“Stop it! Get off her!” she heard someone yell.
It was a female voice. When Sereeta looked down, she saw the same brown-skinned girl with no bra pulling at France's arms.
“Get off her! What are you doing?” the girl screamed.
France must have realized from the shocked look on the girl's face that he was bugging the hell out. He jumped off Sereeta and pulled her up by her arm.
“Are you OK?” the girl asked.
Sereeta placed her hand around her neck as she began to breathe heavily, trying to catch her breath.
“Are you fucking crazy?” the girl asked France. “Isn't she Corey's assistant? How the hell you go and do something like that to her?”
Sereeta could tell from the look on the girl's face that she was extremely pissed off and disgusted, but definitely not more than Sereeta was.
“Are you OK?” France asked her. He had knelt down some to look in Sereeta's face.
Sereeta took all the strength she had left in her body and slapped the shit out of him, and before he could react, she darted for the door. When she reached the end of the hall, she looked back and saw France trying to come after her.
“WaitâI'm sorry!” he yelled. He stumbled and almost fell, and by the time he gained his balance, Sereeta was running down the stairs. She grabbed her purse off the table and headed for the front door. She walked as fast as she could to her car and began trying to find her keys. Her hands were shaking, and she was trying to slow down enough to get her keys into her car. She felt the metal keys and began to pull them out of her purse when she heard footsteps walking up close behind her.
“Leave me alone!” she yelled as she turned away and pressed herself up against her car door.
It was Corey with a fresh haircut and some bags in his hand. His eyes were squinted; it was obvious he was confused and thinking. “What is wrong with you, Sereeta?” he asked.
She quickly turned back around and began trying to fit the car key in the door.
“Sereeta,” he said.
She could hear the concern in his voice. She got the car door open, threw her purse in the passenger seat, and plopped down in the driver's seat. By this time, Corey was standing right next to her in front of the open driver's-side door.
“Corey, please move and get away from me,” she said.
“What's wrong? Are you OK?”
“Corey, move!” she screamed.
His eyes widened in shock. “What the hell is wrong with you? You finished the package?”
“I quit,” she said.
“What?” he said.
There was a sound from the balcony door opening upstairs. Corey looked back and saw France standing there in a pair of shorts and no shirt. Sereeta looked up, and when she saw him, she began to put her keys in the ignition.
“Yo, my bad, Corey. I fucked up. I wasn't thinking,” France said.
“What are you talking about?” Corey said.
Sereeta was starting her car, and Corey looked back at her.
“Please move, Corey, so I can close my car door.”
“What is he talking about?” he asked.
“Ask him. I'm just the help.”
Corey turned around and saw that France was still standing up on the balcony watching them.
“Somebody better tell me what the fuck is going on!” Corey said.
France turned around and headed back through the balcony doors. He stumbled slightly.
“France!” Corey yelled.
France quickly turned back around.
“Yo, I said I'm sorry, Corey. Shit just led to another and . . . I don't know, man,” he said.
Corey's head turned fast toward Sereeta. He scanned her face and seemed as if he could see through her to the anger she wasn't speaking about and the tears she was fighting back. “He did something to you?” Corey asked.
Sereeta remained silent, looking out the front of her car. Corey bent down on one of his knees to be eye level with her.
“Sereeta, did he do something to you?” he said.
Sereeta had her eyes locked on the tree in front of her car. “Don't pretend you care about me, Corey,” she said without taking her eyes off the tree.
“Sereeta, please don't go there right now. I need to know what happened.”
“France wanted to see if you were telling the truth when you told the team I had some good pussy, I guess,” Sereeta said, looking Corey right in his face.
Corey shut his eyes and dropped his head. When he lifted his head back up, there were tears in her eyes. Her bottom lip was trembling; she was trying so hard not to break down, but her spirit was getting weaker and weaker each second. Corey looked back and saw France walk back inside the house.
“Sereeta, I don't know what happened, but please come and talk to me.”
“You expect me to go back inside that house? You are out of your mind.”
“What happened? What did he do?”
“He . . . he put . . . he . . .” Sereeta couldn't finish her sentence.
