Chapter 1 #2
“So, who are you?” she asked when they stood face to face.
She smelled edible, like she had bathed in vanilla extract.
Up close, she was blinding. It wasn’t just her locs that were golden.
Her skin, it was 24 karat. It was him who closed his eyes this time, before blinking away to look at the waitress.
She was a bit dimmer. He could stare at her straight on just fine.
“I’m just a man that wanna hear a song,” he said.
“My set is over,” she said. “Come back next Saturday and get it for free like everybody else.” She turned away from him and bent down to begin wrapping up the microphone.
“I’m paying for your time now. Seven days is a long time. I might not make it,” he answered.
She stood and turned to him, a bit taken aback.
“Ten thousand dollars?” she asked, her tone disbelieving.
He nodded.
“You do know you could probably get Mariah to sing you the damn song for ten bands, right?”
He felt the smile but didn’t show it. Tongue on the inside of his cheek. He glanced off to the waitress.
“She always this difficult?” he asked.
“Don’t answer that, Shayla!” Charlie said, with a warning finger.
Shayla. Yup. He had some assumptions about a Shayla; but a Charlie?
The pretty queen with the defensive demeanor, he was stuck on her.
He was drawing blanks. “Bringing weird niggas over here for me to sing.” Charlie sighed.
“I wouldn’t even feel right taking that amount of money. Thank you for the compliment, but no.”
Word? He thought. He was pleased. Extremely fucking pleased. The good shit ain’t never for sale. You just got to admire it from afar and wish you could have it.
“I respect it.” The average woman would have sung while taking her panties off for that amount.
“You really gon’ make us beg for that ten thousand dollars, Charlie?” her guitarist asked.
“Tim!” she shouted, mouth falling open as the band gave her a hard time.
“I got a thousand for the three of y’all too if I can get that song,” Demi said smoothly. He was applying pressure in the form of Benjamin Franklins.
The band pulled out their instruments and Charlie huffed as she folded her arms across her chest. “Noooo!” she whined.
“Girl, just sing!” Shayla, the waitress said. “Fine-ass man asking you to do what you do every weekend for these cheap-ass niggas in here.” Shayla bent down and picked up the tip bowl, shaking the loose change at the bottom.
Demi took a seat and removed a heavy wad of money from his pocket. He placed it in the center of the table. Charlie grabbed the microphone, rolling her eyes. Oh, but when she opened her mouth…
I am thinking of youuuuuuu
In my sleepless solitude tonight
If it’s wronggg to love youuuuu
Then my heart just won’t let me be right
Demi leaned forward and put his elbows to knees as he lowered his head, rubbing the top of it as his eyes closed with her. He met her there... in the dark.
When he looked up, her fists were bawled at her sides as if she were fighting for this song as she belted the words.
I GIVE MY ALLLLLLLLLL
“Tsss,” he pushed a breath of disbelief off his lips as his body went cold. Goosebumps. This girl gave him goosebumps.
She moved her hand like she was directing her own orchestra, and then she snapped pretty fingers and shook her head. She had no business singing in this club. She was a star.
She blushed when she finished the song, and he bit his lip and nodded as she came down off the stage.
“You disappear up there,” he said.
“I just love music. Ever since I was a little girl. I’d listen to my mom play these songs and she’d sing, she’d cry.
She’d wake me out of my bed at three o’clock in the morning and I would know it was time for me to sing to her and her friends because I could smell the liquor on her breath.
She would be so proud when I sang for her.
I just kind of never stopped singing since then. ”
He didn’t know what had possessed her to share so much, in fact, he was sure she wasn’t really sharing it with him but reminiscing to herself. He just happened to be there to hear it.
“You want to tell me what kind of man spends ten thousand dollars on one song?” she asked. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you in here.”
“Just somebody passing through town. I ain’t from around here,” he answered.
“Mr. Not From Around Here, do you have a name?” she asked.
“Demi,” he answered.
“Charlie,” she formally introduced, holding out her hand.
Demi looked at it and his skin crawled a bit at the thought of touching her hand, but he shook it anyway, fighting past alarms ringing in his mind.
The anti-social gangster felt his gut clench at the parallel of their existence. Rough versus soft.
“I can’t take the money but thank you for thinking my voice is worth it. An industry full of music execs thought otherwise, but it’s nice to know somebody likes it,” she said, smiling.
