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“Why are you asking me that?” Esther peered down at her cleavage and frowned. “Is there something wrong with the bra I’m wearing?”
Jinny licked her thumb and flipped to the next page in her People magazine. “My sister says most women are walking around in an improperly fitted bra, and everyone should get professionally measured at a lingerie boutique. She went and did it last week and says her new bras are so comfortable they cleared her skin and watered her crops.”
“Your sister doesn’t have crops.”
“I think we should do it. I’m going to make us an appointment.”
One of the apartment doors slammed overhead and Esther tensed, but it was only stoner Brent.
This was the first time they’d hung out by the pool since Jinny had dumped Jonathan. Every time Esther heard a door, she was afraid it might be him. Jinny still had no idea that Esther and Jonathan were friends—because Esther was a coward who hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell her—and she didn’t want her finding out because of a chance encounter in the courtyard.
She should just come right out with it and tell her now. It didn’t have to be a big deal. Except…Jinny would ask a bunch of questions. She’d want to know how it had started, and what had possessed Esther to start spending time with a guy she supposedly couldn’t stand. Why she had agreed to help him with his script in the first place. And there wasn’t a good explanation for that, unless she also told Jinny about the bargain she’d made with him and how she’d coerced him into asking her out. That was the part that was really bad. Because if Jinny found out—
“Hey, so lemme ask you something,” Jinny said, tossing aside her magazine. “What do you think about Yemi?”
Esther leaned over to dig another beer out of the cooler she’d brought down. “I love Yemi. You know that.”
“No, but…what do you think about him as, like, a man?”
“Yemi?” Esther swiveled to look at Jinny. “Wait, do you like Yemi? Like, like like him?”
Jinny’s lips pursed and twisted to the side. “Maybe?”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. I never really thought about him like that until…” She trailed off, biting her lip.
“Until what?”
“Remember when I was trying on that new dress at work? And he said I looked beautiful?”
“Yeah.” That was over two months ago. Had she been harboring a crush on Yemi all this time and was only just now getting around to saying something?
Jinny ducked her head, picking at the lavender polish on her thumbnail. “It was the way he looked at me. Like I was something rare and special. Like he was looking at the Hope Diamond or a new Star Wars movie.”
Esther thought about the way Jonathan had looked at her before he’d left her apartment last night. It would be easy to get used to being looked at like that.
“And then the other day, he was wearing that pink shirt, remember?”
Esther didn’t, but she nodded anyway, taking a swig of her beer. “Uh huh.”
“And I thought to myself, ‘That shirt looks really good on him.’ And then I noticed he had muscles that you could see through the shirt, and I realized—Yemi’s cute.”
“He is,” Esther agreed.
Jinny shook her head. “No, he’s like hot cute. He’s got this nerdy Chadwick Boseman thing going on that I never noticed before but…” She broke into a slow smile. “I think I like it.”
Esther smacked her on the arm, grinning. “You like Yemi!”
“I don’t know.” A blush spread across Jinny’s cheeks. “Maybe. Do you think he likes me?”
“I know he likes you, but I don’t know if he likes you like that. He can be a little hard to read.”
“Right? He’s always so polite, it’s hard to know what he really thinks of you.”
“But he’s also very forthright. He doesn’t do pretense. If you ask him straight out, he’ll give you an honest answer.”
Jinny’s mouth pulled into a frown. “You think he would have told me if he liked me?”
