The studio was more packed than usual, full of faces she'd never seen before along with a handful of her friends. The walk up the stairs made them arrive to the room later than everyone else. The seats were packed and almost everyone crowded around the walls.
Elias was settled in front of the booth, in a singular rollie chair. Infront of him was a lanky dark-skinned man with cornrows decorating his head. As Laney entered the room, she caught on to the silence of everyone else in the room minus her brother and the unknown man.
"And your sister? How you feel about her come up?"
"Aw man," Elias smiled, his head bowed down. "My sister is my heart outside my chest ya feel me?"
He lifted his head and looked directly into the lens of the camera.
"She my lil mini me, like, we different in some ways but we more alike than anything just like, like she everything I wish I could be plus more, but the good traits I got she also got em'."
"So, you two are close I'm assuming?"
Laney came to the conclusion that her brother was in the midst of an interview. She saw an open seat beside Dd and scooted in between him and Jay. Jay dapped her up, his attention stuck on his phone and Dd thew his arm over her shoulder his attention on Elias.
"Closer than close, it's like a closeness more than siblings, I almost feel like she's my own child sometimes. Like if I was to have a child I feel like I'd feel Like Aolani was my firstborn. I got such a..." Elias smacks his teeth looking off into the distance to try and gather his thoughts, when he finally found the words he continued, "paternal love for her."
Laney smiled at her brother's words.
"I was four when she was born so like, that's old enough to realize that it's a life under your care and eye you know?" The man hummed and Elias continued, " I guess I'm tryna say like, I've always been protective over her but when I was twelve and she was eight we lost our mother and, in a way, we lost our pops for a while, so I wanted to make sure she had the feeling of parents that I had in those um, crucial years of being a child. So I stepped up a lot as a big brother and I think although we were already close we became wayyyy closer when um- all that happened."
"And her popularity?"
Elias let out a laugh, "Man, bro she don't even know that's the funny part. Cause like she so out the way, she like being alone and shit like. I'm always having to ask her if she wanna come with me or having to drag her somewhere. So, she don't really vibe with being around people especially niggas she don't know. She wouldn't have expected this level of um... fame? I knew though that she had it in her, she's like the people's person. Like she don't know it but she got like a calm impact on everybody. Me and the boys call her the hood princess, like she's just like that."
"We could talk to your sister?"
"If she's down for it, of course."
At their words Laney shrunk into herself a baffled look covering her face.
"You down Laney?" Elias called out, already standing up from his seat.
There was an encouraging smile on his face that made the nerves ease from her body.
"Okay." It was nearly a whisper and Kofi; the interviewer, almost didn't hear her.
From his seat, he observed the young teen, she was quiet, she was calm, and she did have a strong aura surrounding her for sure, she was exactly how her brother had described.
She walked there should always be instrumentals behind her, peaceful piano ballads playing in the background, like the songs you put on to try and sleep. She was relaxation in human form.
Now, Kofi had interviewed a lot of people during his career, it's what helped him accumulate such a large following of 1.3 million supporters. But he had to admit he felt like he had to treat the young girl with much more delicacy, much more respect and discipline.
He'd interviewed some people of much higher status than the teen drill rapper from Harlem. But he had a feeling this would be a significant moment for him. One he'd carry with him forever, if he asked the right questions. And he had a lot of them.
"Hi." He smiled at her. Laney offered him a smile, it reached her cheeks, the apples burning slightly as she felt the anxiety bubble inside of her.
"Hello." She responded, reaching out to shake his hand. "I''m Aolani, but you can call me Laney."
"I love your name, pronounce that for me one more time."
"Ayo-loni."
"Why do they call you laney?"
"My grandmother is Haitian, her Loni, sounded like Laney. It grew on me."
"If you don't mind me asking, what is your ethnicity?"
"My father is full blood Samoan, my mother is-was from the Dominican Republic. Her Mother had moved from Haiti to the DR as a teen and she married my abuelo. They had my mom and her brother and then moved here."
"That's beautiful, a combination of sorts huh?"
"Yeah."
"Do you have strong ties to your cultures?"
"I do, some more than others. As of now I practice more Samoan customs than the others, my-um my mom, when she passed a lot of the things she had grown accustomed to as an afro Latina halted in our household."
Kofi smiled at Laney, a warm smile that showcased understanding and empathy.
"You're close with your father I'm assuming."
"Oh yeah," Laney chuckled. "He's my rock."
"If you had to name the five closest people to you who are you naming?"
"Oh wow, Okay. Laney started. "This is an easy one, my brother, my dad, dd, Ddot, and Not. For sure them."
"I've spoken to those three kids over the past week," Kofi admitted, making the trio smack their teeth at the term kids leaving his mouth.
"Yeah?" Laney laughed, "how was it?"
