16. Asha
Asha
The text came through on a quiet afternoon between clients. Unknown number, no name, just four words: You good out there?
I stared at it sitting in the salon bathroom with the door locked and the tap running. Nobody had this number except clients, Nene, and the booking page. The booking page. I almost laughed.
Who is this? I typed back, even though I already knew.
You know who it is.
I closed my eyes and leaned against the counter.
I'd promised myself. I'd literally promised myself lying in Supreme's bed with his arm across my body, that I was done thinking about Omar Baptiste.
The kiss in the park was a mistake, the feelings were a complication, the plan was still the plan.
The plan didn't include a man who could get me killed.
And now he was texting me from a number he'd pulled off my Instagram like a teenager with a crush and I was standing in this bathroom smiling at my phone like I didn't have a whole man at home who'd ordered someone's throat slit over dinner.
I'm good, I typed. You shouldn't be texting me.
I know. You want me to stop?
I stared at that for a full minute. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. The smart answer was yes. The safe answer was yes. The answer that kept me alive and kept my plan intact and kept everything moving in the right direction was yes.
No, I typed. Don't stop.
I saved his number under "Crown Heights Color Correction" and went back to my client.
We texted for the rest of the day. Short messages, never more than a few words, always deleted immediately after reading.
He never asked where I was or what I was doing.
He never mentioned Supreme. Just You good?
and Thinking about you when I was lying in bed next to Supreme who was snoring with his mouth open.
I didn't reply to that one. I just held my phone against my chest and closed my eyes and let myself have it for a second before I deleted it.
I started paying attention to Cee's routine after that. He dropped me at the salon and parked outside, stayed in the car unless I texted him that I was done. He didn't come inside, didn't check on me, didn't walk the block. He just sat there with his phone and waited.
I had a gap between my second and third client. Forty minutes where Cee sat outside the building assuming I was with a client. Forty minutes that Supreme's schedule had no awareness of. Forty minutes that belonged to nobody but me.
I told Cee I had a client at a different location, a home visit for a regular who couldn't make it to the salon. He dropped me at the address I gave him, a building on the next block, and I told him I'd text when I was done. He pulled off and I stood on the sidewalk timing everything.
He came back when I texted. Didn't ask how the appointment went. Didn't ask anything.
Cee was loyal to Supreme but he wasn't surveillance. He was a driver. He did what he was told and reported what he was asked to report and nothing else.
I texted Omar: Can you be on Kingston Ave in 20 minutes?
He replied in seconds: Already there.
I told Cee I had the home visit again and he dropped me at the same building.
I walked around the corner and Omar was leaning against a car half a block down, hands in his pockets, watching me come toward him.
He looked different in daylight without the urgency of stolen minutes.
Calmer. Bigger somehow, like the street was too small for him.
"Hey," I said when I reached him.
"Hey." He pushed off the car and looked at me properly. "You look good."
"Don't start."
He almost smiled. "There's a coffee shop two blocks over. Back corner, nobody goes in there this time of day."
I checked my phone. Thirty-eight minutes. "Let's go."
We walked fast, not touching, both of us scanning the street out of habit.
The coffee shop was small and mostly empty, just an old woman reading a newspaper by the window and a barista who barely looked up when we came in.
Omar ordered two coffees and we sat in the back corner where the wall blocked us from the window.
It was the first time we'd sat across from each other at a table. The first conversation that wasn't standing up or stolen between glances over our shoulders. The quality of it was different. More dangerous and more real.
"Tell me about Atlanta," he said.
I wrapped both hands around my coffee cup. The warmth helped. "Which version you want? The one I tell people or the real one?"
"The real one."
I took a breath. Traced my finger around the rim of the cup, watching the brown liquid instead of his face.
"Ray owed money. A lot of money, to the wrong people.
He'd been gambling, borrowing, making promises he couldn't keep.
When he ran out of options the debt was six figures and the people he owed weren't the kind to write it off. "
"How'd Supreme get involved?"
"There was a middleman. A fixer. Ray called him 'the connect.
' He came to our apartment, sat at the kitchen table, drank our coffee, and told Ray there was a way to make the debt disappear.
" I paused. My thumb pressed hard into the side of the cup.
"Supreme was looking for someone. A woman.
Someone to be with him, live with him, play the part.
The connect told Ray that if he was willing to negotiate, the debt would be cleared. "
Omar's hands were on the table. His fingers curled inward slowly until his knuckles were white against the formica. He didn't say anything.
"Ray negotiated," I continued. "He negotiated with his daughter's life.
Told me it was an arrangement, a partnership.
Told me I'd be taken care of, that Supreme was a good man, that it wasn't like he was selling me.
" I finally looked up at Omar. "I moved into Supreme's apartment three weeks later. I was twenty-seven years old."
Omar's breathing had changed. Slower, more controlled, the way you breathe when you're trying very hard not to react. His eyes were on me but something behind them was working, calculating, filing away every word.
"Did he..." Omar started, then stopped. Started again. "Did Supreme force himself on you?"
