Page 172 of Buy Back My Love

Van pushed the cart forward. “Tonight.”

I laughed and followed him toward self-checkout.

A few days later, I found out Skye had done exactly what me and Van knew she was gonna do and ran her mouth.

Van was at my house helping put together a shelf for the baby’s room when he said, “My mama want you to come eat Sunday.”

I looked over at him. “Skye told everybody about Walmart, didn’t she?”

He kept working on the shelf. “Yep.”

I laughed. “What she tell them?”

“That she ran into me with my pregnant neighbor at Walmart late at night buying oatmeal cream pies.”

“That ain’t even a lie.”

“No. The lie came when everybody decided I got you pregnant.”

That made me laugh harder. “You told them the baby ain’t yours, right?”

“Several times.”

“And?”

Van finally looked up. “Half of ’em still think it is.”

I shook my head, still laughing. “Your family messy.”

“You met Skye. She ain’t exactly subtle.”

“Okay, but why your mama wanna meet me if she know you ain’t my baby daddy?”

He shrugged and went back to the shelf. “I talk about you.”

That shut me up.

“You talk about me?”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting nothing. I just ain’t know I was a topic at the Coleman family meetings.”

Van laughed. “It ain’t like that.”

“Then how is it?”

“I talk about you sometimes. They wanna meet you. That’s it.”

I looked at him for a second. So this man had really been sitting around talking about me to his family.

“So Sunday dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“And they all gon’ be staring at my stomach trying to decide if you lying?”

“Probably.”