wasn’t the corner of my studio, she’d finally listened.
Sort of.
Technically, she’d found the space herself.
Three blocks from me.
Close enough that she’d already informed me my conference room was still available to her if she needed it.
I told her that defeated the purpose.
She told me to mind my business.
So there was that.
I pushed through the glass door and immediately heard somebody drilling into something.
“Watch it!”
A man carrying a ladder nearly clipped me.
“My fault.”
I stepped aside.
The place looked completely different from when she’d shown it to me last week.
Cream walls.
Glass.
Pale wood.
Some weird sculptural light hanging from the ceiling that probably cost more than my first car.
And directly across from me, three men were trying to mount the biggest fucking painting I’d ever seen.
It took up damn near the entire wall.
I stared at it.
“What the fuck is that?”
“It’s art. Sha’Main. Street artist turned phenom. Good friend of mine.”
I looked over.
There she was.
Perched on the edge of a glass desk.
Hard hat on.
Of course.
Except underneath the hard hat, she was dressed like she had somewhere important to be.
Wide-leg trousers.
Blouse.
Stilettos.
Jewelry.
Not a speck of dust on her.
Everybody else looked like they’d been working.
Roe looked like she’d been supervising.
I smiled.
“You got a hard hat on with heels?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because things are being mounted above my head.”
She pointed toward the men.
“OSHA.”
I stared at her.
“Roe, you ain’t even under the shit.”
“Alex.”
“What?”
“Did you come here to bother me?”
“Partly.”
“I figured.”
One of the installers stepped backward.
Roe immediately sat up straighter.
“Wait.”
Everybody stopped.
She tilted her head.
“No.”
The man holding the level looked at her.
“No what?”
“It’s too high.”
He looked at the measuring tape.
“It’s centered.”
“Mathematically.”
I closed my eyes.
Here we fucking go.
Roe hopped down from the desk.
“Visually, it’s floating.”
The installer looked at me.
I held both hands up.
“Don’t bring me into this shit.”
“Bring it down two inches.”
“Ms. Blackshire, we measured—”
“Two inches.”
He stared at her.
She smiled.
“Please.”
The man sighed.
“Two inches.”
“Thank you.”
She climbed back onto the edge of her desk.
I walked over.
“You know they hate you, right?”
She shrugged lazily.
“They’ll survive.”
I looked at the painting again.
Still didn’t know what the fuck I was looking at.
“You like this?”
“I love it.”
“How much?”
Her eyes slid toward me.
“Don’t.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She smiled.
I stood between her knees.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
She leaned forward and kissed me.
Quick.
Soft.
Easy.
That was us lately.
Easy.
Which was probably why I’d waited four days.
I didn’t want to fuck with easy over something that happened when this woman still had homework.
I rested my hands beside her on the desk.
“You happy?”
She looked around.
“With this?”
“Mhm.”
Her smile came slowly.
“Very.”
“Good.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She looked at me.
“For pushing.”
I shrugged.
“You needed your own shit.”
“I had my own shit.”
“You had six garment bags, seventeen notebooks, and a laptop taking over my studio.”
“Seven garment bags.”
“Exactly.”
She laughed.
One of the workers called her name.
She looked over my shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Here?”
She studied the painting.
“Little lower on the left.”
I turned around.
“Roe.”
“What?”
“That motherfucker straight.”
“It isn’t.”
I looked at the installer.
He looked exhausted.
I nodded toward him.
“Whatever she say, bro.”
“Thank you,” he muttered.
I laughed.
Roe smacked my arm.
Then her phone rang.
She checked it.
“Give me one second.”
“Do your thing.”
She walked toward the windows.
I watched her go.
And there it was again.
Saturday.
Lidia stumbling toward us with her wine.
I’m happy for you.
Roe’s face.
You deserve...
Baptiste damn near barking his wife’s name.
Then his pops.
Sunny’Monroe.
Not Roe.
Sunny.
And the way Roe had gone quiet for half a second.
Four days.
I’d had four days to decide whether any of that was my business.
Most of it wasn’t.
Who she’d dated at seventeen damn sure wasn’t.
But something had happened in that room that everybody seemed to understand except me.
That part?
Yeah.
I wanted to know.
Roe ended her call and came back.
“Sorry.”
“You good.”
She reached for a folder on the desk.
“Okay, I have to meet with the lighting people in about twenty minutes, but after that I thought we could grab lunch.”
“Cool.”
She looked up.
I hadn’t moved.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Alex.”
I smiled.
“See? Now you doing that shit.”
“What shit?”
“Reading me.”
“You’re standing there staring at me.”
“I’m looking at you.”
“You’ve been looking at me for months. This is different.”
Damn.
I rubbed my beard.
“You and Baptiste ever mess around?”
She froze.
Not dramatic.
She didn’t drop anything.
Didn’t gasp.
Didn’t suddenly become guilty.
She just...
stopped.
