Page 71 of Buy Back My Love

He waited until I climbed in before answering. “I like your shoes.”

I looked down at my Dunks and then slowly back at him. “My shoes?”

“Yeah.”

“You looked at my whole damn body to tell me you like my shoes?”

That made him laugh as he pulled away from the curb. “Do you want me to tell you that you look good, Lee?”

“I ain’t ask you to tell me shit.”

“You kind of did.”

“I asked why you was staring.”

“I wasn’t staring.”

“You damn near scanned me.”

Van shook his head and pointed toward my seat belt. “Put that shit on.”

I laughed as I reached for it. “That’s what I thought.”

We hadn’t even made it out of the neighborhood before we were arguing about pumpkin pie again. I told him he was wasting both our time because there wasn’t a pumpkin on earth that was about to turn into something better than my mama’s sweet potato pie, and Van accused me of being committed to hating something I had never even tasted.

“I’m giving you a chance to prove me wrong,” I told him.

“Oh, now I have to prove something?”

“You the one invited me.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to regret that shit.”

“No you ain’t.”

Van glanced over at me, and the smile that came across his face was slow enough to make me wish I hadn’t said anything.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

I looked at him a second longer than I needed to before turning toward the window. “Whatever.”

I could still hear him laughing beside me.

The pumpkin patch was packed when we got there. Cars covered damn near every patch of grass they had turned into parking, and once we made it through the entrance, I didn’t know where to look first. There were pumpkins everywhere, hay bales stacked around for pictures, kids running toward a corn maze, food stands, a hayride, and a little petting zoo off to one side.

Even before prison, I had never done no shit like this, and Van figured that out about five minutes after we walked in because I wanted to stop and look at everything.

He bought us little paper cups of feed at the petting zoo and handed me one.

“I don’t want this.”

“Feed the goat.”

“I don’t fuck with goats.”

“Are you scared?”

“No, I just don’t know that nigga.”