“Uh…pardon?”
She smiled gently. “They’re from Marcus Sloan.”
“Marcus Sloan?”
She misunderstood me, thinking I didn’t know who he was when I didn’t. Not really. But I’d heard of him. And, of course, seen him at the club since I noticed he’d come in every once in a while after that first time I’d seen him with Ashlynn.
“He’s Smithie’s partner. Silent partner.” She said that last quickly, and I knew the way it came at me the “silent” part was very silent. “He…he’s…” She seemed to struggle before she went on, “A good man. Kind-hearted. He helped me and Smithie with some things once and I’m grateful he did. Don’t know what we would’ve done if he hadn’t. My guess is that he heard what happened and—”
Oh no.
Nononononono.
No.
My chest closed up so I had to force out my, “Please.”
She set the daisies aside and crouched down beside me, taking my hand.
The instant she touched me, I pulled my hand free.
“Darlin’ child,” she whispered, the words broken, like she was going to cry.
“I need some alone time,” I whispered back.
“Okay, baby, then you go into your room and I’ll stay right here so if you find you’re not feelin’ the alone, I’m real close so you don’t gotta be.”
“Thank you but by alone, honey, I mean alone.”
She scooted closer in her crouch and her voice dipped low and even sweeter.
“Hon, I know you think you know what you want right now but you don’t. You need me here. And I’m gonna stay here, Daisy. You need to be alone, I’ll give you that how I can. You wanna be in here, I’ll go to the kitchen. You wanna lie down in your room, I’ll be out here. But I’m not leaving.”
The tears hit my eyes and they stung.
I looked to the window, and to control the tears, my tone was ugly when I rapped out, “Do whatever you wanna do.”
“Daisy?”
“What?” I snapped.
“I could turn back time, I would, baby.”
She said that like she really meant it.
I looked back to her and hissed, “That makes two of us.”
She bit her lip, wet trembling against her bottom lashes, and nodded.
I again looked out the window.
I felt her presence leave me but it didn’t leave my apartment.
And I stared out the window knowing I was done.
My daddy beat me. Then he left us with just what he gave us when he was with us. Nothing. My momma gave not one shit about me. Every man I’d had in my life (outside Smithie, and long ago, a man I barely remembered, just his shoulders, his eyes, and his name, Stretch), had treated me like trash.
And I was finally getting it.
Finally.
They treated me like trash because that was what I was.
The kind of girl some loser you once gave a lap dance to who was ejected because the motherfucker was way too fucking handsy jumps you in a parking lot, lands his fist in your face until you can’t think straight, and violates you on asphalt.
I didn’t move from that chair not because it was comfortable.
I didn’t because it hurt too much to move and I’d already learned that there was nothing, sitting or lying down, that felt good on my scraped-raw back and ass.
Yeah.
That’s where trash belonged.
Thrown to the asphalt just like what it meant.
Nothing.
Miss Annamae had been wrong.
Everyone else had been right.
I got treated all my life like I’d been treated because that’s who I was.
I wasn’t even trash.
I was nothing.
And coming to this understanding, I stared out the window not seeing anything and I didn’t even try to build castles in my head. I didn’t surround myself with a moat, heavy doors solidly bolted to keep the bad away, knights in armor always close to protect me, pennants flying to the glory that was me. The princess high atop a turret in a stronghold, a glorious, magnificent, grand castle made of impenetrable stone, safe and protected where no one could hurt her with words or fists or anything.
You didn’t keep trash safe.
You threw it away.
But nothing?
Nothing was just…
Nothing.
* * * *
I woke when I was lifted and immediately started struggling no matter the pain—throbbing in places, acute in others—that tore through me.
“Shh, darlin’, quiet now, it’s only me.”
I went slack in Smithie’s arms.
He carried me to my bed. LaTeesha was already there, folding back the covers.
She straightened and turned to Smithie and me as Smithie bent and laid me out on my sheets.
“You want me to help get you in your jammies?” LaTeesha asked gently.
In answer, I turned my back on her.
I heard her sigh.
I felt Smithie pull the covers up over me.
He tucked them lightly around me and then I felt his lips touch my temple.
I pressed my head into the pillows to get away.
“Baby girl—” he started to whisper in my ear.
“Not now, honey,” LaTeesha advised her man. “Not now.”
“Fuck,” he murmured as I felt him move away.
The light went out.
I didn’t hear the door close and I reckoned this was because one of them came back. I heard a muted sound like they’d put a very full glass of water on the nightstand.