CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After that eventful few days, life settled down for JJ and Tish. She was able to get back to completing her daily tasks without any police officers or so-called concerned citizens harassing her. JJ phoned her constantly, which she thought was so cute, but she knew he was concerned about her. She wasn’t used to that kind of attention, but she found that she loved it. And every night, when he got home from work, she’d have dinner ready for him. They ate, watched TV, usually something they could laugh about, and then they’d retire to her bed or his – but they always made love. It was a wonderful life for three solid weeks. Until it wasn’t again.
They were in JJ’s bed making love again, and both of them were on the verge of cumming as he was pumping so hard and grunting so loud, when his phone rang.
“Shit!” he yelled out. But because he was the circuit’s chief judge, he was always on call. He could never let a call go unanswered.
Still holding Tish, who was on top of him, he grabbed his phone off his nightstand. “This is Judge Brant,” he quickly said into the phone, trying hard not to reveal his displeasure in his voice.
It was Artie. “Turn on First Coast News.”
JJ frowned. “Why?”
“Just do it!” Artie ended the call.
JJ tossed his phone back on the nightstand, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV.
“Something wrong?” Tish asked him.
“I don’t know,” JJ said as he found First Coast News and turned it on. Tish looked toward the TV too. A reporter was following JJ’s rival for his judgeship in the upcoming election.
“Who’s that?” Tish asked.
“Manny Davis. The man who wants to unseat me.”
“Unseat you?”
“We have an election in the Fall, remember?”
She hadn’t forgot, but JJ never brought it up around her. “What do you think of the video, sir?” the reporter asked Manny and then shoved the microphone into Manny’s eager face. But JJ was wondering what video were they talking about.
“What I think the voters need to know,” Manny said as he continued to walk through the courthouse parking lot, “is why is it that their presiding chief judge let a woman accused of manslaughter and should have been locked up for fifteen years get out with just a few months served?”
Tish’s heart dropped. It was about her!
JJ’s heart began to hammer. Because he knew Manny Davis was never above dragging an innocent woman’s name through the mud too.
“And if that’s not enough disgrace to go around,” Manny continued, “our same presiding chief judge of the fourth circuit court would allow that same criminal he let off with a slap on her wrist to drive around in his fancy S-class Mercedes like she was his woman all along! Was he sleeping with this thug before he reduced her sentence? Inquiring citizens want to know. Do we want as our chief judge a man with this level of poor judgement? I say we don’t. I say the citizens of the fourth circuit should kick JJ Brant and his thug out of office and never let him anywhere near a judiciary again!” And then Manny walked away.
“That pile of shit!” JJ yelled angrily. It was one thing to go after him. It was another thing to go after Tish.
“Why would he call me a thug?” Tish asked.
“It’s code for black. He wants his fellow racists to know I’m with a black woman. To give them yet another reason to not vote for me. I don’t want their fucking votes!”
But even though Tish liked that JJ wasn’t trying to kick her to the curb over that nonsense, she still didn’t like it. Every vote mattered and if the fact that she was around him might cause him to lose his judgeship wasn’t something she could go along with.
Then his phone rang again. He answered quickly. The guy on the other end was so loud that Tish couldn’t help but hear him even though the phone wasn’t on Speaker.
“This is a fucking nightmare, JJ!”
“Just slow down, Artie. It’s just Manny talking out of both sides of his mouth again.”
“What was that video doing? Talking out of the side of its mouth too?”
“What video?”
“The one I sent to you! Do you ever look at your text messages?”
JJ immediately pressed buttons that allowed him to pull up his text messages on his TV screen. Tish looked too as he found the video and pressed Play. And there they were, in the Scottsdale Police Station, hugging each other. JJ frowned. “Those gotdamn cops. Bill Goslin will hear from me!”
“You are missing the point entirely,” said Artie.
“What’s your damn point? That shit happened three weeks ago!”
“That video shows you, in a police station, getting the same woman out of trouble just like you got her off scot-free in your courtroom.”
JJ and Tish both knew it was hardly scot-free, but they were too exhausted to belabor the point. But JJ did decide to try his ex-brother-in-law. “And the fact that she’s black doesn’t help,” he said and Tish looked at him. “Does it?”
But Artie wasn’t taking that rap. “I’m not like that and you know it. I sleep with black women all the time. But for some of these racists in the fourth circuit? You better believe it doesn’t help. Did you see all that shit on social media?”
JJ glanced at Tish. But what he didn’t know: Tish was hearing the entire conversation. “No,” he said.
“They’re going to town on you and that girl. Why would a judge want to shag a murderer? What’s wrong with him? All these beautiful white women out here and he picks that thug. We don’t want a judge who wanna be about that thug life. It goes on and on. The press would be in front of your house right now if you didn’t live in a gated community and they had no access.”
JJ leaned his head back. Tish could see the concern all over his face. And she was devastated. This man could lose his judgeship behind this!
“We’ve got to get out in front of this,” said Artie. “It smacks of favoritism in the criminal justice system. Unfairness to the highest degree. Hooking up with her might just seal your fate if we don’t get ahead of this. It stinks of everything people believe is wrong with the courts today. You need to hold a press conference immediately.”
JJ frowned again. “I’m not holding a press conference over something that’s nobody’s damn business but my own. That’s off the table.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. But debate prep is now essential, JJ. You have got to get started prepping for the upcoming debate. That may be our only chance to right this ship.”
Tish could see that JJ didn’t disagree with that part of the conversation. He understood that his judgeship was in trouble. “Set it up and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Finally he’s taking this seriously,” Artie said, and JJ slammed down the phone.
