Page 10 of This is Law

Michelle knew that that was my way of telling her to let me have the office to myself, so that I could make that call to Autumn because she quickly got up, and she grabbed the iPad.

Before she walked out of the door, she let me know to call her if I needed anything, and I assured her that I would.

She was gone now, and even though the office was quite, the footage from the live video was playing repeatedly in my head, so it felt as if it was loud in here. I couldn’t believe Autumn. I was pissed with her. It was to the point that my leg was shaking up and down, as I chewed on the inside of my lip, trying to calm myself down.

Shaking my head, I grabbed my phone that was sitting on my desk, went for her number, and I called her, putting the phone to my ear. As always, the phone rang once, and it went directly to voicemail, and that was because her phone was always on ‘do not disturb’. Because it was also early, just a little after nine in the morning, I’m sure that she was somewhere, sleeping.

One thing about me, when I was itching to talk to someone, and get their attention, I would continue to ring their phone back-to-back, until I got in contact with them. After what felt like the tenth time calling her, the call finally connected. Her background was quite, but I could hear shuffling from her end of the phone, as if she was trying to get the phone to her ear.

“Soraya, why you calling me so early?” her voice came out raspy, and it held a tiredness to it, so I was sure that I’d awakened her from her sleep.

“You know exactly why I’m calling you. Are you cool? Like seriously, what the fuck do you have going on? I’m starting to think that you don’t really care about this rap shit, and you would rather go back to the club, shaking your ass for a few dollars!” I snapped, getting right to the point. I heard her suck her teeth, doing exactly what I knew she would do.

“If you talking about the shit that happened on Instagram live, them people started with me-

“I saw the live, Autumn! Someone in the comments asked you a question about you, and Savannah! Yes, they could have been trolling, trying to get a reaction out of you, and if that was their plan all along, you fell right for the fuckin bait! I just don’t understand why you had to do all of that. If you weren’t feeling the question that they asked you, you could have pretended that you didn’t even see it, or you should have just simply told them that you and Savannah were just friends, and that ya’ll weren’t involved with one another on an intimate level. You chose to go so fuckin low, offending a whole group of people, and those gays, and lesbians that you were talking about, they really were fuckin with you. What you think they going to do tomorrow when your album comes out? Because of your mouth, they not going to fuck with it!” I snapped at her. This girl had really pissed me off, and I couldn’t control my emotions.

“See, they about to try and take this shit and spin it. They going to try and make it seem like I have some kind of hatred towards gay people. My best friend is a guy, and he’s gay. That’s been my best friend since we were in elementary school. You know how many gays and lesbians I’m around every day? I don’t have no fuckin hatred towards them! I wasn’t trying to diss them. I was just saying that I don’t like pussy! I like dick! The world so fuckin sensitive man-

“Sensitive? Autumn, what you said was wrong! You offended a large community of people. The shit you said was ignorant, and it went viral. To make matters worse, you’re in a room with all your homegirls, right? These supposed to be people that love you, and want you to win, right? If they felt that strongly about you, one of them would have turned that fuckin camera off and told you to get off live saying that stupid ass shit!” I was still on her ass.

“Yaya, I was just trying to clear the air and let them folks know that I’m not gay. That’s all I was trying to do!” she snapped.

“That’s not what you did though. There’s nothing wrong with getting some straightening and clearing the air. You have that right. You went low, and in the process, you sounded homophobic as fuck!” I fired back at her. I swear that outburst shook some of the pictures that I had hanging up in the office.

After I released that outburst, Autumn didn’t say anything else. She knew she was wrong. She knew that there wasn’t anything left for her to say. She did too much, and she couldn’t justify her actions to me, and make me side with her in the least bit.

For about five minutes, neither one of us said anything on the phone. I had my thoughts, and I’m sure that she had hers as well.

“I know my choice of words probably weren’t the best. I’m not homophobic though, Soraya. I don’t have nothing against gay people. I’ve been hanging with gay people damn near all my life. Some of my closest friends are gay men, and lesbian women. I had a moment where I just snapped. I think I only went so hard because before the person had commented, asking me if me, and Savannah were dating, before that, somebody had already been trolling, saying that my album was going to flop. I’m already on edge, nervous as fuck with my first album coming out, and I let Instagram live get the best of me last night. What you think I’m going to have to do to make shit right? I worked too hard on this album to let it just crash like this,” she voiced, and she sounded sincere. Might I even add, she sounded afraid, which was a feeling that I’ve never witnessed her show before.

