Charlie dialed Day’s number next.
“This cannot be happening,” Charlie cried out. Stassi scrolled through social media, and sure enough, she found what she was looking for.
“Charlie, he’s on Shade Room. It’s saying he died.” Stassi couldn’t hide her shock. She knew how Demi got down. Had he taken his frustration out in the streets and gotten caught up? He may be a gentle giant with Charlie, but he was menacing to everyone else. She knew his background. Had she sent her man out into the world in a mind state that had cost him his life?
Charlie stood there, in shock as her stomach plummeted. “Stassi, tell me you’re lying!”
Stassi read comment after comment, but it was all speculation, and it got worse and worse as she kept scrolling. Repeating the gossip would only make things worse.
“We’ve just got to get down there, Charlie. These people don’t know what they’re talking about,” Stassi reassured. “Some people are saying he’s dead. Some people saying he killed somebody. Some are saying he’s arrested. It’s all gossip. None of this might be true. If he’s in jail, he’ll need his lawyer. You know who that is, right?”
“Ummm…yeah, some guy…umm, Einstein, I think. I don’t know. He gave me his card and told me to put it up one day. I can’t remember,” Charlie said. She rushed into her bedroom, and Stassi followed as Charlie went into her closet. She frantically pulled handbags from the shelves, dumping all types of shit out of them as she rummaged through the junk. Remnants of nights out covered her closet floor as she searched high and low for the attorney’s business card. “It’s in one of these bags. It has to be. Where is it?!”
“Okay, calm down. Lauren has to know his lawyer, right? She’s his…”
Charlie’s eyes welled with tears, and she stopped all her efforts. “His wife. You can say it. She’s his wife, and she’ll knowhow to help him.” Charlie fisted a handful of locs as she shook her head in disbelief. She sat down in the middle of her chaotic closet and reluctantly dialed Lauren’s number.
“Hello?” Lauren answered in confusion.
“I’m sorry to call you like this…”
“Are you crying, Charlie?” Lauren asked. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie replied. “The blogs are saying something happened to Demi. I don’t know if he’s in jail or if he’s hurt. Everybody is saying something different. I need his lawyer’s number. I don’t know where he is. I heard rumors that he’s been shot. I don’t know what to believe.”
There was no pause, no hesitation, no need to gameplan. They were opposites. Charlie was the soft to Lauren’s hard, the weakness to Lauren’s strength, and it wasn’t that Demi needed one more than the other. He needed them both for different things. Circumstances like these shone a light on Charlie’s naïveté. She was young. She had no connections. No power on her own. Lauren, on the other hand, was armed with not only knowledge but resources to make shit shake. It was insane the way one man could convince two women they weren’t enough, all the while they envied the qualities each other possessed. Lauren admired Charlie’s softness, while Charlie envied Lauren’s strength. Each attributing their lack of ‘something’ to the reason why Demi may choose differently. The power of men was too hefty when it turned women into unnecessary enemies. Today, they were on the same page.
“First, I need you to calm down. Are you there by yourself?” Lauren asked.
“My sister is here,” Charlie said.
“Okay. Get yourself together. We don’t know anything yet. Let me make some calls and find out what the hell is going on, andI’ll call you back. Get dressed. I’ll let you know where to meet me.”
“Demi might be hurt,” Lauren said aloud as soon as she hung up the phone. She lifted her eyes to meet Nyair’s.
“I don’t expect you not to care, Lo. He’s your family. Y’all just lost something monumental. Where is he? I can take you where you need to go if you need some support, or I can fall back if you need to go alone to figure things out,” Nyair responded.
If a king needed a visual, she was staring at it.
“I’m not sure where he is, but I’d love some help figuring it out.” Her sigh of relief held so much. There would have to be a merging of her past with her present, and Nyair was proving to not be intimidated by that fact.
“Say less,” he said. “Where did this happen?”
“I think at a bar on the Northside of Flint, according to these comments,” she said as she scrolled through social media. “I’m not sure, though.”
“Let’s get to the bottom of it,” Nyair said.
He pulled out his phone, and with the press of one button, he was on the line with the chief of police in Flint. The one thing about Nyair was he was very well-connected in his city. There wasn’t a city official that he hadn’t collaborated with. Within minutes, he had a rundown of the situation.
Lauren sat anxiously as she watched him conduct the call. Her stomach was in knots. She was trying to follow Nyair’s conversation and piece together what had happened, but she could only hear one end of it. When he finally ended the call, she could tell from the look on his face that it was bad.
“Just tell me,” Lauren said.
“He’s been shot. He’s in surgery. The police have no idea who did this, but it’s not looking good, Lo.”
Lauren’s brain exploded.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “How is this happening? Where was he shot? How bad is it?” she asked.
