Page 90 of Omar

The kettle clicked. She made coffee for both of us, bringing the mugs to the couch where we sat the way we always sat, facing each other with our legs crossed, mugs in both hands. Morning light was coming through Omar's blinds in thin stripes across the living room floor.

"Tell me what happened," I said. "The whole thing. From the beginning."

"You sure you wanna hear this?"

"I need to hear it."

Nene took a sip of her coffee, set it on the arm of the couch, and looked at me.

"I was coming back from the store. Two blocks from my building. This black car pulled up next to me, moving slow. The back door opened and this big dude stepped out. He didn't say nothing at first, just stood on the sidewalk looking at me. Then a second one came around from the front and they were on both sides."

"Did they hurt you?"

"They didn't touch me. The first one said 'We need you to come with us, Miss Denise.' Miss Denise. Like we were at a job interview." She shook her head. "I thought about running but there was nobody on the street and both of them were twice my size. So I got in the car. What else was I gonna do?"

"You could've screamed."

"And then what? They grab me anyway, except now they're angry about it? Nah. I got in, kept my mouth shut, and paid attention." She picked up her coffee again. "They drove me to Crown Heights. This ground-floor unit, real bare, nothing in it except a chair and a table. They sat me in the chair, zip-tied my wrists, and left me there."

"How long were you alone?"

"Hours. Maybe four? Maybe more. I lost track cos there wasn't a clock. One of them came in every now and then to check on me. Asked if I needed water, asked if I needed the bathroom. Real polite about the whole thing, like they were hosting me at a bed and breakfast from hell."

I almost laughed. Almost. "Did they say what they wanted?"

"One of them told me straight up. He said this was about getting you back where you belonged. Said I was just the bait to make it happen." She looked at me over her mug. "They left my phone powered on in the hallway. On purpose. They were counting on you tracking the signal."

"Omar figured that out."

"Good. Cos I was sitting in that chair praying you wouldn't be stupid enough to try."

We were quiet for a moment. The coffee was getting cold in my hands but I didn't care.

"The worst part wasn't being tied up," Nene continued, her voice dropping. "It wasn't the room or the guards or the zip ties. The worst part was the hours when nobody came in and I was sitting there alone in the quiet trying not to think about what happens if this goes wrong. If they decide I'm not useful anymore. If Supreme gets bored of waiting." She stopped. "I kept thinking about you. About what it would do to you if something happened to me cos you left him."

"Nene, don't."

"I'm not blaming you. I'm telling you what I was thinking. Cos all I do is worry about you, Ash. That's been the job since Atlanta. You call me at two in the morning from Supreme's bathroom and I answer. You tell me you're scared and I talk you down. You need me to walk you out of a salon with your driver sitting ten feet away and I show up." Her eyes were bright. "I do all of that cos you're my person. You're the closest thing I got to a sister. But Ash, sitting in that room, I was scared. For real scared. The kind where your hands shake and your brain starts going to the dark places."

She put her coffee down. Her hands were shaking now, small tremors she was trying to hold still by pressing them flat against her thighs.

"Come here," I said.

She slid across the couch and I put my arms around her. She pressed her face into my shoulder and for a minute she wasn't the strong one. She wasn't the one with the plan, the jokes, the deep conditioner recommendations. She was a woman who'd been tied to a chair for ten hours because her best friend had left a dangerous man and she'd helped make it happen.

I held her the way she'd held me a hundred times in Atlanta. Through the midnight calls, the bad days, the mornings when I couldn't get out of bed because the weight of performing for Supreme had pressed me flat. She'd always been the one doing the holding. Now it was my turn.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"Stop apologizing." Her voice was muffled against my shoulder. "I told you already, I made that choice. I'd make it again tomorrow. I'd make it a hundred times." She pulled back and wiped her face with the back of her hand. "But next time your man comes to rescue me, he better bring snacks. That cornbread they fed me was from a box, Ash. A box. I been kidnapped by men who can't cook."

I laughed. Really laughed, the sound breaking out of me rough and uncontrolled. Nene laughed too, both of us sitting on Omar's couch in the morning light with tears on our faces and cold coffee on the armrest, laughing because the alternative was falling apart.

"You know what I kept thinking about in that room?" Nene said when we'd calmed down.

"What?"

"My mama's biscuits. Like, if I'm about to die, I want my last meal to be Mama Denise's buttermilk biscuits with the honey butter. And instead I'm getting box cornbread from a man with a gun in his waistband." She shook her head. "If that's how I go out, I'm haunting everybody involved."