"He didn't have to." I looked back at my coffee.
"That's what people don't understand. He didn't beat me, didn't lock me in a room, didn't put a gun to my head.
He was kind. He bought me things, took me places, told me I was beautiful every morning.
He built a whole world around me where everything was comfortable and nothing was mine.
And then he made it clear, real clear, what would happen to Ray if I left. What would happen to my sisters."
"So you stayed."
"I stayed. For three years I got up every morning, put on the face, played the part. Smiled when he touched me, laughed at his jokes, made the right sounds when he..." I trailed off. "You don't need the details."
"I can handle the details."
"I know you can. But I can't say them out loud.
Not yet." I took a sip of coffee that was already going cold.
"The first year I still believed I could talk my way out.
The second year I realized I couldn't. The third year I stopped trying to leave and started saving instead.
Cash, small amounts, every time Supreme gave me money for the salon or shopping.
I skimmed a little off the top and put it in an account he didn't know about. "
"How much you got?"
"Almost enough." I looked at him. "I've been building toward a number for two years. A number that would let me disappear. New city, new name, start over."
Omar sat there with his white knuckles, his controlled breathing, his steady eyes. He hadn't interrupted once. Hadn't flinched, hadn't looked away. He just sat there with his coffee and his attention. He let me talk.
"You don't gotta perform with me," he said when I finished. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "I do know that."
"Good." He took a sip of his coffee. "Cos I ain't interested in that version. Never was."
I looked at him across the table and something loosened in my chest. "Tell me about you. What you became after I left."
He told me about working alongside Kadeem when he took over the family business after his pops disappeared, about the enforcement work, about the things he'd done that most people would run from if they knew. He told me flat, like facts, no drama and no apology.
"That bother you?" he asked.
"No."
"For real?"
"Omar, I been living with a man who orders people killed between dinner and dessert. You think you scare me?"
Something moved across his face. Relief, maybe. Or surprise that I could hold what he was telling me without looking away.
"Nah," he said quietly. "I don't think I scare you."
"You don't." I picked up my coffee. "Honestly? You're the safest thing in my life right now and that's terrifying cos you might be the most dangerous man I know."
He looked at me for a long moment. "I'm gon' get you out of there, Asha."
"Don't say that."
"Why not?"
"Because if you say it I might believe you and if I believe you I might stop planning my own way out and that's the only thing keeping me sane right now."
He leaned back in his chair. "Then keep planning. But know I'm here. Whatever you need."
I checked my phone. Twelve minutes left. "I gotta go."
"Already?"
"Cee's waiting. He thinks I'm at a home visit."
I stood up and he stood with me. In the back corner of this empty coffee shop with the old woman still reading her paper and the barista wiping down the counter, we were invisible. Nobody could see us. Nobody knew we were here.
He caught my wrist when I went to turn. Gently, not pulling, just holding. His thumb pressed against my pulse and I didn't move away.
"Asha."
"Yeah?"
He pulled me closer and kissed me. This one was slow, full, nothing like the park.
I kissed him back with everything, both my hands coming up to his jacket, gripping the front of it, pulling him closer.
His hand went to the back of my neck. Mine went to his chest. His heartbeat was right there under my palm, steady and strong.
When I finally stepped back I was breathing differently.
"This is going to be a problem," I said.
"You already said that."
"Because it's still true."
He let go of my wrist. I could still feel his thumb where it had been pressed against my pulse. I picked up my bag and headed for the door.
"Asha."
I turned back.
"Same time next week?"
I should have said no. I should have walked out of that coffee shop and deleted his number and gone back to Cee's car, Supreme's house, my savings account and my plan. I should have been smart.
"Yeah," I said. "Same time."
I walked the two blocks back to the building where Cee thought I was doing a home visit. Eight minutes to spare. I came out the front door, texted him and he pulled up a minute later.
"All good?" he asked.
"Yeah. She wants the same appointment again next week."
"Cool."
I got in the back seat and we drove home. Supreme was on a call when I came in, pacing by the window with his phone pressed to his ear. He glanced at me, mouthed hey baby, then went back to his conversation. I mouthed hey back and went to the bedroom to change.
Afterwards in the bathroom, I locked the door and sat on the edge of the tub looking at my own face in the mirror across from me.
I was in serious trouble. The worst trouble I'd been in since I came back to Brooklyn.
Omar Baptiste was texting me from a number saved as a color correction client.
I was sneaking out of my driver's sight line to sit in coffee shops, kiss him, tell him things I hadn't told anyone except Nene.
I was lying to Cee, lying to Supreme, lying to myself every time I said I had this under control.
My savings were three thousand away from the number I needed. My plan was still intact. My exit strategy was still possible. Everything I'd spent two years building was still there, still real, still mine.
But I'd just kissed a man in the back of a coffee shop with both hands on his jacket and his thumb on my pulse and I could still feel it. All of it. Every second.
I was in the worst trouble of my life.
And there was a growing part of me that didn't care.