Corey could see the pain all over her face. He reached into the car and put his arms around her. As much as she wanted to hate Corey, she needed the shoulder to cry on. She needed to feel like he cared and she wasn't some expendable slut. Feeling him hold her tight felt so good, even in the midst of how horrible the situation. She buckled in his arms. She was ashamed and hurt and didn't want to face what was really happening or what had really happened. She tried to forget the thoughts of having to lose her job over this and focus on the bigger picture, but she was embarrassed that she was even considering that. She felt as if she had no self-worth, like she deserved what had just happened to her. At least, that was how she felt until she envisioned France on top of herâthen she felt anger, and she knew he deserved to be punished. She was way too overwhelmed with all her thoughts. She had to get away. She needed downtime.
“I have to go,” Sereeta said as she lifted herself out of Corey's grasp.
“I still don't know what happened,” he said.
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
“I honestly don't know. He made a move on you?”
“A
move
on me?” she asked and gave him a puzzled look.
Was he really that clueless? Was it not obvious from what she and France had said?
“Well, then, tell me. Listen, Sereeta. I like you. You are a cool girlâI've never kept an assistant this long. You are reliable, and you are professional. You were becoming more to me than just an assistant, and what happened between us . . . I'm sorry I told him. I wasn't bragging, though, I was just having guy talk. You are a very attractive and good type of girl; I just didn't want to mess things up. I'm sorry if you felt taken advantage ofâthat was far from the case. Please don't hate me because I told him that. He's drunk, and he probably was just trying to see if you would do something with him.”
Sereeta looked down at her steering wheel while he talked. It was all a bit comforting, she had to admit. Aside from all her mixed emotions, it was nice to know what he was thinking, for once. Still, she wished she had known a few days or even a few hours earlier. Now it was all almost irrelevant.
“He raped me,” she said.
“What?!”
he snapped.
“You heard me.”
Corey reached over to her ignition and removed the key.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
With the key in tow, he stormed off into the house. He banged the door open and ran through the front living room to the staircase. Sereeta followed behind, but by the time she got to the living room, he was upstairs. She could hear him yelling, and she definitely wasn't going up those stairs again.
“What the fuck, man?” Corey yelled.
“Yo, it wasn't like that,” France replied.
Sereeta could hear a few more muffled shouts, but she couldn't make out what was being said.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” Corey barked.
Sereeta sat on the couch with her face buried in her hands; she couldn't believe any of this was happening. She heard footsteps and jumped up to see who it was. The brown-skinned girl who had come in the room, along with another one of Corey's teammatesâAaronâand another light-skinned young lady were coming down the stairs. The brown-skinned girl had an overnight bag with her, and the light-skinned girl had just her purse. The brown-skinned girl had this look of shame and guilt on her face, and when she saw Sereeta, she immediately turned away. Sereeta knew why the girl couldn't look her in the eyes; she wouldn't want to either. At that very moment, Sereeta didn't even want to face herself in the mirror.
The three of them walked out the front door and closed it behind them. Sereeta assumed it was just her, Corey, and France left in the house, and she didn't feel comfortable with that. She wanted to go get her keys, but she didn't want to face France. She could still hear them arguing.
“Are you bugging?” Corey asked.
“She was going along with it at first, and then she changed the game up. Then I stopped,” he yelled.
“She said you raped her, France. She wouldn't make up something like that.”
It felt good to hear him say thatâhe believed her. He could just as easily have believed what France was saying, but Corey knew her better than that, and if there was anything positive that would come out of the whole fucked-up situation, in Sereeta's mind that was it.
“My bad, Corey,” France said again.
You could hear in his voice that he was still drunk. His words were slurring, and he just seemed out of it.
“And how you going to do that shit in my house? You dragging me into this. She can press charges, and I will be caught right in the middle,” Corey spewed.
Is that all he was concerned about, his name being in the paper? Is that what all his anger was about?
she asked herself
.
She wanted to leave, and she had no idea why Corey wanted her to stay and hear all this. As if what had just happened weren't bad enough, now she had to sit here and listen to France make excuses for it and Corey worry about himself and not about how she felt. She wanted to get out of there, but she was way too far out in the boonies to walk or to try to find a bus. She started to realize that Corey probably wanted to coach her about how to handle the situationâtell her who to talk to and who not to talk to.
