I possess not to walk over and throw him out of the window.
“Barry, please stop making threats,” Mila says, sounding mildly bored. “I’d hate for you to leave with a police escort instead of on your own. But you better believe I’ve got my finger on security’s number.” She stands, folds her hands over her chest, and watches him impassively.
“Oh, I’m leaving. I wouldn’t give you two feminazis the satisfaction of seeing me really lose my cool,” he sneers.
“And you keep your shitty severance. I’m calling a lawyer. I’m going to take you to the cleaners, Remi,” he spits as he starts walking.
When he slams the door behind him, the windows of the conference room rattle from the force.
“What an idiot,” Mila says and walks over to where Confidence slumps over in her chair. I start toward her. She looks at me and shakes her head, no. Her blue eyes are glassy but unwavering.
“Are you okay?” Mila asks, peering down at her in concern.
“I’m fine,” Confidence says and swallows hard. “Violent men and I don’t mix,” she says with a nervous laugh. But I see the tremble in her hand when she pushes an errant curl behind her ear.
I want to kill that man for putting that there. I hate that I can’t walk over, put an arm around her. I hate this distance. I’m done letting it grow between us. It’s time to bring my woman home.
UNEXPECTED
CONFIDENCE
“That line outside is incredible,” I say, wide-eyed, to Remi as we stack the clothes that have been folded and sorted by gender and size into the bins lined along the 500-yard-long convention center room. The volunteers are all busy at work setting up their stations for the doors to open at eight o’clock. “They did a great job getting the word out and there are shuttles all day for people who need it,” I tell him.
“Yeah, the Rivers kid is putting his money where his mouth is, that’s for sure,” he says and reaches for another box of clothes the organizers just dropped off.
“Why do you call him ‘kid’?” I ask a question that’s been burning at the tip of my tongue.
“Because when I met him, that’s what he was. And now, because it annoys him,” he says with a laugh. I laugh along.
“You knew him when y’all were kids?” I ask, my curiosity about how his family’s community is named after another family.
“No. Our families have been neighbors for thirty years now. When they bought the land from the Riverses in the oil bust in the 80s, the name of the development was one of the terms of the contract. And they hated having to sell part of their empire to a bunch of fresh-off-the-boat immigrants who made their money selling plantains in the hood,” he says.
“Plantains in the hood?” I chortle.
He chuckles. “Yeah, we lived in one of the parts of the city that was like a food desert. No good grocery stores. Just corner stores—Popeyes, Church’s Chicken, Shipley’s Donut Shop, if you were lucky. So, my grandfather saved the money he made painting houses and opened Eat!. That was our first business. And who knew that grocery stores that catered to every single palette it could source for would be so popular?”
“Well, apparently your grandfather did,” I say. They have three hundred and fifty stores in Texas and about two dozen in northeast Mexico.
“Yeah, and he and my dad founded Rivers Wilde. My mom’s brainchild was Wilde Restaurants, Crick Crack being the very first,” he says.
“Wow, it’s amazing you’ve done all that in one generation.”
“Yeah. We’re kind of ambitious. And Houston is the most fertile ground for ideas that are all about the hustle. My mother’s Jamaican, so she’s got to have at least three jobs or she feels like she’s being idle,” he says.
“What about your dad?” I ask.
“He’s dead,” he answers in an uncharacteristically flat, hard voice.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No worries, he has been for a long time,” he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Anyway, so I met Hayes once—because our families were enemies in a way that felt like a law. And then I ran into him in this little patch of land between our properties on the day of his dad’s funeral. I called him kid. He didn’t like it, so I did it repeatedly and now he’s back and it’s just stuck.”
I laugh, but I don’t feel like laughing. I miss Hayes. Like crazy. And I haven’t seen him since that