She shook her head slow.
Then she turned and walked away fast and didn’t look back. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. I had been to her crib these past few days, and we’d gotten to a point where I knew she started not to care about her parents opinion. Now, I had just taken us ten steps back. The crazy part was, I hadn’t even done shit.
The door closed and the car pulled off. I sat back in that seat and looked at the ceiling. I didn’t let myself feel any of it right now because feeling it right now wasn’t going to help anything.
I had one job.
Stay calm and wait for Legal to show up at that jail to get my ass.
—
I spent the night in a holding cell and didn’t sleep. Laid on the hard bench and stared at the ceiling all damn night. I ran everything through my head. I knew damn well I hadn’t assaulted anybody other than them niggas in the cage fights. In the middle of the night, I hit a flash back to the nigga who I beat at the gas station.
The gas station. The girl recording said she was gonna call the police for what I did to her abusive ass nigga. The footage that was apparently circulating online and I had heard about it a few days ago but brushed it off to prepare for my fight. I honestly didn’t think shit was that big of a deal for real. Niggas got the ass beat in the hood on a daily.
Had I known it was possible something could come from that situation, I wouldn’t have put it out of my mind. At that time though, I had too many other things demanding my attention and now here I was paying for that decision.
The next morning before I had even gotten to a phone Legal was already there.
They brought me to a visitation room and he was sitting at the table in a suit that cost more than most people’s rent, his reading glasses on, a legal pad in front of him. Jermaine. Legal. My father’s best friend from before I was born, the man who had stepped into my life after my pops died and filled a space that could never be fully filled. But still, he filled in better than anybody else could have.
He looked at me when I sat down across from him and didn’t say anything for a moment. He always showed up and right now, I was more grateful than anything.
“Tell me everything, Xavier Jr.” he said. “All of it. Truth, from start to finish.”
So I told him. The gas station, pumping my gas, hearing the argument, the hit I heard from two pumps over. Walking over. The man grabbing me by the throat. What I did after that. The girl turning on me with her phone. Me leaving.
When I got to the part about last night I told him I was at a fight but that the warrant wasn’t connected to the fight, it was connected to the gas station situation. I was being honest when I said it felt like the wrong person was getting arrested for trying to help somebody.
Legal listened to all of it without interrupting. When I finished he took his glasses off and set them on the legal pad and looked at me.
“I need you to understand something first,” he said. “What you did at that gas station — your intentions were right. I know that and anybody who knows you knows that. But intention and outcome are two different things in the eyes of the law.” He put his glasses back on. “The smarter move is always to call the authorities and remove yourself. Because you end up insituations exactly like this one when you take matters into your own hands even when you’re right.”
“I hear you.”
“Do you.” He looked at me over his glasses. “Because I’ve been telling you the same version of this your whole life Xavier.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
He pulled his phone out and set it on the table and turned it toward me. The video was already pulled up. Forty seven seconds of footage from inside that Camry, the angle slightly obscured by the window but clear enough. You could see the confrontation. You could see the man grab my throat. You could see what I did after.
“This is what’s circulating,” Legal said.
“This is also what I’m going to use.” He put the phone back in his pocket. “I’m going to get the gas station’s exterior surveillance footage which is going to show the full sequence of events from a neutral angle including him striking that woman before you got involved. That footage combined with this video gives me a strong Defense of Others argument.” He folded his hands on the table. “I’m also going to work on getting you a bond so we can get you out of here while this moves through the court. But Xavier—” He paused. “I need you to hear me when I tell you this is going to be a process. I can not promise you a specific outcome. What I can promise you is that I’m going to fight for you the way I would fight for my own son. But I need you to trust me completely and do exactly what I tell you to do. Can you do that?”
“Yes sir.” I didn’t have it in me to fight him on this.
He nodded once and gathered his pad and stood up.
“Hold tight,” he said. “I’ll have you out as soon as I can move on the bond.”
—
It took Legal four days to get my bond reduced to something manageable and to get me out. I had the money, but being that I got arrested after a fight, I didn’t want my funds to look questionable. Everybody in the city knew what I did in those cages, so I wasn’t going to put any more heat on myself.
Four days in a cell, I used that time to think, plan and get my head right about what came next because sitting still had never been something I did well and the only way I got through those four days without losing my mind was by treating it like preparation for something.
After my release, I couldn’t reach Bri at all. I wasn’t ever gone be the nigga to pop up at a woman’s house uninvited, so I pushed that to the back of my mind. I sent her countless text, and called her repeatedly. After a full week passed, I gave up and decided to let her come to me on her own. That never happened, and it made me realize that I really needed to let her go. She wasn’t the only woman that I could get, but she was the only one that I wanted, and she just kept playing with me like I was some lame ass nigga or something.