Sereeta felt trapped again, like she had when France was holding her arm. She sat up straight, scanning the room, looking around for a solution. She looked at the table by the wall and noticed that Corey's keys to the Range Rover were lying there. She thought for a few seconds and then jumped and grabbed them and headed toward the front door.
Chapter 32
C
alling out sick for two days probably didn't help the situation at all, but Naomi wasn't up for whatever drama was brewing at the office. Her coworker had called her and told her there were a lot of folks gossiping about what was going on, and quite a few new faces passing by her desk were trying to get a peek of her or something. Her original plan was to miss just one day of work with the intent to let things subside. However, that evening her cubicle neighbor, Jared, had called her and told her how it seemed to be even worse that day. Naomi was so glad she wasn't there to be the fish in the glass bowl for all her nosy coworkers to stare at. She knew Tiffany didn't believe her when she'd said she'd eaten something bad. She was sick to her stomach, but not because of bad foodâbecause of bad decisions.
What clinched Naomi's decision to call out another day was when Jared had told her that the stories circulating were different from what she knew. He said one of the guys from the dubbing office asked him if Jared had slept with her, and when he told him no, the guy had said to make a move because she was an easy knock-down. Jared had apologized for telling her this, but he'd thought she needed to know. What put the nail in the coffin was when he'd told her the version of the story he'd heard was that she was in that hotel room with both Neil and Tyreek, and they'd taken turns. All Naomi could do was shake her head in disbelief. She'd told Jared those stories weren't true, but he'd said before she could even finish that it was unnecessaryâhe hadn't believed it when he'd heard it. It felt nice to know that someone in the office knew she wasn't the slut whore Tyreek had everyone believing.
The first day she'd stayed home, she'd talked on the phone with everyone she could confide in from back homeâand Devoraâto let them know what had happened and to get their advice. Everyone had a different opinion, but many of them felt as though she had made herself a bed she wasn't going to enjoy having to lie in. No one seemed to encourage her, aside from Devora.
“Girl, I say you go back in that office and you let them all know you don't have anything to be ashamed about,” Devora said.
“I know, but that would be way easier if I didn't.”
“Half the bitches there have probably slept with someone in that building. They can't talk.”
“Yeah, but the difference is the whole staff doesn't know all their business.”
“Well, yeah, it does suck that Tyreek gossips like a girl, but so what? Gossip back about him.”
“What do you mean? No! I am not even going to admit that I slept with him. I would rather pretend he's just lying.”
“That's if people believe that, Naomi. Sometimes the best way to save face is just to confront it head-on. Admit you did, but let it be known that he was horrible in bed or was stinking or something. Make him regret blabbing.”
Naomi liked the idea, but she couldn't imagine herself walking around talking about her sexual life with just anyone. Before she hung up with Devora, she'd said she would think about it, but she wasn't quite sure if telling one or two people at work was going to have the same effect. She didn't have the advantage of being friends with Monique; if so, she could just tell her, and the word would spread like wildfire.
Naomi really tried to take the time at home to evaluate where she'd lost herself. She had even called Charles the night before, but he hadn't seemed too sympathetic. She'd told him a twisted version of the story, but he hadn't seemed to believe it or care either way. She'd told him that people had just seen her and Tyreek leave together and begun to assume and gossip about it, but she swore Tyreek was just her colleague and friend. From his response, Naomi could tell he probably believed the “gossip,” too. Afterward, Devora had told her she was stupid to even mention it; she now regretted telling him anything at all. She figured because their relationship was practically dead anyway, maybe sharing this would help or make him want to console her. She realized after the fact that she'd had the wrong idea.
The television was on all day, but Naomi barely paid it any attention. She kept drifting off into different thoughts and imagining what people were thinking about her. She still didn't see how she'd been living a dreamâworking in New York City at a top record labelâand now here she was, less than a year later, a cast-off at work, still underpaid with no boyfriend back home anymore, and only a few steps away from losing her job. She'd had no idea that this was what would come with a taste of the life.