10. Asha
Asha
Supreme brought up the driver situation three nights after the Holt thing, right when I was fixing his collar before we left for some fundraiser in Manhattan. His hands settled on my hips and he pulled me close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at him.
"Baby, I been thinking," he started, his voice all warm and reasonable. "You out there moving around the city by yourself, taking trains and cabs and all that. I don't like it."
I smoothed the collar flat and stepped back to grab his jacket. "I'm fine getting around. Been doing it for years."
"I know you can handle yourself." He slipped into the jacket and adjusted the cuffs. "But I'd feel better if you had Cee driving you around full time. Someone I trust. Just to make sure you safe."
I handed him his watch from the dresser and kept my face open and receptive, nothing but a woman listening to her man express concern. "Cee's fine. I know him."
Supreme looked pleased, like I'd just handed him something he wanted. "See? That's what I love about you. You smart. You think things through." He kissed my forehead and grabbed his keys. "I'll set it up tomorrow. Cee gon' take good care of you, baby."
I smiled and told him thank you and followed him downstairs to the car that was waiting to take us to Manhattan.
The fundraiser was in a hotel ballroom on the Upper East Side. Chandeliers, white tablecloths, a jazz quartet playing in the corner. An event where men in expensive suits talked about community investment while their money came from places nobody mentioned in polite company.
Supreme walked in like he owned the room.
His hand found the small of my back before we'd made it past the coat check, steering me through the crowd like a rudder, his fingers pressing into my spine through the fabric of the dress he'd picked out for me that afternoon.
Green silk, low back, heels that made my feet ache before we'd been standing for ten minutes.
"There's my man!" A heavyset man in a grey suit crossed the room with his arms open. Supreme shook his hand, pulled him in for a half-hug, turned to me.
"You remember Asha. My better half."
"Of course, of course." The man looked at me the way men at these events always looked at me, his eyes dropping to my neckline before coming back to my face. "Beautiful as ever."
"She keeps me honest," Supreme said, squeezing my waist. Everyone laughed. I smiled.
We moved through the room in a circuit. Supreme knew everyone and everyone knew Supreme.
He talked about a youth center he was funding in East Flatbush, about job programs, about giving back to the community.
His voice was warm, sincere, completely convincing.
The men shook his hand. The women smiled at me.
One of them, a tall woman in red with diamonds at her throat, leaned in close while Supreme was talking business with her husband.
"How long have you two been together?" she asked me.
"Three years."
"Three years." She sipped her champagne and looked at Supreme across the circle. "And he still brings you to these things? Mine stopped including me after the first year." She laughed like it was a joke. It wasn't.
Another woman joined us. Shorter, older, wearing a dress that cost more than my savings account. She looked me up and down without pretending she wasn't doing it.
"I love that dress," she said. "Supreme has such good taste."
"Thank you," I replied, because saying he picked it, I didn't want it, I'm wearing it because refusing would have started a conversation I can't afford to have wasn't an option.
"You're lucky," the shorter woman continued. "My husband can't tell silk from polyester." She turned to the woman in red. "Remember that anniversary dress he bought me? The one from..."
They talked about their husbands like trophies. Complaints dressed as boasts. I stood there holding a glass of champagne I wasn't drinking and smiled at the right moments.
Supreme's hand found me again. He'd finished his conversation and came back to my side, his arm going around my waist, pulling me against him.
"You good, baby?" he asked, his mouth close to my ear.
"I'm great, Premie."
"You need anything? Food? Another drink?"
"I'm fine."
"That's my girl." He kissed my temple in front of everyone. The woman in red watched us with an expression I couldn't read. Envy, maybe. Or recognition.
Three hours. I stood in that ballroom for three hours in heels that were cutting into the backs of my feet, smiling at people whose names I forgot as soon as they walked away, laughing at Supreme's jokes, touching his arm when he made a point, leaning into him when he pulled me close.
The performance was seamless because my body knew the choreography by now even when my mind was somewhere else entirely.
When we finally left my face ached from smiling. My feet were numb from the heels. Supreme was energized, riding high on the handshakes and the backslaps and the promise of more deals to come.
We got home just after midnight. Supreme went straight to the bedroom and I heard the shower running. I took off my heels in the closet, changed into one of his t-shirts, washed my face and pulled my hair up. When I came out he was already in bed with the covers pulled back on my side, waiting.
He'd been with me long enough to develop what he clearly believed was a signature entrance for these occasions.
Sometimes he came out of the bathroom already working on himself, holding his dick like a gift he was about to present.
Sometimes he waited until I was in bed and then rolled over with this look on his face like he'd just thought of something urgent and necessary.
Tonight he was propped up against the headboard with one hand already down his boxers and the other reaching for me.
"Come here, baby. Look what you do to me."
I climbed into bed and he pulled me close, his mouth going to my neck while his hand kept wanking. This was the routine. He liked to narrate himself through it, needed me to watch and react and tell him what I was seeing in exactly the register he wanted to hear it in.
