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I smirked down at this sharp woman who raised Atlas. “I can’t tell her you’re sick, remember?”
Kareena sighed, and I knew I had her. “Then I suppose that will be okay.”
“Cool.” I gave her a quick hug before Atlas’s mom took a step back as I dug my keys out of my jeans and started to leave.
“Maybe you could send me photos of her?” she called out when I had one foot out of the kitchen. “So I can see for myself that she’s all right?”
I debated my next move for only a few moments before pulling out my phone. I quickly scrolled through it while I closed the distance between us again, and when I found what I was looking for, I didn’t allow myself to think twice about it before handing my phone and the evidence of my obsession over to Kareena.
There were plenty, but I chose the least disturbing.
It was a photo of Atlas standing at reception, smiling at whatever the person on the other end of the phone she was holding had said. I remember feeling jealous because she had never smiled at me like that before pulling out my phone without thinking and capturing the moment for myself. I’d never admit how many times I caught myself staring at it while pretending that smile had been for me.
“This was taken a few days after she started.”
Kareena’s gaze seemed to drink in the sight of her daughter before saying, “She’s lost weight.”
I raised my brows at that because I had no idea. “She gets sad sometimes,” I told Kareena. “She tries to hide it, but her eyes give her away.”
“She was never good with expressing her emotions. She prefers to bottle them up—except love. Atlas was the best at making you feel important to her, and she loved her father very much,” Kareena whispered mournfully.
“She loves you too,” I reminded her.
Of course, Kareena chose to ignore that truth and simply wished me a safe drive back to Idlewild.
The shop was already closed, and everyone was gone by the time I returned to the city. I told myself it was better this way as I made my way up the stairs to Hudson’s office, where I knew he’d still be pouring over paperwork. He was the only one with a work ethic that nearly matched mine. The only difference was that Hudson had a wife at home waiting on him, so I never understood why he spent all his time here.
I knocked on his door before opening it since it was cracked and found him sitting behind his desk, pouring over printed spreadsheets. He always complained that the fifteen-hundred-dollar computer the four of us had chipped in to buy his ass hurt his eyes.
“You still here, old man? Now, you know you got one more hour before Ms. Sheila drives up here to drag your ass home again.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” He waved me off as he peered over his glasses at the paper in his hand. I sat in the chair across from his desk and responded to some emails on my phone as I waited for him to finish. Ten minutes later, he finally set the paper aside and sighed as he removed the reading glasses from his eyes. “You ready to tell me what’s bothering you, boy?”
I tucked my phone in my jeans before running my hand over my braids as I struggled to figure out how to voice the question I came to ask.
“When you met Ms. Sheila, did you…um…did you know you wanted her to be your girl?”
“Well…no. I was younger than you are now, so I had only one thing on my mind, but my wife was hell on wheels, and she never let me forget it.”
“So you struck out?”
“The opposite, actually. She gave me exactly what I wanted, and I walked around for a week thinking I was the baddest cat around. Every player from the Battery to Unity Garden wanted Sheila, but I was the only one to get her. I was so confident in my game that I went to call on her again, and she shut me down.”
“What?” My eyes bucked, and I started cackling when Hudson somberly nodded like he was reliving the moment his ego was bruised. “Don’t tell me your stroke was so weak that she wouldn’t let you hit it again?”
“No, no. I assure you it wasn’t that,” he said with a reserved chuckle that made it clear he wasn’t going to dishonor his wife by going into detail.
I respected it like a motherfucker, so I changed the subject. “All right, so what was it then?”
“It was my arrogance. We men make the mistake of assuming that when a woman catches our eye, it’s solely by chance and not by design. My wife had chosen me long before I chose her, and I didn’t know it until she sent my ass packing.”
“Okay, I’m lost.”
He gave me an impatient look. “Normally, I would say this is the problem with your generation, but I know you, Rowdy, and I know your parents. They’re good people, and they raised you right. Because of them, you’ve never had an issue working hard for what you want. You don’t sit around blaming the White man for your problems. Instead, you stood up and forced your way through them. It’s one of the reasons I risked my wife’s wrath coming out of retirement to work for you knuckleheads. I want to see you succeed in every way, and no man—no matter how talented and ambitious—makes it very far without a good woman by his side.Yourproblem is that you haven’t met one until now. That’s why you’re pushing forty and sitting in my office seeking advice on how to court one.” Hudson peered at me, and whatever he saw in my gaze made him chuckle. “Goddamn, it finally happened. You found her, didn’t you?”
“Found who?”
“A woman who sees your potential and possesses the fortitude to help you reach it.”
