Page 13 of All Out of Love

“It was more like that position left me,” she said again. She couldn’t soften that blow. It was still too bitter for her. “I was fired.”

Grayson inwardly nodded his approval. Because it was a test. He used a softer response to see if she would take the bait. But she didn’t. She didn’t try to minimize what had happened to her, and he admired that. “Explain,” he said.

Dena looked at him when he asked for an explanation. “What’s there to explain?” she asked him. “She was fired. They got rid of her. That’s all we need to know.”

But when Grayson ignored Dena, Toya ignored her too. “It was the morning the department head was going to announce my promotion to supervisor of the clerical staff. One of the founding partners, Richard Lowe, came up to me that morning and started forcing himself on me.”

Grayson had not expected to hear that. “He what?”

But Dena was doubtful. “That’s what they all say when they get fired. They always want to go to rape. It’s insulting.”

But all Grayson could see was a very distressful look in Toya’s eyes. She didn’t have the look of a woman lying or making stuff up. She had the look of a very hurt woman unable to verbalize what she’d been through.

But she soldiered on. “He forced himself on me,” she said. “He ripped my blouse and everything. So I fought back.”

“What do you mean you fought back?” Dena asked her.

“I fought back,” Toya responded. She was equally perturbed by Dena’s lack of understanding. “Nobody will ever put their hands on me and I just let’em. Yes I fought back. I wanted to kick his ass!”

Dena smiled. That fake prim and proper part of her was gone. Now that real ghetto queen part of her was coming out. And in front of Grayson. Perfect, she thought.

CHAPTER NINE

But Grayson didn’t see a ghetto queen in Latoya at all. He saw a woman standing up for herself. And he couldn’t agree more. “Good,” he said to her.

Dena looked at him. Good? Did he say good? That woman had just showed who she truly was, ghetto fabulous and all, and all he could say was good?

“Keep going,” he said to Toya.

And Toya kept going. “So I fought back,” she said to him. “His wife came in the breakroom where we were, and she saw that he had torn my blouse and everything. But she blamed me. She said I was fired and that she would call the cops if I didn’t leave Leonard and Lowe and never look back.”

“She fired you on the day of your promotion?”

Toya fought back tears. She could only nod her head.

Which broke Grayson’s heart. Poor girl. “What did you tell her when she threatened to phone the police?” he asked her.

“I told her to go right ahead and phone them. He assaulted me and I fought back. I wasn’t running away like I did something wrong.”

“Damn right,” Grayson said. Dena looked at him again.

“People have something like that over your head they’ll always use it against you later on. But,” Toya added with a kind of resignation in her tone, “the police didn’t believe me. I got arrested.”

Grayson was enraged. “You got arrested?”

“They said it was because he had burn marks and bumps and bruises for when I took that pot of grits and threw it on him, and then I beat him with the pot.”

“Grits?” asked Dena. “Beating people with pots? Who are you?”

But Grayson smiled and nodded his head. This woman was something else, that’s who she was. But then he realized what she had said. “But they released you, right?”

“Three months later.”

“Three months? Why would they keep you that long?”

“That was nothing to them. They were looking at giving me years in prison based on those lies Richard Lowe and his wife were telling them. The prosecutor said if I didn’t sign an agreement where I would drop all charges against Richard, because I did press charges against him, then he would drop all charges against me. But they also said I had to accept being fired and not even apply for unemployment nor ever attempt to sue him later on. And he agreed to never sue me. It was like they wanted me to pretend that my entire thirteen-year career never happened.”

“Ridiculous,” said Grayson. “He certainly got the better end of that deal.”