Page 77 of Can't Get Enough

“Ready?” She tightens the strap on a Prada cross-body bag. Fiddles with gold bangles stacked at her wrists. Tugs at the end of one braid on her shoulder. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was fidgeting. I’d think she was nervous.

“Yeah, ready.” I nod toward the door. “Lead the way to this culinary institution.”

She exits the apartment, locking up before we start down the hallway. I let my hand rest at the small of her back. She’s warm and soft beneath my palm. I want to turn back around and sayfuck wherever we’re going. I’d rather hole up in her apartment all night while we get acquainted with each other’s bodies. Trade memories, fears, dreams in a cocoon of privacy. She tenses beneath my hand before she steps away from my touch.

We got a ways to go before we get there, but that’s okay. Hendrix will be worth it.

Once in the car, she leans forward and whispers the address to the driver. They laugh quietly for a second before she sits back and raises the privacy partition.

“What’s so funny?” I ask. “Where we going?”

“You’ll see.” She smiles, eyes lit with mischief. “It’s not that big of a deal. This place is nothing fancy. Believe me. The opposite. I’m just guessing you’ve never been to one.”

“To one? So it’s a chain?”

She zips a finger across her lips. “Talk about something else.”

So I do. While the city’s lights blur past the windows, I focus all my attention on Hendrix. The deal she’s been working on for her client Imani. An update on her mother’s condition, which seems to be holding steady as of now. When she tells me Aspire decided to take on the cannabis founder, I’m proud that I had at least a little to do with that move. We even debrief about the last episode ofTop Boywe watched. We’re now into episodes I hadn’t seen yet, and the storytelling is fantastic.

I’m distracted as the car comes to a stop. I peer through the car window at the restaurant’s iconic bright yellow and black sign.

“Waffle House?” I ask, turning a smile on her.

“You said you didn’t need it to be fancy.” She shrugs and grins. “And I did promise I’d take you to an Atlanta institution. Have you ever eaten at one?”

“No, but I’m starving so let’s do it.”

She is the perfect blend of highbrow and hood-brow. At ease socializing and negotiating deals in rarefied air with the world’s wealthiest, but then completely comfortable in a Waffle House dressed down on a Saturday night. She moves between wildly different spaces, never pretending to be anyone but herself. Her level of authenticity is rare and compelling. She’s as at home in her own skin as anyone I’ve ever met.

She hops out of the SUV before I can help her down.

Of course she does.

“We’ll be maybe an hour or so,” I tell the driver Bolt arranged for me while I’m in the city.

“Yes, sir,” the driver says. “I’ll wait here.”

Hereis a parking lot with cracks in the asphalt. It looks like it could use a facelift, contrasting with the black Bentley Bentayga and its tinted windows and costly rims.

“You’re not coming in?” Hendrix asks the driver. “Matthew, was it?”

Surprise flickers over the driver’s face momentarily before he schools it into the professional mask. “Um, yes. It’s Matthew.”

“You’re not hungry?” Hendrix persists.

“I’ll be fine,” Matthew says. “Thanks for checking. Unless you need me, Mr. Bell.”

“No, you can wait here,” I tell him. “Thanks, though.”

As soon as we enter, the smell of fried… everything slaps me across the face. It’s past eleven o’clock, and the place is packed. There’s one empty booth at the very back, which the hostess, a woman I put maybe in her early sixties, shows us to.

“Come on, babies,” she coos at us, shuffling past the packed booths. But then she tramples the “somebody’s grandma” image by hurling a stream of cuss words at the cook behind the grill.

“Motherfucker get on my damn nerves,” Ms. Pearl, according to her nametag, mutters as we sit. “Slow ass. Y’all know what you want?”

“No, ma’am,” Hendrix replies, lifting her menu. “Well, I do, but it’s his first time. So I’ll let him look.”

“Can’t go wrong with the hash browns,” she tells me. “Try ’em all the way at least once before you die.”

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