Autumn had a personality that was raw, uncut, and she always had to show how hard she could be. She was real, and her raps were authentic, and something that the industry had never seen before, that’s why when she popped out, everyoneimmediately started fuckin with her because she’s what the rap industry needed. The way she just fucked up though was big. These people out here were cutthroat, and they wouldn’t give a damn about her talents if they felt disrespected.

“The same platform you used to make this mess is the same platform that you need to use to clean this shit up. Your disrespect for the LGBTQ community was loud, Autumn, so the apology must be even louder. I’m going to get with my team, and we’ll draft up the basics for you to say, but at the same time, you need to come up with your own choice of words because I don’t want your apology to look like an apology that was given to you by your PR team. It needs to sound sincere, so that the people can believe your ass. Please refrain from drinking, and smoking today because when you go live, I need you to be sober, poised, and clear, so that the people can know that your being sincere,” I let her know.

“Okay. That’s cool. Thank you, Soraya,” she said.

“In the meantime, you need to stay off social media. People are going to have a lot to say about this, so please don’t go digging your hole even deeper, and respond back to them. Right now, the focus needs to be on your apology, and getting ready for your album that’s getting ready to release. Before I let you go, I want to give you a heads up with something. A lot of these brand deals that you currently have, be prepared for some of them to drop you. A lot of the deals you have, they’re tied to major companies that have LGBTQ representatives, customers, and they take that kind of disrespect seriously. Personally, I feel like the album will do well. It won’t hurt your music that much, but some of your bags? Be prepared for them to stop,” I had to keep it real with her, so that this shit didn’t come out of nowhere later, when shit started going viral about some of her brand deals choosing to part ways with her.

When I explained that to her, she grew quite, and I knew that she was hurt by my choice of words.

“Give me about an hour and a half, and I’ll call you back with something,” I let her know. She responded that that was fine, and then we hung up.

I tossed the phone on the table, and I slouched down in my chair, wanting to scream. I took one day off from work yesterday, so that I could finalize my divorce, and I walked back into the office today to bullshit. I thought that today would be a smooth, quite day, especially since it had started off right with the flowers, and everything waiting for me in my office, but I guess not.

8:49 p.m.

“Creed, pick those shorts up! You would think that you would get tired of me saying the same thing to you all the time, and just do it without me having to correct you!” I went off on my son the second that he walked his ass in the kitchen.

He’d been upstairs, taking his shower, and everything, and now he was walking into the kitchen with his blue, cotton materialRalph Laurenshorts, and they were sagging slow, showing off the white,Calvin Kleinbriefs that were under them. He came in with his shirt off, and because it was off, you could see just how ripped my son was. His arms were huge, he had a six pack, and he was overly strong. The boys didn’t play about the time that they would put in at the gym. Law was in the gym faithfully, and he would often take the boys with him, and that was one of the many ways that the three of them would bond.

“It’s actually the other way around, ma. I be thinking that you going to get tired of telling me to pull them up, and eventually stop doing it,” he shot, coming over to me, and I reached my hand out, and hit him on his chest for being a smart ass.

He came behind me, and he wrapped his arms around me, putting me in a bear hug, and placed wet kisses on my cheeks.My boys were very affectionate, just like their dad, and I were, but Creed had it worst. Since he was a baby, if he could live in my skin, he would try to do it. No matter how hard he was, or how mannish, this boy loved his mama, and he wasn’t afraid to show it, or say it. Even though he was my most affectionate child, he was also the child to try me in ways that Legend would never. I drank wine out of the bottle because of Creed. He had his days where his mouth would be too slick, he could be very rebellious, and he thought that he was grown, and it was always my duty to bring his ass back to reality.

“I thought you said that by the time I took a shower, and washed my face and stuff that the food would be done? I’m starving,” he complained the second he let go of me. I think I heard ‘I’m starving’ from him, and his brother at least one hundred times a day. The two of them were going to eat me out of a home.

I was standing over the stove, doing one last mix of the dinner that I’d prepared tonight. My boys loved any kind of seafood, so tonight, I’d opted on blackened salmon alfredo with spinach. Inside, I’d added sun- dried tomatoes, and we were having this over fettuccine. As fancy as it sounded, it took under an hour to prepare. My boys loved garlic rolls, so I had that in the oven, and in about another minute or two, it would be ready to come out.

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