Rock Chick Reborn (Page 32)
That got me another chuckle before he said, “Ever think there’d be a time you’d be scheduling lectures to your teenage boys?”
“Dreamed it every day, but no. Never.”
There was a beat of silence then he asked, “You wanted kids?”
“Wanted a boy. Least one. One I could make into a good man. One who’d take care of his momma.”
“And then God gave you two,” he remarked.
“And then God gave me two,” I repeated. “We shouldn’t bitch, Moses. We’re so lucky. We both got good kids.”
“We are, baby,” he agreed. “Don’t I know that. Damned lucky.”
It was heavy and it went on with the heavy as Moses shared about some of the kids at Gilliam and the obstacles they faced in their lives to get them on the right path.
I took us out of the heavy when I felt he was ready by sharing about the antics of the Rock Chicks (the tamer ones, we were starting out, I didn’t want to scare him) just to try to make him laugh.
We talked and we talked, and we talked some more.
We even talked through me washing my face.
And a whole lot longer.
In fact, I was in bed, my hair twisted up, my silk scarf wrapped around it, under the covers in the dark after we’d talked out his kids, the Rock Chicks, movies we liked, books we’d read, places we’d been, dream vacations we wanted to take, and Moses’s sweet honey voice was in my ear, soothing me like a lullaby.
He didn’t miss it.
“Gonna let you go, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want you to let me go,” I mumbled.
And I really, really didn’t.
“And I don’t wanna let you go, but you sound about ready to pass out.”
I was.
“Okay, you can let me go.”
“Call you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for listening, baby,” he said.
“Thanks for talking, and also thanks for listening,” I replied.
He chuckled.
And hearing it, that was where I wanted to end it.
“’Night, Moses.”
“’Night, baby.”
I pressed my phone to my chest after we disconnected and I did not even care I slept with it there.
Holding him close.
Holding his goodness to me.
His promise.
Holding it tight.
“Say what?” I asked during our phone date Thursday night (we’d had one Wednesday night too, bee T dub).
“I’m reading the Rock Chicks. I’m at the beginning. Indy and Lee.”
Damn.
I didn’t know how I was feeling about this.
“When do you come in?” he queried.
“Uh, the next one. Jet and Eddie.”
“Do you know this Kristen Ashley person who wrote them?”
“It’s a penname. It’s really someone who used to work at Indy’s bookstore.”
“Did she fire them?”
“No. But the books took off so she writes full time now.”
“Goes on book tours?”
“Apparently, unless you sell a bucketload, that doesn’t happen. That is, unless it’s your own dime.”
He sounded confused. “But she has a schedule of appearances on her website.”
Hmm.
He’d checked the website.
“That’s just some woman in Phoenix Jane hired to pretend she’s Kristen Ashley. Jane’s not super social. She’d lose it if she had to go to a book signing.”
“Ah,” he mumbled. Then he asked, “You okay I’m reading these?”
Yikes, but he could read me already.
Even over the phone.
“Well, uh, they met me when, uh . . .”
“Babe,” he clipped.
I shut up and not only at his tone.
He’d called me “babe,” not “baby” not “sweetheart.”
That was totally Hot Bunch.
Toe-tah-lee.
I’d heard Luke Stark call an eighty-three-year-old woman, who’d come into the office to hire the guys because she was concerned her children were slowly poisoning her, “babe.”
She’d blushed like a schoolgirl.
And Moses was getting impatient with me being an idiot.
He was into me.
He called me every night.
We were going out to a nice dinner the first night he was free after his girls went back to their mom’s.
I needed to get over it.
“Actually, I’m pretty funny in those books,” I told him. “It’s just that, in the early ones, I was drug-dealing, poker-game-running funny.”
“This isn’t going to surprise me, Shirleen,” he reminded me.
“Right,” I muttered. “Uh,” I went on, “have you thought, you know, if this works with us—”
Moses cut me off. “If it does?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You don’t think it’s working?”
“It is now.”
“You think it’s going to quit working?”
“I hope not.”
“So how ’bout we use the word ‘when’ this works.”
This was not a suggestion.
“It doesn’t fit in my question,” I explained.
“What’s your question?”
“Okay, when this works and I meet your girls, and then I got a question after that. Do you think that fits?”
“It could be when we’re confident this is working and you meet my girls.”
It was safe to say Shirleen was getting irritated.
“My man, are you honestly tellin’ me what to say?”
“I’m telling you not to say or think negatively that it might not work.”
“I can tell you right about now I’m thinkin’ negative thoughts about a man telling me which word to use.”
I knew what he thought about that.
He thought that was funny, and I knew he did because I heard him laughing.
“You think I’m being funny?” I asked.
“No. I think it’s all kinds of good you got no problem tellin’ me like it is when I’m being a jackass.”
“Well . . . humph.”
Yep.
I humphed.
But the situation warranted it.
“So, what was the question you wanted to ask about when we know this is working and you meet my girls,” he prompted.
“I know this girl’s nerves are getting worked by her man.”
“Yeah,” he whispered, that honey pouring right in my ear. “Like that. ‘Her man.’”
I shut up.
But I liked it too.
Legs-getting-restless-while-I-was-lying-on-my-bed liked it.
“Baby, you were gonna ask me a question?” he pushed.
“What are you gonna tell them about the woman their daddy’s datin’ being an ex-poker-game-running drug-dealer.”
After I asked that, I held my breath.
I didn’t have to hold it long because Moses answered immediately.
“When the time is right, which will be when they’re older, I’m gonna tell them you used to run games and deal drugs.”
“Say what?” I whispered.
“By then they’ll know you, Shirleen. They’ll know you’re good for me. They’ll know Roam and Sniff and what you did for them. They’ll have met your friends and know how much they love you. And I don’t keep anything from my girls, not anything that big. It’s disrespect. So they’re too young now. But when they can get it, they’ll know.”