Then he rubbed his forehead, which made Tish feel even worse. Then she slid her naked body off of him and grabbed up her clothes.
“What are you doing?” he asked her as his phone began to ring again.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” she said, but her eyes said so much more.
JJ wanted to reassure her this, too, will pass, but he knew it would ring hollow to her. He wasn’t the one being called a thug and being treated like some common criminal. She was. Thanks to her entanglement with him. Which only made him feel like a pile of shit himself.
He didn’t stop her from leaving as he answered the phone. “What?” he said angrily. Then he realized it was his clerk. “Oh hey, Reeva. Yes, I saw the tape. Yes, I heard that asshole. Over all the news channels? No, I didn’t see all that. No. Absolutely not. Don’t give them any information. You say no comment and nothing more. That’s all everybody at that courthouse had better say. We aren’t turning this nothing burger into a media circus. Alright. Goodbye.” He ended the call.
And then he leaned his head back. And got up and went and showered with Tish.
She had managed to wipe away all her tears when she heard him enter the guest bedroom. But when he got in the shower with her, and held her in his arms, she couldn’t help it. She began crying again.
JJ, hearing her, pulled back and held her by her shoulders. “Don’t let them get to you, honey. It’s politics pure and simple. He wants my job and he’ll do anything and everything to try to get it. He’ll say what he has to say and it’ll blow over. It always does. Don’t let it get to you.”
Tish smiled and allowed him to wipe her tears away, but inwardly she knew he wasn’t looking at the big picture. What Manny Davis said might have been politics, but what they were saying all over the internet, according to that man named Artie that had phoned JJ, wasn’t politics. It was people dragging her name through the mud. Calling her a murderer and a thug and a hood rat. And she didn’t like that. Because she knew that kind of talk could destroy Judge Brant’s chances of ever being reelected. And she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if that happened.
But that wasn’t his fault, and she wasn’t going to project it onto him. She allowed him to bathe her back, and she bathe his back, and they bathe together. And then, as they both knew was coming too, he backed her up. And they made love again.
The sounds of slapping flesh and pouring water might have drowned out her silent screams, but she was still inwardly screaming. She was still terrified that she could bring down this wonderful, caring, kind man. And that was something she couldn’t abide.
But even in her anguish, he put it on her so good that she came again. And he came again. And then he fell against her – exhausted again.
It took several seconds for both of them to get their breathing back to normal. And then JJ, who was behind her, looked around at her face. She put on her best smile, but he saw in her eyes that she wasn’t as joyous as her smile suggested. But she wasn’t as anguish as she had been when he first entered that shower either.
Then he slowly pulled out of her. He was in so deep that it took a while. And as soon as he left her body, she felt empty again. Still filled with him – but empty.
“Hungry?” he asked her as he began getting out of the shower.
She looked back at him. Was he serious? How could he think about food at a time like this? They were being dragged all over the internet like they were dogs and he was asking about food? At least sex was a release from stress. But what was food going to do?
But maybe that was how he dealt with it: by not dealing. “I guess so,” she said to him.
“We’ll go to the club for dinner,” he grabbed a towel off the rack and began walking out of the bathroom.
A club for dinner? That sounded strange to Tish. Unless it was some sort of supper club he was taking her to. She got out of the shower too.
But as soon as JJ walked into her bedroom to get to his room, he noticed her clothes spread out on the bed. She had washed and dried them that morning and hadn’t had the chance to put them away. But he immediately saw a problem. There were jeans there, and shorts, and a few sleeveless blouses, and one long-sleeve jersey. But they would not do. Then he realized the woman he was slowly committing himself to lived her life out of a backpack.
“LaTisha?” he called out.
She came out of the bathroom still drying off. “Sir?”
JJ turned when she called him sir. They were well beyond that now. “No more sir. You can call me JJ. Or James if you prefer.”
“Oh. Okay.” It only made it even more stark just how fast things had changed between them. Maybe too fast. “You need something?”
“I need to take you shopping.”
“Shopping? For dinner? I thought you said we were going to a club?”
“Clothes shopping.”
“To go to a club? I have club clothes,” she said as she looked over at the clothes spread out on the bed.
JJ realized his error. “We aren’t going to that kind of club, I’m afraid. We’re going to my country club. They tend to dress up for dinner.”
“Oh.” Tish was mortified. She wouldn’t begin to know how to act in a place like that. Why would he even want to take her there? She was a homeless girl just trying to get back on her feet. She wasn’t trying to get all up in that world. “You know I really don’t think I feel like going anywhere.” Then she looked at him. “Unless it’s a part of my job.”
JJ stared at her. “This is my world, Tish. And I want you to be a part of it.”
Tish had never heard anybody say they wanted her like that. And he was always giving to her. Her world wasn’t his world, either, but he went in it to get her that motel room. The least she could do was try to be part of his world too. “Okay,” she said, and tried to smile.
JJ knew she was trying her best. He went over to her and gave her a big hug. “I won’t let them eat you,” he whispered in her ear.
“And I won’t let them eat you,” she whispered back.
JJ, caught off-guard, laughed. Then they stopped embracing. “Get dressed,” he said. “You can change at the boutique.”
A boutique, Tish thought as he left her bedroom. Clothes-shopping for her had always been Walmart or maybe Ross Dress for Less. Now she was going shopping at a boutique. It sounded so surreal to Tish.
But she was still digesting what he had said. Despite everything, including the fact that she could ruin his career, he wanted her in his world. Which meant he wanted her with him. And he made clear it wasn’t a part of her job. That made her feel great. That made her feel that maybe that one in a million man was Judge Brant. Then she smiled. JJ.