Chapter 14

He hurries down the length of the counter, coming out at the store entrance just as the two guys approach. “Excuse me, sir?” he asks, speaking to the taller guy. He keeps his gaze high, off the sweats, and silently prays, Please.

The guy stops, an amused smirk on his handsome face. “Yo, me?”

His friend comes up beside him and glares at Bill. “Jamal, who the fuck’s this?”

“Chill, man,” Jamal murmurs, holding out his arm as if trying to keep his friend back. To Bill, he says, “What you want with me?”

Oh, God, you don’t even know.The thought flutters through Bill’s head and is gone, but the images that trail in its wake set his heart stuttering. “Listen, ah…Jamal. One of my associates thinks she saw—”

“Bullshit!” the friend cries, surging forward like a baying hound. Only Jamal’s arm blocking his chest keeps him back. “That bitch is profiling. She ain’t seen shit.”

“Tyrece,” Jamal warns, his gaze never leaving Bill’s. “Cool it.”

Bill tries to explain. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m just asking if maybe you could empty your pockets and we can clear this all up…”

“Oh hellno!” Tyrece whirls to holler at the small crowd that’s begun to gather around the entrance. “This cracker’s whack! See some black kids with low-riding pants and big shirts and you think we stolefrom you? We din’t steal shit.”

“First of all,” Bill says, trying to stay calm even as his heart hammers in his chest, “I didn’t say you stole anything. This has nothing to do with race—”

Tyrece feels otherwise. “Fuck you.”

Bill explains, “It has nothing to do with your low pants or big shirt or the chains around your neck. It has nothing to do with you at all, really.” He turns to Jamal—he has to look up into the guy’s face and, right now amid the chaos forming in his store, the warmth and amusement he sees shining back seem safe. With a wry twist of his mouth, he admits, “She thinks youmight have taken something. I’m real sorry—it’s the jacket. If you’d just empty your pockets and show her—”

“I ain’t showing hernothing.” Jamal’s voice is low and pleasant, but it cuts through the murmurs of the crowd and Tyrece’s filthy tirade, stopping him in mid-rant. Shoving his hands farther into his pockets, Jamal tells Bill, “You want to see what I’m hiding? I’ll show you. Onlyyou. Got it?”

“Fuck that,” Tyrece mutters. “You don’t have to show him shit. We din’t—”

“Tyrece.”

Jamal’s voice is edged in steel, and manages to shut Tyrece up. His eyes hold Bill’s like a dare. Only you.Which means not just away from Angie but away from Tyrece as well, away from the customers pushing against the entrance, away from anyone else’s prying eyes. Alone.

Bill knows just where to go.

With a slight nod, he says, “There’s a back room.” When Angie starts to protest, he raises a hand and his voice to silence her. “It’ll be fine. Just the two of us. If you’ll follow me?”

He doesn’t wait for Jamal to respond. Instead, he jingles the set of keys in his pocket and weaves through the crowd, down the aisle, heading to the locked door at the back of the store. Even though music still blares through the sound system, the crowd is quiet and Bill feels as if the world has stopped. Everyone watches him walk the length of the store. Everyone waits to see what’s going to happen next.

When he reaches the door, he turns and sees Jamal right behind him, thank goodness. If the guy hadn’t followed, he doesn’t know what he’d do. Shaking out the right key on his ring, he unlocks the door and steps inside.

The room is narrow and has two other doors, one opening to a tiny employees-only bathroom, the other to a back hall that leads out of the mall. Along one wall runs a waist-high countertop strewn with opened merchandise, price stickers, rolls of receipt tape, and promotional items—free CDs, flyers, the like. On the opposite wall hangs the time clock and a work schedule. A couple employee coats hang on a coat rack, and that’s about it.

Jamal steps into the room and instantly the place seems to pull in. Bill imagines what it might look like to someone unfamiliar with the area and suddenly it seems dingy and small. Bill waits until Jamal’s all the way inside before closing the door behind him. As he turns the lock, he sighs. “Well, that got ugly.”

“Tyrece all right,” Jamal says. The word runs together on his tongue, the consonants disappearing. Ai-ight. “He just don’t like white folk. Nothin’ ‘gainst you.”

Bill laughs nervously. “I get it. It’s not personal.”

“Me, though. I like white meat.”

Jamal turns and pins Bill with a smoldering stare. Bill backs up against the door, hand on the knob, heart in his throat. With the deadly grace of a panther, Jamal closes the distance between them until he’s right up in Bill’s space. There’s a scant inch of room separating them, nothing more, and even that disappears when Jamal thrusts his hips forward, pressing the bulge at his crotch into Bill’s groin.

Oh, God,Bill thinks, mind racing. Oh, please. God, yes. I know there’s ten inches in there, and I want every last one.