"You see that?" His voice dropped lower, rougher. "That's all you, baby. Ain't nothing else do this to me."
I made the sound he wanted to hear, something between a gasp and a hum, and he groaned and wanked faster.
His repertoire had three main formats. There was the question version, which required me to confirm what he was telling me.
There was the statement version, where he declared things about himself and I agreed with enthusiasm.
And then there was the freestyle, where he went somewhere genuinely unexpected and I had to deploy every performance muscle I had to keep my face in order.
Tonight was a freestyle.
"Baby, you know what you are?" He was breathing harder now, his eyes half closed. "You like a ocean wave, the way you move. Powerful and shit. Natural force."
Lord.
I bit the inside of my cheek and made another encouraging sound. He took that as permission to continue.
"Yeah, that's right. You a whole tsunami, baby. Crashing over me and taking me under and I'm just gon' drown in you, you feel me?"
He was there. All of him. Unfortunately.
"You drowning me, baby. Oh shit, you drowning me right now."
He was working faster now, his head going back against the headboard.
The show played out like it had a hundred times before, me present in all the ways that were required, absent in all the ways that were safe.
He came with a sound that was half groan and half something that might have been my name, then collapsed back against the pillows breathing hard.
"Damn, baby." He turned his head to look at me with his eyes still glazed. "You incredible. You know that?"
"Thank you, baby," I said, keeping my voice soft and warm.
He kissed my shoulder and rolled onto his side, already half asleep. Within three minutes he was snoring, the sheets twisted around his legs, his hand still resting where it had been working. I counted the minutes until I could move without waking him.
At some point I rolled away and closed my eyes. I let myself think about Omar for exactly five seconds. His hands, his mouth, the way he'd looked at me on that street corner like he'd found something he thought he'd lost forever. Then I closed the door on it and went back to the dark.
When I woke up Supreme was already gone.
Early meeting, probably. I lay there for another hour doing absolutely nothing, just staring at the ceiling while morning light came through the blinds.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd done that, just existed without performing or planning or calculating the next move.
Eventually I got up and made coffee. Checked my phone. Nene had texted me twice asking if I was alive.
I called her from the bathroom with the door locked and the tap running.
"Girl, finally." Nene's voice came through sharp and awake. "I been texting you since yesterday."
"I know, I'm sorry. It's been a lot."
"You good? Supreme still acting right?"
I leaned against the counter and looked at my own face in the mirror. "Yeah. He fine. But Nene, I need to tell you something."
She went quiet on the other end. "What happened?"
"You remember me telling you about Omar Baptiste?" I didn't wait for her to answer. "I walked into a meeting at a warehouse and he was there. Week ago. And then I saw him again a few nights back and turns out Ray been lying to me this whole time."
"What did your father tell you?"
"He told me Omar moved on. Got with somebody else, didn't want nothing to do with me. But it wasn't true. None of it was true."
Nene was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "Your father played both of you."
"Yes."
A moment passed. "Asha, I need you to hear me when I say this." Her voice went into the counsellor tone, the serious one. "You need to stay away from him."
"I know."
"You have a plan, remember? This will only complicate shit."
"Nene. I know."
She sighed. Then her voice went softer, more careful. "Is he... is it still... when you saw him, was it still...?"
I paused just long enough.
"Oh no," Nene said. "Oh no no no."
"I have to go finish my client," I lied. I didn't have a client. I was standing in Supreme's bathroom staring at my own face.
"Asha Cole, don't you dare..."
"I'll call you tonight." I hung up before she could say anything else. The phone buzzed immediately with her calling back but I silenced it and set it on the counter.
I looked at myself in the mirror. The same face I'd been wearing like a mask since Supreme took me.
The same mouth that had smiled at Supreme's tsunami speech and made all the right sounds while he worked himself into a mess.
The same eyes that had looked at Omar on that street corner and felt something crack open that I'd spent fourteen years keeping shut.
I was smiling.
I didn't know why. There was nothing funny about this. Nothing safe. Nothing that made any sense at all. But I was standing in Supreme's bathroom wearing his t-shirt with my best friend yelling at me through a silenced phone, and I couldn't stop smiling.
I was in serious trouble.
I picked up the phone and texted Nene back: I know. I'll be careful. I love you.
She wrote back immediately: You better. Call me later.
I got dressed, did my makeup, and went downstairs to find Supreme's cook already working on breakfast. Cee was outside waiting by the car like Supreme had promised, broad and quiet and exactly the cage I'd just agreed to step into.
"Morning, Miss Asha," he said when I came outside.
"Morning, Cee." I got in the back seat and he closed the door.
The drive to the salon was silent. Cee didn't talk unless he had to, which I appreciated. He pulled up outside the building and told me he'd be right here when I was done. I thanked him, got out, and walked inside to a full day of appointments that I couldn't afford to think about Omar through.
But I thought about him anyway. His hand on my arm. The way he'd said my name like he'd been holding it in his mouth for fourteen years and finally got to let it out.
I was in trouble.
And I didn't care.