And waited.
And waited.
“Fine,” I said.
She grabbed her chest like she was struck by the Holy Spirit. “Hallelujah!” she exclaimed, sliding out of the booth.
“If you get up and do a holy dance, I ain’t telling you shit,” I spat.
Pouting, she slid back into her seat. “You never let me have any fun.”
“It really ain’t that deep,” I began.
“Oh, it’s always deep when it involves…Mekhi Venzant.”
I glared harder. “How do you know?—”
“Do you know what I had to do to get that information? Do you know there are men who can eat your pussy til you pass out? Do you know one of them is named Braeden Christopher?” she asked, frowning.
My jaw dropped for a second. “You let Brae do that to you?”
“How else was I gon’ get the information? Your ass certainly wasn’t forthcoming.”
That man wanted this fool so bad, and she wasn’t having it. She must’ve been desperate to agree to that. If Braeden knew, that meant I hadn’t fooled my cousin Ajani, his partner, with my lies about a scorned date. But the fact that they were hanging back, letting Mekhi take lead when it came to my safety spoke volumes.
“‘Forthcoming’ is only slightly better than ‘untoward,’ FYI,” I muttered. “And I can’t believe you let Brae take you down.”
“All to hear about…Mekhi Venzant.”
She kept pausing before she said his name all dramatic. Hy was the best kind of messy and extra.
“Could you not say his name like that?” I requested.
“Oh, you mean the man you used to crush on so hard senior year that you almost failed AP Calculus because you kept daydreaming about his stupid eight-pack? You mean that…Mekhi Venzant?”
“Hyacinth,” I warned before pointing a finger at her. “And I passed that class with a B+.”
“You passed because TeTe Marian prayed and anointed you with that holy oil. But we not talking academics. We talking about how you look like somebody’s boo this morning.”
I wanted to flip the table.
She leaned forward, eyes wide. “Farrah Michelle Gray… did you sleep with him?”
“No!”
“Did you sleepnextto him?”
I paused. Her mouth flew open. She knew she had me.
“Mm-hmm. Mm-mm-mm. You sneaky heffa. I knew it! I feel vindicated!”
“Would you chill with these words and these assumptions? It wasn’t like that.”
She grabbed her purse, pulled out a fan, and put it to work. “I need water. I need prayer. I need the ancestors.”
“Hyacinth.”
“Continue,” she said, waving her hand like she was presiding over a court case.