He nodded, as she bent to grab her bag and her guitar case.
“You play too?” he asked.
“A starving artist must do it all to make a living,” she replied. She handed it off to him. “Carry this for me?”
She was assertive, like she had known him for a while, and he was used to taking her marching orders.
Like a longtime boyfriend who knew to get his ass off the couch to get the groceries out the car when his old lady got home.
He took it from her grasp and smirked at her natural authority.
She was sweet, but not all sweet. She had a subtle aggression that he found intriguing because she was so little that he was sure she had never intimidated anyone.
Still, her demand was heeded as he found himself walking beside her as they headed out of the club.
“Goodnight, y’all!” she called, turning to give a slight wave.
The band grumbled their goodbyes as he followed her out into the crisp night air. Sixty-one degrees on a summer day was chilling and Charlie shrank as the wind sunk her collar bone as she recoiled.
“My Uber’s almost here,” she said.
“You make it a habit of hopping in cars with strangers at 2 am?” he asked.
She shrugged.
He turned and walked across the parking lot.
“Hey, where are you going?” she asked, frowning as she quickened her steps to give chase.
He walked to the passenger side of a silver Cadillac and pulled open the door. Charlie stopped walking as she stood in front of the car.
“Uber for the night,” he said.
She stalled for a bit and then took out her phone and held it up to his face, snapping a picture.
“In case you kidnap me,” she said, deathly serious. She snapped the license plate next and then sent the pictures to her sister.
“You done?” he asked, slightly annoyed. He was too fucking fine to frown the way that he was. Rough. Rugged. Thuggish. There was nothing good about this man and Charlie knew it, yet she was still going to get in the car.
She walked up to him and past him as he held open the door, pausing slightly to look him in the eyes.
“Uber drivers don’t have tattoo tear drops on their faces,” she said. “Am I safe with you?”
She was so close that he smelled the leftover hint of wine on her breath.
She had sipped it periodically throughout her set.
Sometimes, holding it in her hand while swaying and singing.
She hadn’t put on a performance at all. She had set a vibe inside the club.
He thought about what she had asked him.
Was she safe? The life he led. The circumstances that had lured him to the club that night.
He couldn’t say she was safe at all with him.
He was danger personified, walking in designer clothes and dripping in expensive cologne.
“I think I can handle getting you home,” he said.
She slid into his passenger seat as her phone rang. She giggled, covering her mouth as she answered her FaceTime.
“Who is that fine-ass man?”
Charlie laughed as her sister, Stassi, demanded answers through the screen and Demi slid into the driver’s seat.
“A crazy man who likes to spend money on frivolous things,” Charlie said, smiling.
“Must be nice,” her sister answered.
“I’ll call you when I make it home,” Charlie replied.
“Damn, can I at least hear his voice? I know he has a voice that makes you melt because everything else, girl!”
Charlie turned the phone to Demi.
“Say hi to my sister, Stassi,” Charlie said.
Demi gripped the woodgrain steering wheel with one hand as he put the car in drive, and he rested one elbow on the center console.
“How you doing?” he said, only half glancing at the screen, as he tried to focus on the road.
“Hey, handsome, please get my sister home safe and knock the cobwebs off that...”
“Aye, aye! That’s enough, bye, Stassi” Charlie interrupted, hanging up abruptly.
“I didn’t catch that last part. I like to follow instructions. Let’s run that FaceTime back right quick,” he said, as he drove.
“You wish!” she said, laughing, and blushing so hard that her cheekbones reddened.
He pointed to the navigation. “Put your address in.”
She did as she was told and then settled into the luxury car as a quiet settled over the car.
Charlie turned in her seat, pressing her back against the door and looking at him curiously. Demi’s eyes went to the foot in his leather seat and had to turn his eyes back to the road to avoid asking her to remove it.
Demi frowned. She was intruding with her eyes.
“You mad rude with the staring,” he said.
Demi giggled. He was annoyed.
“I’m just wondering what this is. This moment, you know? A man walks in a bar and sees a girl. What happens after that?”
“What you want to happen after that?” he asked.
Charlie shrugged. “I’m only here for happily ever after. I’ve had enough horror stories to last a lifetime,” she said, turning back toward the front. She rolled her eyes back to him as she pressed her head against the headrest. “No pressure or nothing.”
He bit his lip. “All pressure, baby,” he answered. “I ain’t afraid to apply a little pressure.”