“Bristol, let me just p
aint a picture for you first.” Sarah tucks my phone behind her back.
“Let me paint a picture of you in the unemployment line if you don’t give me my phone.”
“Are there actual lines anymore, though?” Sarah stalls. “I mean, it’s all computerized now, right?”
“You’ll know for sure tomorrow unless you give me my phone.” I sigh, exasperated. “How bad can it be, whatever it is?”
Her silence and the eyes shifting from me to the floor tell me it’s bad. The worst things I can imagine immediately leap to mind.
“It’s Grip? Rhyson? Kai? The baby?” Sarah’s unchanging expression gives me no assurances. “Just tell me.”
Sarah blows out an extended breath and starts tapping keys on my phone. When she finds what she’s looking for, she turns the screen around for me to see.
“Let’s start here,” she says.
I take the phone, my eyes still trained on her face. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It’s surveillance footage from the “routine” stop on Sunday with Officer Dunne.
“What is this?” I search Sarah’s face for an answer. “This happened Sunday when Grip was stopped by a cop.”
“Yeah, someone got ahold of the surveillance footage and posted it.” Sarah bites her bottom lip. “There’s a lot of talk about the irony of Grip being stopped DWB when ‘Bruise’ is just coming out. But there’s a lot more . . . discussion about you and Grip. Keep watching.”
I look again, and then I see it. I get out of the car and join Grip on the curb. I remember this moment when his forehead presses to mine and we whisper to one another, the intimacy between us obvious. Our lips touch and our eyes hold onto each other.
Oh, God, please no.
Our lips touch and linger. We kiss.
I slowly lift my eyes to meet Sarah’s. Hers are wide and questioning. “It’s just a . . . an itty bitty kiss, right?” False hope lilts my voice.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah agrees and bites her lip. “But there is that other part.”
“Other part?”
I look back to the phone. There’s another clip after Officer Dunne leaves. A different feed, different angle. Maybe from a nearby pole. Who knows. We’re chatting with Greg, and Grip kisses my hand and presses it to his chest. He pulls me into his side. I lean into him. There’s nothing platonic about any of it. We look like we’re in love, but it’s nothing too incriminating until Greg leaves. The footage shows the long kiss we shared against the Rover. If there was any doubt we’re more than friends, this kiss eliminates it.
The first few comments, like Sarah said, focus on the stop itself. But slowly, comments about me, about Qwest start trickling in. The comments become accusations about the white bitch with Grip. Dozens of commenters post about Grip cheating on Qwest. About him caught “creeping.” With every comment, the vitriol, the outrage on her behalf increases. The hashtags stack up.
#GripzQueen. #BlackLove. #CheatingAss. #SellOut.
The room tilts. The floor beneath my feet becomes Jell-O. I stumble to my desk, perching on the edge.
“How long has this been up?” I ask between hyperventilating breaths.
“Um, maybe fifteen minutes,” Sarah answers cautiously. “It’s getting a lot of traffic, though.”
“I can see that.”
I scroll and scroll and scroll, but still haven’t reached the end of the comments. Every once in a while, one commenter will mention the stop itself and how this is exactly what “Bruise” talks about, but it’s drowned in the sea of speculation about Grip and me.
“What’s a thot?” I look up from the phone, eyebrows bunched. “They keep calling me a thot.”
“Um . . .” Hesitation is all over Sarah’s face and in her answer. “That Ho Over There.”
My mouth drops open. I was a damn debutante in the most exclusive circles of Upper Manhattan, and I’m a thot?
“Qwest.” I look at Sarah with horrified eyes. “Oh, God. What must she be thinking?”