Page 24 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“Good,” Nacora said, her hand moving across the trackpad. “Let me play some mood music.” She cranked the volume up, and the opening beats to “The Rest of You” filled the air and the dance floor turned into the set of an early-2000s R&B music video. Bodies pressed together and writhing. The strobe lights went from flashing white and yellow to pulsing red and green to the beat of the song. Ray’s voice had folks grinding and damn near fucking on the dance floor.

It was glorious.

Nacora turned to me, her face scrunched up like something stank to high heaven. All I could do was smirk and bob my head to the beat.

“This is a banger.”

She was right, of course.

“Thanks, Nacora.”

I’d made a radio edit that was only three minutes long, but the version I sent to Nacora was the full five-minute version, which included thirty-five seconds of Ray’s vocal runs as the instruments played. It was actually me on piano for part of the song, because I’d wanted to channel the seventies habit of giving the musicians time to flex their skills.

Nacora allowed the entire song to play, transitioning into Victoria Monét’s “F.U.C.K.” so damn smoothly that you would’ve thought the two songs had the same melody. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked the screen to see it was a text from Xeno. Preferring to get her reaction in person, I got Nacora’s attention and let her know I was leaving. She turned to give me a quick hug and then turned right back to her setup. I was down the stairs within seconds, feeling lifted from the crowd’s reaction to “The Rest of You.”

I’d taken two steps away from the booth before a woman stepped in front of me and blocked my momentum forward. Almost colliding with her, I held my hands up, half-finished drink sloshing around in the glass.

“My bad, sweetheart,” I murmured, stepping to the side so she could get to wherever she was going in a hurry.

“It’s all good,” she remarked in a voice infused with sensuality. When she stepped with me like a mirror image, my eyebrows shot up and I leaned my head back to take her in.

Face beat, titties sitting, dress serving sexy disco ball, and heels higher than my car note, she looked good. Real good.

How would that dress look on Jucee?

Instinctively, my eyes swept up toward the VIP section, where she was likely shaking her ass with Mercedes. The way the lights were situated, I couldn’t even see up there, but I wondered what she thought of the club’s reaction to “The Rest of You.” I squinted, and the motion made me realize what I was doing. Blinking out of my thoughts—especially that initial random one that came out of nowhere—I acknowledged the woman in front of me. Her voice had what sounded like a natural rasp, the depth not matching her bubbly appearance. She sounded like she should be scatting at the Red Rooster, but she was dressed like a top-forty popstar.

As she stepped closer to me, I tried to place her face. It was possible that she was in the industry, but she didn’t look familiar.

“You lookin’ for me, or is this just a happy accident?”

Sauntering over to me, hips rocking from side to side, she licked her lips and shrugged. “Can’t it be both?”

I cocked an eyebrow, lips curving into a smirk. “It’s like that?”

“It is,” she insisted, practically purring. “I’ve been looking for you all night, but running into you right now was a coincidence. Fate, maybe.”

“Fate,” I found myself repeating. “Oh, so you think this was meant to be.” It wasn’t a question. There was no need to ask, because clearly that was what she was telling herself. I recognized her point as one fans—groupies—believed in on a regular basis. It was a little unrealistic, but I rarely said no to a beautiful woman when she was so obviously interested in me.

She threw her head back and laughed uproariously as if I’d just done stand-up comedy, and my eyes widened as my head snapped back a bit. I was known to tell a lil jokey joke or two, but this wasn’t one of those times. It was still wild to experience groupie shit, and this felt like that.

But there was something else wrong here though. Something was off. Like a Jacuzzi with no bubbles. The water is heated, so your mind registers that you aren’t in a pool, but without the jets it’s just a public bath.

Shorty was gorgeous, without a doubt. She was one of those aggressive femmes that I lowkey loved, pushing up on me and telling me how much she was feelin’ me. The icing on the cake was that she was clearly down to fuck immediately.

It had been a few busy weeks since I’d been back, with me in the studio twelve to fourteen hours most days, and before that I’d been chillin’ after me and a girl I met at H-E-B stopped kicking it. I wasn’t exactly hard up for sex, but if she was down, then I was with it.

Except...

There was something in the rhythm of her laughter that made me cringe. It was in the wrong key or something. It was nails on a chalkboard, the way it grated at me. We were in a loud-ass club with hundreds of people around us and we’d just met, so I had no idea about her personality outside of her not being afraid to go for what she wanted, but her good looks could only take us so far. I took a step back, putting some space between us, preparing to make my way back up to VIP. She immediately clocked my movement and slid forward, getting right up on me, brushing her titties against mine as she fingered the crown medallion on my chain.

That was all it took for me to reconsider. I mean...if things were going right, there wouldn’t be too much to laugh about, and hopefully her moan was more D-flat than E-sharp.

She put her lips directly at my ear. “So, whose place are we going back to? Yours or mine?”

Her breath tickled my neck, but instead of it being a sexy caress, it itched. It was perplexing. Tilting my head to the side, I placed my hands at her waist and leaned back.

“Tonight’s a no go, but gimme your number and we can link another day.” I’d never had such a negative response to someone’s laugh like this, so I needed to process this phenomenon. I might not be interested in fucking her anymore, but I was definitely interested in testing this out.