“I’ll run your bath. There’s food in the oven for you.”
It was shit like that. She was a woman. His woman. He knew he needed to do a better job at appreciating what he had. Normally, he was accomplished at that. Making her smile. Rooting for her wins. Being her support. Her protector, but last night he hadn’t protected her at all. Not from his selfishness. Demi felt like less than a man, as his son’s video game blared in the background, making the soundtrack of their lives. This was his home. This was his family. He hated the song, Charlie’s song. “My All.” His all. She felt like his all. It felt like she expected him to give his all and damn it if he didn’t want to, after only one fucking night. Witchcraft. Charlie had to be a fucking witch the way she had him running those lyrics back in his mind. The damn song was interrupting the sound of Roblox. Lauren looked at him, forehead creased in a look that he was sure was skepticism.
“That’s not what you left the house in,” she said, surveying his change of clothes. Women didn’t miss shit, especially not this woman.
“Since when you don’t know the type of business I’m into, Lo? A change of clothes ain’t nothing new,” he said. “Relax and stop overthinking. A nigga been solid with you, I’ma keep being solid with you.”
He meant it. He drowned out Charlie’s voice, but inside he really wanted to go back to Charliezonia. The place she had sung about. Their place. He wouldn’t though. 15 years versus one night. He’d be a damn fool. One night couldn’t stand a chance but still, it had been a good fucking night, one he couldn’t seem to get off his mind, even as he stood here in front of his girl.
Lauren seemed pacified with that. Her face softened and she walked by him, stopping before she walked out of the room. “Are we good Demi?”
“I’ma always make sure we good.”
He found his son and took a seat beside him, grabbing the remote control.
“You ready, dad?” DJ asked.
Demi opened his phone and clicked on the unread message Charlie had sent. He put his AirPods in and pressed play on the video she had sent.
He found her simplicity extremely complicated. Her hair was all over the place, destroyed from their time in the shower. She did little to tame it, opting to pull it up by a red scarf, leaving locs cascading out of the top of her head like pineapple leaves. Just disorderly. Charlie was a spur of the moment, throw on anything, who cares if it’s wrinkled, type of girl and all those things, all that chaos drove him mad. Ying and yang. Day and night. They were completely opposite, but the pull he had felt when in her presence made it hard to delete this song.
“Since you stopped me from rehearsing,” she said, as she reached for the phone, coming near the camera, her hand swallowing the frame as he counted the lines on her palm as she adjusted her phone. She positioned it and then sat back, giving him a visual of her.
Her fingers to those guitar strings and the fucking melody that came out of her was hypnotizing. He listened to her sing for 1:42 seconds before his son interrupted.
“Dad, come on!” DJ said.
He clicked out of the screen, sliding his phone in his pocket as he grabbed the remote control and focused on his son.
Charlie was temptation. He had fought temptation through every part of his come up, avoiding women who could destroy what he had built with Lauren. Putting last night behind him should be easy, but as he thought of her, even in this exact moment when he should have been enjoying time with his son, he knew that letting go of her would be the hardest thing he had ever done. Demi had been touched.
Chapter 6
Stassi pulled up to the brick building and parked curbside as she hopped out of her car.
“You’re late.”
She heard the baritone behind her and she looked up to find Day climbing out of the black, big body Benz. Black Jeans and an open hoodie, revealing a fitted white t-shirt beneath. He certainly wasn’t dressed for the occasion.
“I’m not,” she said. She was but she couldn’t let him know that she had destroyed the fondant on the cake she was currently making twice before getting here. She was supposed to be earning his business. This was supposed to be a meeting where he could see her in action, all professional, composed and orchestrating a corporate event so that he would feel good about hiring her company to handle an event of his own. So far, it had been a disastrous morning. “I actually emailed you letting you know we had a thirty-minute delay.” A lie, but she knew a man like Day wasn’t paying attention to emails.
“I must have missed that memo,” Day said as he met Stassi at her trunk as she opened it. She reached in and grabbed the cardboard box that was inside, passing it off to him.
“Put potential customers to work. Got it. That’s how you run your business?” he said, smirking.
“You look like you can handle it,” she said, giggling as she grabbed her overflowing tote.
“You got your whole life in there or something?” Day asked.
Stassi smiled. “Literally everything,” she replied. “So, I’ve been planning this event for six months. It is a wedding, but I’ve learned that the reason for the event doesn’t matter. I’ve handled both corporate and personal events. The process is pretty much the same.”
“It’s a wedding?” Day asked.
“That’s why I told you to dress up,” she said.
He glanced down at his street gear. “You can stay out the way, it’s fine,” she said.
Stassi’s dress clung to her curves as she pulled her heels off her feet and put them in the tote, replacing them for crystal slides that would allow her to maneuver around the event easier until start time.
