Page 65 of Buy Back My Love

“Oh.” I kept listening to the music getting farther away. “Play it.”

“You liked it?”

“I liked what I heard.”

Van pulled his phone from his pocket, found the song, and started it over. I could barely hear the shit coming through his phone speaker, so I reached toward it.

“Turn it up.”

He moved the phone out of my reach. “Now you finna have us out here like White Boy Rick.”

“I ain’t tell you to shake nobody windows. Just let me hear the damn song.”

Laughing, Van turned it up and held the phone between us as we kept walking.

He started rapping along under his breath, knowing damn near every word. I laughed at first, but somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped. He wasn’t even looking at me, just walking beside me with Snoop’s leash in one hand and his phone in the other, saying all that shit about being serious about a woman and wanting to prove what she meant to him like it was nothing.

Snoop wandered into somebody’s yard while we were walking and managed to wrap his leash around their mailbox. Van sighed and went after him.

“Come on, man. How you even do this shit?”

I laughed while Van crouched down to work the leash free, but my attention drifted back to the song. The more I listened, the more the words started hitting a little different.

I glanced over at Van.

He was still crouched beside Snoop, untangling the leash from around the mailbox, not paying me any attention. Maybe it was all that shit in the song about somebody being your peace, but for whatever reason, I thought about how easy things felt with Van. He checked on me, walked with me damn near every evening, and made sure I was straight without acting like I owed him something for it. And damn if looking at him while that song played didn’t make all that shit feel a little different.

Van finally got the leash loose and stood up. I was still looking when he turned around.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He looked behind himself like maybe there was something back there. “Then what you looking at?”

“I’m listening to the song.”

Van looked at his phone, then back at me. “What that got to do with looking at me?”

“Nothing. Damn.”

A little smile pulled at his mouth. “Aight.”

“What?”

“I ain’t say nothing.”

“Your face did.”

“My face minding its business.”

“Well, tell it to keep doing that.”

He laughed and started walking again, calling Snoop along with him.

I fell into step beside them, still listening harder than I had been before.

“Who you said this was again?”