She shook her head. “I can get her to fool with fruit every now and then and maybe a little soup if she isn’t too nauseous, but that’s about it.”
“What the doctor say after treatment?”
“The same thing they’ve been saying.” She sigh as we started walking again. “Keep pushing fluids. Make sure she’s eating when she can. Bring her back if the fever comes back.”
I nodded. “And the nausea?”
“They changed one of her medicines.” She shrugged. “Some days it help, some days it don’t.”
We reached Tasha’s bedroom, and she pushed the door open with her shoulder before walking inside. Her clothes were folded across one side of the bed while a basket of clean laundry sat near the closet, and a pair of heels were on the floor near the dresser. She picked them up with one hand and slid them into the bottom of the closet before coming back over to the bed.
“I swear,” she mumbled, grabbing a T-shirt off the comforter and hanging it over the back of a chair. “Every time I clean this room, it look like somebody done broke in here by the next day. I’m always rushing and I need to slow down.”
She bent over, picked up a bottle of lotion from the floor and set it on top of the dresser before finally looking over at me. “You haven’t said much yet, but you called me four times so what happened? How did it go at the restaurant after we hung up. I can’t believe you took that money and didn’t tell me until tonight when you thought you fucked up Navy. ”
I leaned against the wall near her bedroom door and folded my arms across my chest. I looked down at the carpet. She wasn’t wrong for chewing into my ass. The problem was figuring out where to even begin. How do you explain that a man she’d never met had calmly put a gun beneath your chin, gave you eleven days to replace money that no longer existed, then walked back into the club like nothing had happened?
I rubbed my forehead before letting my hand fall back to my side. “Tash…”
“Mhm?” She sat down waiting. “I’m waiting. What happened?”
The tears burned my eyes as I blinked them away trying not to panic. I drug myself over to her bed and plopped down on my backside staring up at the ceiling feeling her eyes glued to me. “Well, after I hung up with you, he was waiting for me to come out of the restroom stall. I didn’t even know he had entered but it made sense why it got so quiet.”
“Who was waiting, Marv?”
I shook my head, “No it wasn’t Marv, it was Lev, the one I told you I believe I may have said too much to. The one who makes any woman nervous just from his presence being there.”
I could feel the intensity of her watching for me waiting for more as she ignored a call on her phone. She placed her soft hand under my chin and forced me to look at her since she was right next to me. “Did he hurt you Navy?”
“No,” I wiped the tear that slid down the side of my cheek, “At least not physically but he told me I had exactly eleven days to pay back every single dollar.”
Tasha immediately hopped up and started pacing while lightly chewing on her bottom lip. “Wow, I hate that you even went anywhere near them. How much of the money do you have left Nay?”
I shrugged and prayed the headache that was threatening would bypass. “I don’t know, maybe about seven thousand.”
“What?!” She blurted. “Out of fifty thousand? That’s so irresponsible Nay.” She scolded me.
I immediately sat up now and glared at her pointing my finger at her. “Well, you weren’t saying that when you convinced me to buy the most expensive piece of everything either.”
Tasha’s arms flimsily flew in the air before she dropped them back down placing them on her hips. “Well, I didn’t know that you stole the damn money from some gangsters either. I thought the bank released your funds, or you got it from Lulu, hell I’m not sure.”
Tasha was giving me a headache. It was like I came to her to vent of course; however, she was now pissing me off. I placed my hand on my forehead and began to massage it. I then exhaled through my nostrils. “Tash… I know I did something extremely stupid, but you know why I did it. All I need now is for you to help me figure out how to get the money.”
She returned to sit next to me placing one hand on my back gently rubbing it. “I don’t know Navy. What about asking Lulu or possibly pulling it from your 401k?”
“I can’t ask Lulu for that kind of money and besides, she’s on a set income. I can’t pull out of my 401k either. I already did that when Lulu was about to lose her house that time.”
“Damn,” she muttered in deep thought. “Well, I know you don’t want to ask Rome, but…”
“Absolutely not,” I said cutting her off.
“You know what, you’re right,” she agreed.
Out of nowhere, it hit me like a ton of bricks like a light had come on. I abruptly turned to her with my eyes wide. “How much are you making at the club?”
She shook her head and held her hand up. “Don’t even think about it Navy. “You’re a career woman and that isn’t the place for you.”
I frowned. “Come on Tash, you’re a career woman too, you just have a lot on your plate right now, but you have degrees just like me. That doesn’t stop you from doing what you have to do to make extra.”
