The doctor wrapped Demi’s stitches, taking it around his entire mid-section.
“Keep these clean. I’m going to prescribe you something for the pain and you should be all set. It’ll heal completely in a few weeks’ time. Until it scabs, don’t submerge in water. I’ll go have the nurse discharge you.”
“That’s a plan, Doc,” Demi answered. Charlie looked on; guilt-ridden. The doctor walked by her.
“Demi, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Come here.”
Charlie walked to him, standing over him as he sat on the examination bed. His stare held no disdain, but it was brooding as he inspected her.
“I’m not fucking him,” Charlie said. “I haven’t even spoken to him.”
Demi nodded and then lowered his eyes to his hands.
“I got a problem, Bird. When it come to you. I just lose it. A nigga ain’t right in the head over you,” he admitted.
“You scare me,” she whispered. “You kicked me out of your condo, Demi. You dragged me out, kicking and screaming. You said you loved me and then you treated me like I wasn’t shit.”
“I’m wrong, Bird,” he said.
Tears built up in her eyes, but she held them.
“I been going crazy, baby. I been living in hell, Bird. Going through the motions, sleeping in a bed where I don’t belong. Living in a house that don’t feel like mine no more.”
“You’re married, Demi,” she whispered.
“I told you where I’m at with that,” he revealed. “That can be over.”
“If I tell you to leave,” Charlie said, scoffing and shaking her head. “If you wanted to leave you would be gone already, Demi.”
Charlie closed her eyes.
“I’m not a homewrecker,” she said.
“Nah, you a Demi wrecker, Bird. You just knocking my shit down. Every rule. Every wall. You just come in a nigga life and do what you want. Let me come home. It’ll never happen again, Bird, but you got to come back to me.”
Charlie shook her head. “No, Demi. I’m not coming back.”
Demi hit his chest with a balled fist, like he was trying to get an old vending machine to work, like his heart had clunked out and a knock in the right place would get it to work again. Charlie had broken his shit. He had tried to stay away, tried to let it go. He was fine until he heard her voice, until he heard her pain in a song. He had come running.
“Bird...”
“It’s not just you, Demi. It’s me too. You lied, I lied. We’re both wrong. We argue and we fuck and then we argue some more. We don’t belong together. The shit is toxic,” she argued.
“So be toxic with me! Who the fuck we comparing our shit to? I want this toxic shit. Whatever it is. I want all of it. I want to fuck and fight. It’s the best fucking and fighting a nigga ever did, Bird. I’ma do better by you. The lies and the hiding shit and losing my temper. I ain’t gon’ be about none of that no more with you. You can’t let this shit go. I’m up like a fucking teenager, sick and shit. You can’t tell me you been good?” he asked.
“I’ve been dying,” she gasped.
“Then why you running, Bird?” Demi asked. “Huh?”
“Because I have to do better than this. I’m on a journey, Demi, and you are disrupting that. I am trying to get my shit together. Trying not to keep making the same mistakes...”
“We ain’t no mistake, man,” he said, hanging his head and rubbing the back of his neck.
“We are. All of this. I should have never given in to this. I was fucked up before you came along, and now, I’m even morefucked up,” Charlie said hopelessly. “I can’t do this with you, Demi. I can’t be with someone who chokes me and manhandles me. I don’t feel safe.”
“I’m in love with you, Bird,” Demi said, shame and desperation transforming a gangster to a man.