"That Dd kid doesn't know how to form complete sentences, Ddot skipped every question I asked him and the Notti boy made every answer about you."
Laney felt her heart flutter at his last words. She made a mental reminder to watch his interview later.
"Sounds like them." She joked.
"You're very private compared to the rest of your group, yeah"
"you could say that. I like to keep to myself a lot, not on no rude stuff but it's just comforting to me, to know myself in peace."
"I like that answer. You talk like you're in a book."
"Bro!" She cackled, "everybody says that, it's probably because I read so much actually."
"You do realize that you break the stigma that there is surrounding you right?"
"What is that"
"People," Kofi sighed, wondering how to word his thoughts. "People stereotype you as this little violent person, hard. I don't see that."
"I don't pay attention to what others think of me, but I know why they'd think that and I see how they could think that, and it's understandable." Her head tilted down towards her shoes, her hands fiddling with the zipper of Notti's jacket that adorned her frame. And she thinks back to the last conversation she'd had with Notti before she'd seen him today.
**
They were still outside of the jail, he had kissed her for the final time and he was holding her in his arms. His chin resting on her head her curls framing the bottom half of his face. The pair didn't realize but they were swaying side to side with the gentle breeze of the wind.
"You're good y'know that right?"
"Yeah," Laney hummed, her arms still wrapped around his torso.
"No,like. I mean you're a good person. I don't think you believe that but I wanna let you know it's true, you are."
Just like he expected, she din't respond to him. But he could feel the sharp intake of air she breathed in.
"You've always had doubt in yourself even before this whole situation. I never understood it, I still don't. I think you're the purest soul to walk this earth. I mean that, if anybody's good, it's you."
***
"You're a good kid Laney. I can feel that, I can see that."
Her head lifted and her eyes met Notti's.
His face was observant like he had been watching her the entire times studying her reactions. He smiled when he noticed her peeking at him. She is a good kid, he thought.
He appreciated someone else speaking life into her, if you asked him, everyone who had the pleasure of being in her presence should bow to her and treat her with grace with every glance she offers them, he would.
The interview went on for a little while longer, forty minutes to be exact. And while Notti usually hated doing stuff like this and spending his time listening to people talk, this surprisingly. Well not surprisingly, didn't bother him. He could only equate it to the fact that it was because it was Laney he was hearing. And her voice was smooth like silk and low like the sun during sunset and the moon as it appears.
He loved to hear her talk no matter what but especially about herself, because she didn't do it much or really even at all and he felt as though she deserved to be cocky sometimes. He wished she would scream out to the entire world her achievements, her hobbies, her favorites, hell everything.
He was salty ripped out of his dreamy daze of her voice as she stood from her seat and began giving the crew hugs. She gave out cheery and appreciative smiles and thank you's as she traveled from person to person.
And when she was done, she traveled over to him as her brother chatted away with the interviewer over the details.
"Notti." She Hummed.
"Laney." He reciprocated.
They weren't looking at each other, in fact they wore stood side by side shoulder to shoulder, eyes casts on the scene in front of them.
"I'd kiss you right now, but apparently there's too many eyes." She admitted.
"There are."
"Why are there too may eyes?"
"Because they're a body part?"
"Stop playing dumb Notti." She huffed.
He turned his head to observe her, catching her side profile seeing as she didn't bother to face him.
"I thought we were getting somewhere after the whole you know admittance situation."
"We are."
"Then what's going on, just tell me."
To be perfectly honest, this must be that self sabotaging she always said he does. Because he had no excuse, just nerves and unrealistic thoughts?
To be even more honest, Notti's brain deals with all of the emotions he can't confront. Oddly enough, even after confessing his undying love for his best friend he found a sort of awkwardness out of trying to pursue it. It all felt so different for him so he knew it probably felt one hundred times more different to her. And he didn't want to weird her out or make her uncomfortable so he opted for trying to keep her with a sense of normalcy so that she wouldn't get weirded out by him and push him away.
"Never mind." She said, after she had turned her head to observe Notti and seen the frantic look behind his eyes. She was always so weak when it came to him, letting him have his was all in an effort to avoid getting him out of his comfort zone and making him uncomfortable. She'd put his peace above anything as long as he was okay, she would give up anything even her desire for answers.
"Tell me when you're ready." She continued. And her mind drifted back to the minuscule argument they had encountered that night of the video shoot, where she had put an heavy amount of pressure onto him. And she patted herself on the back for progressing already.
He'd tell her when he was ready, she thought.
"Hey, I'm going to say goodbye to Kofi really fast and then we can go."
She didn't wait for Notti to answer seeing as when she finished her sentence his phone pinged with a text message alert. She waltzed away allowing him his privacy.
Notti pulled his phone from his pocket, the message glaring at him from his screen.
𝐇𝐈𝐈𝐈𝐈𝐈𝐈𝐈, 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐞. 𝐘'𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨 :)