Chapter 21
Oh my God, Justin,” Charlie whispered as he entered his home. Charlie sat in his living room, hugging her knees to her chest, on his plush couch. She had been there for hours, calling him repeatedly, wondering what had gone down. His face was every indication of how things had gone horribly awry.
She rushed to his side and he shrugged her off.
“It’s alright. I’m good,” Justin said.
His pride. He was saving his pride. That’s all it could have been because Demi had left him bloody.
“Let me see,” she said, fighting for a view of his face as he pulled away.
“I’m good, Charles, I’m good...”
“Justin, let me see your face,” she said, persistent, as she cupped it tenderly. “I’m so sorry.” She should have known better than to let this happen. She knew there wasn’t a nigga alive that could handle Demi’s gangster. Only she had been able to tame him, and even then, it had backfired.
I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have never let you go there.”
“I’m a big boy, Charlie. I’m good,” Justin said. He snatched away from her and pulled open the freezer, retrieving a bag of frozen vegetables.
“Let me help,” she said, taking them and placing them to the eye that Demi had blacked.
“He broke my fucking nose,” Justin said, wincing. He was pissed, triggered, aggressive as he thumbed his bloody and swollen nose. “He’s a madman, Charlie. You need to stay away from him,” Justin said. “Next time I see him, know I’ll be strapped.”
“I don’t want it to come to that. Not over me.”
“Don’t defend him,” Justin said.
“What? I’m not!” Charlie pulled back.
“I went there for you and you acting like I’m just supposed to let this shit ride.” Justin was deflecting, taking his anger out on Charlie.
“I didn’t ask you to check Demi about shit. I didn’t ask you to save me. It’s not my fault that you confronted him, and bit off more than you could chew!” Charlie knew she had said too much when she saw his ego flare.
“Fuck you, Charlie,” Justin said. She was speechless as he pushed by her. “I’ma take the couch. You can take the bedroom, if you’re still staying.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Charlie asked.
Justin turned to her. “Do what you want, Charlie.”
“What happened?” Lauren’s voice came over his shoulder as Demi sat in the darkened living room. “You were arrested in Flint. What were you doing in Flint? Who is this man you assaulted?”
Demi didn’t turn. Instead, he sipped his cognac and flexed his swollen hand. His hand looked bad. Justin’s face looked worse. Bails laid at his feet. A man and his dog. What a lonely existence.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” Demi said.
“I’ve been with you forever and the only time I’ve ever seen you lose your shit like that was when I cheated on you in college.”
“Don’t bring that shit up, Lo,” he said, voice revealing his disdain at the mere mention of that indiscretion in their relationship.
Demi had hustled back then, hard, on the block, moving major weight across the Pennsylvania turnpike.
He had taken care of her every need, including her six-figure tuition, and in return, she had cheated on him.
While he was consumed with proving that he could take care of the young college girl who had her heart set on taking over the world, she was investing in someone else.
.. a ball player that was slated to go pro, his roommate at that.
Demi had never felt a betrayal so cold. Demi would have never found out if one of his runs hadn’t been rescheduled.
Demi had doubled back to her apartment the same night he was set to leave for Philly.
Finding her in bed with another man had sent him into a rage he couldn’t control.
He ended an NBA career that night. He ended a life that night.
It had taken them a long time to come back from that.
It was one of the reasons why he had never grown accustomed to her touch.
She was covered in disloyalty. He had never quite let it go, no matter how much he claimed it to be “old shit.”
“I’m just saying, Demi. You don’t fly off the handle. I know you have your business to attend to. You’re disciplined with that... calculating. You’ve only ever popped off over me. When you caught me cheating, so I can’t help but ask what caused all this tonight?”
“What I’m hiring the nurses and chefs and shit for if you up on your feet, Lo? It’s not the time to have this conversation. I just want to make sure you’re straight,” he said.
“There was a woman at the hospital. Who was she, Demi?”
The sigh that left his soul unlocked the door to the truth. He stood and faced Lauren. It wasn’t the time to have this discussion, but if he knew her, she wouldn’t let it go. There would be no getting her back in bed.
