“Just wait! I don’t understand any of this! Can I just make a phone call before you take my car?” She pleaded.
The man ignored her, climbed into the bed of the truck, and pulled away mercilessly. It wasn’t until the car was gone did she realize she wasn’t alone. Day’s driver was parked acrossthe street and Day stood, leaned against his car door, hands hidden inside the pockets of his pea coat, as he watched her play of embarrassment conclude. Stassi wanted to die. She had never been so fucking humiliated in her life. Stassi had used her employee discount to buy the car, and Lauren had helped her secure the loan by verifying her income. Defeat wore her as she stared at Day. All she could do was shake her head.
“This shit literally couldn’t get any worse,” she uttered.
“Come take a ride with me,” Day said in the most unbothered way.
“Take a ride with you?” She asked, scoffing. She threw up her hands in exasperation. She didn’t know if she was frustrated with him, with the moment, or with fucking life. “Does it look like I feel like entertaining an arrogant-ass nigga right now?” She had to shout slightly so that her voice could be heard over the howling wind.
Her candor pulled a laugh from him as his brows hiked in surprise. “Is that what I am?” He called back.
“You had your handler DM me. Any man that has a handler that reaches out to girls online in his place is an asshole,” Stassi said. “Or maybe I’m just being an asshole because I’m a bum bitch with no car.” She mumbled that last part.
“Humor me and give me an hour of your time, Stassi. We both know you can spare it.”
Yup, he was an asshole. Only an asshole would throw her newly jobless status in her face so smoothly. She shook her head and huffed before looking both ways to cross the street.
She opened the back door to the chauffeured truck, and she slid inside. He climbed in behind her, and the crunch of the tires against the snow announced their departure.
Arms folded. Gaze on the passing snowy lawns, Stassi couldn’t find words because she was fighting overwhelm. She just wanted to cry. She always felt a little better about things when she tooka minute to let her tears flow, but she wasn’t in a safe enough space to reveal her vulnerability.
Please don’t cry in front of this man.
Trying to convince herself to be strong only made her feel weak. She was tired of being the symbol of strength. Tired of her skin tone setting the expectation that she could handle anything, that she should accept anything, that she should automatically know how to bounce back. Black women weren’t immune to weakness. She had been taught to master fake strength but she didn’t know if she was ever truly strong. The car smelled like Lafayette Street, weed, and the pine-shaped air freshener that hung from the gear shift.
“I’m not the girl that this happens to, you know,” she said, feeling like she owed him an explanation for what he had just witnessed.
“I’ve always been able to tell the difference between a bum and a nigga that’s down on his luck,” Day stated. “Every nigga don’ had they downs. I’ont really like to meet niggas when they up. Lose that shit, and let me see how you bounce back. That’s what I like to judge a mu’fucka on. Money flips itself when its laying like that. Can you make something out of nothing, though? That’s where you show your value.”
He looked out his window as he spoke, and she kept her eyes focused outside hers, but his words hit home.
“Thanks, Day,” she whispered.
“That li’l bit of game is free cuz I know you broke. The next time I’ma tax you.”
Ice broken. The tension coming from her melted as she broke into laughter.
“It’s too sooonnnn. What’s wrong with you, bruh?” She asked, giggling.
“I’m just fucking with you,” he replied, smiling. “Can I have a bit of your time today?”
“Just a bit of advice,” she said. “When you want to spend time with a woman it’s much nicer to hear that if it comes from you personally. The creepy white boy in the DM is a turn-off.”
She could tell she embarrassed him a little. He glanced off, an invisible blush searing him as he said, “I can’t just be falling in everybody messages, baby. Bitches out here waiting for attention so they can gain clout. Shade Room will have my business on the Gram before lunch,” he explained.
“I’m not everybody, don’t treat me like them other ones,” she said.
She had a lot of confidence for someone who had just been repo’d.
“If I give you the day where we gon’ end up?” She asked.
“Wherever we want to end up,” he stated plainly. He said it like he ran the world. Like he didn’t have to answer to anyone, and rules didn’t apply to him. She didn’t live like that. She had never had the luxury to even think like that, and she envied him a little.
That’s what freedom feels like.
The car was silent for a while. Only the sound of the tires spinning on the road against the frozen gravel could be heard as her mind ran wild. Lauren was playing dirty, or perhaps she was the one playing fair, and Charlie had played dirty and used Lauren as a teammate. She didn’t even know who was right and who was wrong anymore; all she knew was that somehow she was caught in the middle of a war over a nigga she hadn’t even fucked. Charlie had always been able to come back home if she messed up. She had run away with an older boyfriend when she was a kid, and Stassi had watched her stepfather pine away at the idea of his daughter returning home, leaving her room untouched. Meanwhile, her mother was pushing her out the door, encouraging her to do her very best in school sothat she could send her away to college as soon as possible to empty the house. Stassi was an appendage to her mom that seemed to be in the way of her marriage. She was a stepkid, an extra mouth to feed, and although Charlie’s dad treated her well, she never really felt loved. She felt like a responsibility, like his least favorite bill to pay, the one that never went unpaid because it was a necessity, but the one you paid last because it was just a motherfucker to have to cover. She couldn’t go back home when she fell on hard times. While Charlie always thought she had favor in their childhood home, Stassi knew better. She knew she was a nuisance. Her mother had married up and having an existing child was not ideal.
Her eyes burned because she felt like she had been backed in a corner, and no one was coming to save her. She couldn’t even save herself.
