Page 18 of Two’s Better

“Do you need any help?” I asked gruffly.

“No, thank you.” She gave me that quick, shy glance again. If she kept looking at me like that—from underneath those lovely, long, curled lashes—I really was going to kiss her. Right here. In front of all our friends, fuck what they might think. “I’m just about done here. You should probably start setting the table.” She glanced in the direction of the dining area like I didn’t know where it was.

“Should I?”

She let out a dramatic sigh. “Uzezi. You’re distracting me.”

“Am I?” I grinned, slow and feral. She blushed again. My hands curled into the counter behind me to keep myself from crowding into her space to see if it might make her blush harder.

“Go and set the table before you piss me off.”

I laughed, my body suffusing with familiar warmth when I saw her responding smile.

As I left my spot against the counter, I had to fight yet another urge to press a kiss to her glistening shoulder. But I couldn’t resist touching her hip again, though—this time her left—pressing close to her back as I leaned over her shoulder to ask, “Know where the dishes are?”

Subconsciously—or consciously—she swayed into the weight of my hand. She cleared her throat. Used her chin to point at the designated cupboard.

I squeezed her hip, and she made a tiny noise. Goddamn. I wanted to hear that noise again. But louder. And with more passion. Goddamn. What the fuck was even happening right now?

Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed Ofure last night, but not for the reasons I’d initially fretted over. Had this well of wanting just been, what, hiding deep down inside me all this time, and was now finally unleashed? It felt like by crossing that line, we’d opened Pandora’s box, and there was no closing it back.

Whether that was a good or a bad thing remained yet to be seen.

6

“Never have I ever ...” Tamara paused for dramatic effect, her eyes sparkling with something that had me automatically bracing myself. “... kissed a girl.”

“I’m taking that one as targeted harassment,” Prince said as he, Uzezi, Ezra, and I took a shot, sending all of us laughing.

“Wait, o,” Bernice said, just as Tamara and Fiona also took a shot, the former with a mischievous smile, while the latter was blushing furiously. “Wait, wait, wait. Both of you have kissed girls? You—what? Huh?”

We all burst out laughing again, though I was just as surprised. Almost everyone in our friend group was queer; it was how we’d met, during freshers’ week of first year at a mixer thrown by the university’s Queer African Union; we’d bonded over being first years, our queerness, the fact that we were all Nigerian, and that, for literally all of us, it had been the first time we were publicly letting ourselves claim that part of our identities.

Uzezi and I were bisexual, Fiona was biromantic and demisexual, Tamara and Ezra were both pansexual, Dayo was gay, Bernice identified as queer, and the only unqueer person in our midst was Prince. He’d been a flatmate of Dayo’s in first year and they’d apparently just “clicked”. When he’d tagged along with Dayo to one of our group hang outs, he’d seamlessly meshed with the rest of us, so we’d happily taken him in as our token straight.

In the nearly three years we’ve known each other, Fiona has never so much as looked at anyone—regardless of their gender—with interest, and Tamara and Ezra have been dating practically since that first, fateful QAU mixer where we’d all met. If either of them had so much as kissed a frog, we’d all have known about it. Right?

“Y’all don’t know everything about me,” Tamara said with a wink.

“Nah, you I trust, but Fiona?” Bernice exclaimed.

“I don’t think I like your tone,” Tamara said playfully, at the same time that Fiona complained, “Why are you saying my name like that?” but she was blushing. “Just because I’m an introvert doesn’t mean I’ve never ... you know.”

“Hear, hear,” Dayo said, lifting his empty shot glass in a mock toast.

“I mean, I was thinking more because of the whole demisexual thing, but colour me wrong, I guess,” Bernice said, sending us into laughter once more.

Fiona shrugged jerkily. “I have kissed and been kissed,” she said primly. “In fact, the kissing was one of the many pieces of evidence of my demisexuality. Now that we’re done acting like I’m an alien, can we continue?”

“Oya, I’m sorry,” Bernice said dramatically. We laughed again.

“All right, my turn,” Uzezi said, and as usual, practically since the moment he’d shown up today, the sound of his voice made my heartbeat stutter, and my lower belly tighten. “Never have I ever driven a car.”

“Uzezi ... et tu?” Prince said with mock betrayal, and we all burst out laughing again.

Uzezi shrugged unapologetically. We were all seated in a circle on the carpeted floor of the sitting room, with Uzezi sitting directly to my left. I was leaning back slightly, resting on my left palm, and even though Uzezi was right-handed, he’d been using his left hand to take his shots, while his right hand rested on the space between us, the side of his wrist brushing not-so-innocently against mine. I could barely think over the soft touch against that small strip of skin, ninety percent of my attention focused on what felt like the smallest, sweetest caress known to mankind.

Every time either of us shifted, even for the briefest moment, it had our wrists rubbing, making my heart threaten to play leapfrog behind my ribcage. I was a sitting, ticking timebomb, with what seemed like seconds before exploding.