“This yo’ payback?” she asked in confusion.
He would be a cruel nigga to go tit for tat with her after all these years.
.. to get her comfortable in their bliss only to purposely do her harm.
This wasn’t that. This was a case of the universe handing Demi something he couldn’t keep and him being too selfish to release it.
“I ain’t on no bullshit like that. What I did had nothing to do with getting back at you for some old shit,” Demi said.
“So, you did cheat?” she pressed. “Oh my God...”
“There was a girl, Lo. It’s over now. I don’t know what that mean for us, but I’m tired of covering shit up. I was fucking with somebody.”
It was like someone deflated her. He saw her reach for the back of the couch to give her some stability, but it wasn’t enough.
She came to her knees, wailing. It was the sound someone made when they found out someone they loved had died.
That someone, was their existence as they had known It.
Their normal was now abnormal and it ached so bad.
“How does a man who hates to be touched, cheat with another woman?” she asked.
“I fucked up, Lo,” he admitted.
“What was I not doing?” Lauren asked.
“It was never about you. Women like to make it about them. Internalize the shit. I was selfish. It was about me, not you, and it’s over,” Demi said.
“When did it start? How many times?” Lauren asked. “Do you love her? Has she been in this house?”
Demi groaned and shook his head as he swiped both hands down his face. “We not doing that. The torture shit. None of that shit matters, man,” Demi said. Her self-deprecating ways would only make a bad situation worse.
“It doesn’t matter because she’s been here? Because you love her?” Lauren asked.
“It don’t matter cuz it don’t change shit. I ain’t trying to punish you with the details. I’m wrong, Lo. That’s all you need to know. I did some fuck shit and you ain’t to blame. A nigga just get shit wrong sometimes.”
Demi’s chest tightened because he wasn’t sure if he believed that.
Charlie had felt too right to devalue her in this way.
Nothing about her felt wrong but the way that they had concluded.
The fight. The lies. The cheating. All of that was wrong.
It was the opposite of what they stood for.
Still, Lauren didn’t deserve that part. The intimacy.
The exceptions Demi had made for Charlie.
It was those things that would hurt Lauren most. So, he omitted those parts.
For the sanity of his wife, he reduced Charlie to a fling.
“I can’t do this, Demi,” Lauren said. “I can’t become the woman worrying about my husband’s dick every time he steps foot outside.
“I will divorce you and I’m not talking about a nice, neat divorce.
I will leave this marriage with what I’m owed and take my son so far away from your existence that you won’t even be able to find us.
I’ll be bitter. So, you decide right now what happens next.
Is it over? Because if it’s over, we can move on from this.
You forgave me once; I could do the same. ”
“I never forgave you, Lo.” His words silenced her. She stood, painfully slow before facing Demi with wet eyes.
“You don’t forgive shit like this. You just learn to live with it,” he said.
He turned his back on her and recaptured his cognac, pouring another glass.
.. neat. “I ain’t never letting a soul keep me from my son.
You know that. We don’t play that game with one another.
You either leave or stay, but using DJ as a pawn, it’s not your best move.
He’s a king. He’s my young. I’m asking you not to do that because I know how it’ll end. ”
The eerie void that lived in the room after that made the silk hair stand up on the back of his neck. He could practically hear her breathing it was so tense. He hated that it felt this way in his home. It wasn’t what he wanted.
“I can’t heal if you’re still hurting me, Demi.” Her voice was almost non-existent. Had he beaten her down that low? Demi tipped the drink to his lips and then lowered his head as he nodded
“I know. It’s over.”
The words echoed in his mind, reverberating in his gut, ripping through his soul.
Charlize Woods. His time with her. He recalled her entire face with every blink of his eyes.
Her deep and doe-shaped eyes. Her dewy skin.
Her pretty, little Chiclet teeth and those full lips that he had learned to love to kiss.
It was over. Damn if he wasn’t losing all his gangster from just the thought of that.
Charlie had served him a single dose of his own medicine and it was so bitter he couldn’t swallow it.
“Damn,” he said.
He downed the last of his drink and kicked one foot up on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“I’ma sleep out here tonight. Go to bed.”