Chapter 5
The sun was her enemy. It invaded her psyche with an invisible hammer. Pounding. Shattering. This migraine would last all day.
What was I thinking? She thought as she grabbed a pillow and placed it over her face.
Stassi had finished almost the whole bottle of liquor after Day had left.
“This shit don’t make no sense,” she uttered, chastising herself.
She sat up against her headboard and began checking social media.
It used to be for business. Networking on Instagram and checking out the latest trends in event planning each morning was normal.
Today, she was a hopeless scroller. When she noticed Day in her notifications, she clicked on his page.
He was an artist through and through. His page wasn’t even personalized.
It was a collage of half pictures, never showing his face.
Motifs of jewelry, dark studio booths, and tattooed hands around the waists of headless models filled his page.
He was definitely living a rock star lifestyle.
The guns and bulletproof vests he wore in some of the flicks proved that he lived what he rapped.
Almost as soon as she clicked like on one of the images, she was @’d.
@stassisaysso check ur DM’s sweetheart
“Who is this?” She quizzed as she followed the rabbit hole, letting social media take her from Day’s page to a white boy’s she didn’t recognize.
He was beckoning her to her messages, but she didn’t recognize him.
When she noticed him in a picture with Day on his page, she headed to see what he wanted.
D.N. says be ready for lunch. He has some time free in his schedule before he leaves town this evening. What’s ur avails?
Stassi frowned. “Why the fuck is this whiteboy DM’ing me?” She was responding before she could think twice.
He can’t message me himself?
The bubbles began to dance on the screen instantly, and she waited for this messenger boy to respond.
He’s busy. He says be ready in an hour.
Stassi clicked out of the message. “I don’t know who this nigga think he bossing around, but he got me so fucked up. Don’t send no flunky at me barking orders. I don’t care who you are.”
Just off GP, Stassi decided she wasn’t going. If Day thought he was going to treat her like a groupie, he had another thing coming. “White boy probably sliding in hella bitches DM’s with the same tired-ass lines.”
She showered and then slipped into a black, long-sleeved bodysuit, opting to cover her shape with a long fur vest.
She needed to get her most valuable clients back.
Her termination had been like a slap in the face, she was too shocked to try to salvage the situation when it had initially happened, but now she realized she couldn’t leave with nothing.
She might have signed a non-compete clause but what Lauren couldn’t do was control what the client wanted.
She hoped she had made enough genuine connections for her clients to insist on keeping her on their accounts.
If it was the clients’ choice to leave with her, Lauren couldn’t come back and sue.
Lauren grabbed her purse and her car keys and headed out the door.
It wasn’t until she stepped out of the elevator did she hear the beeping of the tow truck. When she pushed out into the freezing air, her heart sank.
“What are you doing?!” She shrieked as she rushed to the curb where her car was being loaded onto the bed of the truck.
“I’m just doing my job, Miss,” the man gruffed.
“That’s my car! This is a mistake! I paid my car note this month!
I still have a week before the next one is even due!
Take my shit off the back of this truck!
” She wanted to cry. In fact, she might have been, but the harsh winds blowing snow around her made it hard to distinguish the tears from Mother Nature.
“Lady, you’re going to have to take it up with Ally Financial.
This car was requested back by them. It was purchased under a corporate discount, and the company has retracted its willingness to contribute, making this car out of your price range for approval.
Contact the bank if it’s a mistake, but today this car is coming with me.
” He began to walk away and Stassi practically chased him to his car door.
“Just wait! I don’t understand any of this! Can I just make a phone call before you take my car?” She pleaded.
The man ignored her, climbed into the bed of the truck, and pulled away mercilessly.
It wasn’t until the car was gone did she realize she wasn’t alone.
Day’s driver was parked across the street and Day stood, leaned against his car door, hands hidden inside the pockets of his pea coat, as he watched her play of embarrassment conclude.
Stassi wanted to die. She had never been so fucking humiliated in her life.
Stassi had used her employee discount to buy the car, and Lauren had helped her secure the loan by verifying her income.
Defeat wore her as she stared at Day. All she could do was shake her head.
“This shit literally couldn’t get any worse,” she uttered.
“Come take a ride with me,” Day said in the most unbothered way.
“Take a ride with you?” She asked, scoffing.
She threw up her hands in exasperation. She didn’t know if she was frustrated with him, with the moment, or with fucking life.
“Does it look like I feel like entertaining an arrogant-ass nigga right now?” She had to shout slightly so that her voice could be heard over the howling wind.
Her candor pulled a laugh from him as his brows hiked in surprise. “Is that what I am?” He called back.
“You had your handler DM me. Any man that has a handler that reaches out to girls online in his place is an asshole,” Stassi said. “Or maybe I’m just being an asshole because I’m a bum bitch with no car.” She mumbled that last part.
“Humor me and give me an hour of your time, Stassi. We both know you can spare it.”
Yup, he was an asshole. Only an asshole would throw her newly jobless status in her face so smoothly. She shook her head and huffed before looking both ways to cross the street.
She opened the back door to the chauffeured truck, and she slid inside. He climbed in behind her, and the crunch of the tires against the snow announced their departure.
Arms folded. Gaze on the passing snowy lawns, Stassi couldn’t find words because she was fighting overwhelm. She just wanted to cry. She always felt a little better about things when she took a minute to let her tears flow, but she wasn’t in a safe enough space to reveal her vulnerability.
Please don’t cry in front of this man.
Trying to convince herself to be strong only made her feel weak.
She was tired of being the symbol of strength.
Tired of her skin tone setting the expectation that she could handle anything, that she should accept anything, that she should automatically know how to bounce back.
Black women weren’t immune to weakness. She had been taught to master fake strength but she didn’t know if she was ever truly strong.
The car smelled like Lafayette Street, weed, and the pine-shaped air freshener that hung from the gear shift.
“I’m not the girl that this happens to, you know,” she said, feeling like she owed him an explanation for what he had just witnessed.
“I’ve always been able to tell the difference between a bum and a nigga that’s down on his luck,” Day stated.
“Every nigga don’ had they downs. I’ont really like to meet niggas when they up.
Lose that shit, and let me see how you bounce back.
That’s what I like to judge a mu’fucka on.
Money flips itself when its laying like that.
Can you make something out of nothing, though? That’s where you show your value.”
He looked out his window as he spoke, and she kept her eyes focused outside hers, but his words hit home.
“Thanks, Day,” she whispered.
“That li’l bit of game is free cuz I know you broke. The next time I’ma tax you.”
Ice broken. The tension coming from her melted as she broke into laughter.
“It’s too sooonnnn. What’s wrong with you, bruh?” She asked, giggling.
“I’m just fucking with you,” he replied, smiling. “Can I have a bit of your time today?”
“Just a bit of advice,” she said. “When you want to spend time with a woman it’s much nicer to hear that if it comes from you personally. The creepy white boy in the DM is a turn-off.”
She could tell she embarrassed him a little. He glanced off, an invisible blush searing him as he said, “I can’t just be falling in everybody messages, baby. Bitches out here waiting for attention so they can gain clout. Shade Room will have my business on the Gram before lunch,” he explained.
“I’m not everybody, don’t treat me like them other ones,” she said.
She had a lot of confidence for someone who had just been repo’d.
“If I give you the day where we gon’ end up?” She asked.
“Wherever we want to end up,” he stated plainly. He said it like he ran the world. Like he didn’t have to answer to anyone, and rules didn’t apply to him. She didn’t live like that. She had never had the luxury to even think like that, and she envied him a little.
That’s what freedom feels like.