Free Chaser by Miasha Page B

wrote back Oh, all right , then put my phone back on my hip.
    Although I knew what I wanted, I looked at the menu to pass time. I was hungry as hell, but I wasn’t going to order until Leah got there. As soon as she walked in the door, though, I got the waitress’sattention. Leah and I put in our orders and drank down our iced teas with peaches while we waited for our food.
    “Let me ask you something,” she broke the silence.
    “What’s that?” I asked, taking the opportunity to look into her light brown eyes.
    “Why you always so nice to me?”
    I chuckled and asked, “What you mean? I’m nice to everybody, ain’t I?”
    “Yeah, but you be extra nice to me. Even before I started working at the shop. Whenever Kenny brought you around, you would give me these looks…like you cared about me or something.”
    I could feel myself blush as I thought about how to explain myself to Leah. I mean, I was flattered to know that she noticed me lookin’ at her. That meant she was lookin’ back. And if she didn’t bring it to Kenny’s attention, that meant she liked it.
    “Oh my God, look at you blushing.” She caught me.
    I chuckled again.
    “What is it with you, Nasir? Matter of fact, I don’t even wanna know. Just do me a favor. Spend some time with Kenny, and maybe whatever it is you feel for me will rub off on his sorry ass.”
    I nodded slowly. “So that’s what’s bothering you. You havin’ man problems.”
    “I wish that was it,” she said, putting her hand up on her forehead, then running her fingers through the front of her hair.
    “What more is it?” I asked her. “That case y’all caught?”
    “Humph, do you know he put that on me?” she revealed.
    I frowned and asked, “What you mean?”
    “Kenny wanted me to take that case by myself,” she explained.
    “For real? That’s fucked up.”
    “No, what’s fucked up is I would do something like that for him and he would still mess around on me.”
    I shook my head, and as I noticed Leah’s eyes watering, I reached across the table and rubbed her shoulder. It was then that she broke down.
    “Why you stay with ’im?” I mustered the nerve to ask.
    “It used to be for the security,” she said, wiping her tears with a napkin. “But now, I did something that kinda tied my hands to ’im.”
    “Hmm, you sound like me.”
    “What are you sayin’?” she probed.
    “I did something while I was workin’ with that nigga back when we used to chase together, and for him not sayin’ nothin’ I felt like I owed him. And he took full advantage of that shit, too…”
    “That’s Kenny for you.”
    “That’s how he ended up with you,” I mumbled.
    “Huh?”
    I looked up at Leah and decided to tell her the truth. “That’s why I’m extra nice to you and be givin’ you those looks,” I said. “I feel bad that I let him get you.”
    “What do you mean, you ‘let him get me’?”
    “I saw you first. Matter of fact, I used to look forward to seeing you at ya bus stop. Every morning I made sure I was posted up at the same time to see you get on the Fifty-two. And then one day I was finally goin’ say something to you, and this nigga come out of nowhere talkin’ about let him have you. I argued this nigga down, like, naw nigga, you wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout her ’til I said I was goin’ try to talk to ’er. But he wouldn’t let up. And him being Kenny, he dangled that shit I did over my head.” I began to impersonate Kenny’s voice and repeated what he had said to me some few years back. “Nigga, you owe me. If it wasn’t for me, you would be locked up right now, not able to get at no pussy. So you can pass it up this one time.”
    “Oh, I was just a piece of pussy to y’all?” Leah questioned with a bit of attitude.
    “Not to me. That was what that nigga said.”
    “So what did you say after that?”
    “I was like, fuck it. You got it.”
    “So you gave me up that easy, huh?”
    I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I