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“Is thereanything I can bring you, baby?”
“All I need is you.”
“Then that’s what you’ll have. I’ll see you soon.”
My smile was wide at the sound of Jeremiah’s voice, but it wavered when I got an incoming call from Allegra. I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid talking to her, so I ended my call with Jeremiah since he was on his way and answered. It was heartbreaking knowing all the progress we’d made to get our crew back together had been destroyed, but I was glad the truth was out. Nova deserved the truth, and Ava deserved to have her father in her life. That was the only thing that mattered to me right now.
“Hello?” I answered, turning on my side. The bulk of my day had been spent in bed. I’d only eaten breakfast and was okay with that. I wouldn’t say finding out their truth had taken my appetite away. Overall, I just hated how things had been lately for all of us.
“Hi. Can we talk?”
I sat up and pulled a pillow into my chest, holding it up with my knees.
“Yeah.” I released a shaky breath. “I need to apologize to you. I should not have put my hands on you, Lay. That wasn’t even just about you. That was my anger toward you, Nova, Tiffany, and this entire situation. It wasn’t fair of me to take that out on you. I’m so sorry.”
She chuckled softly before sniffling. “I deserved that, I can’t lie. What I did was foul. There’s no excuse for it. I slept with him and gave you hell when you came back. I can take responsibility for that. I guess… I just thought it was safer telling you now because of what’s going on with you and Jerry.”
“I can understand that, but they aren’t the same. You weren’t with Jerry for years. You weren’t engaged to him. He didn’t cheat on you one month ago. I didn’t sleep with Jerry out of spite because I was mad at you for leaving. He didn’t hurt you to your core, Lay. You, in essence, slept with my enemy at the time.”
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Chap. I was wrong; we were wrong. Things never should have gone that far, and I should have told you sooner.”
I appreciated her apology and wanted to waste no more time on it. It seems the last year of my life revolved around Nova. I didn’t want another day to be consumed by either of them.
“Jeremiah let me know you’re taking the week off and that he’s acting as managing partner on your behalf,” she continued.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“I’m cool with working on the same floor as my associates. I really didn’t want to leave, so I’m glad you reconsidered firing us. I promise I’ll keep my distance at the office, but if you ever miss me and want to try to work through this, I’m down for that too.”
I couldn’t make her any promises that I would ever get to that point. Up until her truth, I was willing to do just about anything to get our crew back together. Now, I wasn’t sure if that was healthy anymore. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. That history didn’t mean they needed to be in my future. We were changing as individuals, and quite frankly, a lot of lines were being crossed that shouldn’t have been.
More than anything, I just wanted to be healthy, happy, and healed. If I was healed with them in my life professionally only, I’d be okay with that. I didn’t have to have them to feel whole and I didn’t have to get even to feel justified. We’d all made mistakes at this point. I just wanted to be happy and free.
“I’ll let you know,” was all I could think of just to get her off the phone.
Once the call was over, I checked my email to see if Nova had reached out about Tiffany’s severance pay. He had reached out, but it was to let me know he hadn’t gotten a forwarded copy of her severance contract. Since Jeremiah was temporarily working on my behalf, he was supposed to take care of that. I decided to take a quick shower and talk to him about it when he arrived, which ended up being about thirty minutes later.
I could tell by his solemn expression that he wasn’t coming with good news. He headed straight for my alcohol collection and poured us both a shot of the whiskey he’d purchased from Jax at The Tipsy Grill.
“Uh oh. Is it that bad?”
“Yeah, it is.” Jeremiah waited until we were seated at the island to say, “Tiffany didn’t sign her severance contract today, so I didn’t forward the package to Nova.”
“Did she say why? Don’t tell me she’s asking for more money.”
“She went to Black to Back this afternoon and did an interview.”
Oh shit. Black to Back was the biggest Black-owned radio station in the South, and they were nationally syndicated, listened to on every coast. The Rose Valley Hills station was extremely popular because they made their episodes available via podcast and live stream.
“How much damage did she do?”
“It’s hard to say yet, but she played the victim card. She made it seem like you attacked her for no reason and that you and Nova weren’t together when they started dating. She threw him under the bus too, telling them he cheated on her and got another woman pregnant. They were joking about how she did you a favor by taking him off your hands.”
“I don’t care about her lying; I just don’t want this to negatively affect the company. People look for any reason to not support Black-owned companies. We are just now starting to branch out to other cities. I don’t need this causing people to look at us as anything less than the professionals we are.”
“Well, there are a couple of ways we can handle this. You can go on the show and tell the truth, you can ignore it and let the chips fall where they may, or we can start damage control by hiring a PR company to fix what the fight and her interview may have fucked up.”
I took a small sip of the whiskey, savoring its peppery burn as I considered my options.
