CPR

35

Carti - Los Angeles, California
I sat in my car in the parking lot of Aaliyah's condo dreading going inside. The meeting I had with my label and new management went left fast. I knew Aaliyah wasn't going to like what I had to tell her but out of respect I have to. I called her just to make sure she was at home before going up.

"Hey baby." She lightly sung and her voice boomed through my car.

"Hey uh I was just making sure you were at home. I'm about to head up in a minute." I chuckled at her silliness.

"Yeah I'll unlock the door now then." She said.

I told her I would meet her in a minute and hung up. I got out of my car sighing and slammed my door. I greeted the doorman as I walked in and got on the elevator making my way up.

I knocked on the door as I opened it making my presence known. I closed it locking it and seen her looking at stuff on her laptop.

"Hey." She got up hugging me.

"Whatchu looking at?" I asked looking at her laptop.

"Some stuff of Ian's that was sent in an email. You'd be surprised where and who he made his money from." She shook her head.

"Trust me I know I've seen who pays him to work for them." I smiled.

"Yeah it's crazy and now he wants me to take all of his clients while he's away. I'm excited though and a little bit nervous." She smiled.

"It's going to be easy for you because you do this everyday. It's nothing wrong with being nervous either that's normal." I replied.

"Okay enough about this stuff how was the meeting?" She closed her laptop and gave me her full attention.

I scratched my head and looked down at my pants fixing them.

"Uh oh it didn't go good did it?" She asked and the tone of her voice quickly softened.

"As far as management goes I'm happy with that and it went cool." I said slouching down.

"Okay so what was so bad about the meeting? You seem hesitant like you don't want to talk about it." She crossed her legs.

"We were discussing my lack of social media presence and lack of publicity lately. They want to create a publicity stunt to boost the amount of eyes I have on me right now."

"What kind of stunt? I feel like you're tip toeing around what they really said." She sat up.

"They think it would be a good idea if I got involved with someone else." I said looking at her.

"Excuse me?" She said and her whole face changed.

"The label thinks it would be good publicity if I got in a fake relationship with a girl with more 'fame'. They think since we're a hot couple right now if we had a scandal it could boost my fame." I decided to just spit it out.

"The fact that you're evening sitting here right now telling me this is blowing my mind. What did you say to them?" She asked and I could see she was visibly getting upset.

"I told them I didn't want to do it and they needed to come up with something else."

"Okay so why are we talking about this then?" She asked dryly laughing.

"They told me to think about it and we would talk again next week. They were saying we could both get money and other benefits from it." I sat up.

I could feel the tension grow in the room and the energy shifted from happy and light to something uncomfortable and dark.

"Jordan, our relationship is not some joke or some sort of entertainment for people. That's being a sell out and I don't know about you but there's no amount of money anybody could offer me to do that. You can't even make eye contact with me so clearly this is something that makes you uncomfortable." She expressed.