Page 35 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“Get yo tail outta this car.”

Despite the pain in my chest, I laughed lightly, and Carissa hugged me tighter.

“Please take her away, ’cause I’m ’bout ready to clock her.”

“Dang, Mommy,” Poppa tsked from my left. “Two hours in your company and you ready to beat me already?”

My brain was torn between wanting to crack up at their antics and not finding much humor in anything at that moment, so all I managed to do was shake my head. “What am I supposed to do with her? She don’t wanna come with me.”

Leaning back, Carissa pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please. You’re all she talked about the whole time she was with us. She done got on my last nerve!” Carissa glared at her child before pulling me closer for another tight hug. Her declaration wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary had it come anytime before today, but I found myself skeptical. When she released me, I leaned down to wave at Marvin through the opened door.

“Bring me back some shrimp crackers from H Mart!”

Chuckling, he nodded. “Will do!”

Carissa climbed back into the car, and I took a step back so they could drive off without rolling over my feet. Once they turned the corner, I took a deep breath to gather my thoughts before I slowly spun to face Poppa. To my surprise, her eyes were already on me. I mean, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, because she looked at me all of the time, but after the last seven hours and all of the scenarios I’d cooked up in my head, I would’ve bet money that she’d avoid looking at me. My surprise was valid and...even more surprising was the hungry look in them. Surprising...and confusing. I had so many questions, so many thoughts whizzing through my brain that I didn’t know where to start. Slapping my hands on my hips, I frowned and dropped my head to the side.

“What the fuck, Poppa?!”

Chapter Ten

Cyn

What Had Happened Was

“Jucee...” I interjected, hoping to get ahead of her rightful explosion.

She paused, and I know it was to give me the chance to speak, but the only words on my mind were different adjectives that described how fuckin’ fine she was. It had never escaped me that Jucee was bad, but now that I’d experienced her as a lover, it was impossible to look at her in any other way. Shit, the sun even seemed to hit her different, glistening on the skin left exposed by that clingy dress that had been sitting in my closet for six months. She stood in front of me looking edible and so damn pissed with her hands on her hips and her face pinched in anger, but all I wanted to do was have her for breakfast. I couldn’t say that shit to her right then though, not while she was mad, so I did the next best thing.

I closed the small space between us and wrapped my arms around her, resting them against her lower back as I pressed my face into her neck. Inhaling, I breathed her in, allowing her familiar scent to fill me up and settle me. And it did just that because, although she was pissed, the rhythm of her breathing was my internal metronome. She let me hug her, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be. I wanted this hug to be our reset. I needed it to make things make sense again, because it was our thing.

We hugged. We held hands. We kissed. We cuddled.

I’d never had any relationship that was this...intimate, this affectionate, without being sexual. Had never known it was something that I would be even down with, let alone come to look forward to. Even just describing it aloud sounded wild if you didn’t know the context. When Jucee and I first started kicking it, I thought she was tryna get at me because she was always touching me in some way. It was Trisha who told me that physical touch might be Jucee’s love language and suggested that I ask her about it instead of making assumptions. She was right.

I went from looking forward to it to needing it.

Like right now.

With Jucee in my arms, I pressed a kiss to her cheek and then to her neck because I couldn’t help myself. I had gone so long without being able to touch her that I had taken it overboard last night, and yet...I still couldn’t fucking help myself.

She didn’t make a sound, but I felt the way her breath stuttered in her chest, noticed the strain in her neck as she fought not to tilt her head to the side, the way she swallowed down whatever noise in her throat that my touch incited. The hug lasted all of ten seconds before she cleared her throat and stepped out of my embrace. Losing her warmth was like stepping out of the sun and into a walk-in freezer. It was a shock to my senses in a way that I couldn’t verbalize, and I was torn between giving her space to think and pulling her right back into my arms. It was my comfort versus her comfort, and though I could be called selfish by many, putting Jucee first had never been an issue until now. My main source of restraint came from that thick vein of hurt that she was trying so hard to mask beneath her anger. I heard them both loud and clear. “I repeat,” she gritted, her arms folded her across her chest to show me she meant business, “what, the, fuck? We spend the whole night fucking and you just dip without so much as a text message? That’s how we treat each other now? It’s gotta be me, ’cause I know damn well that’s not how you treat them women you run through—not the way they stay tryna spin the block. That’s what sex with you gets me?”

Shit.

She wasn’t pulling no punches with me this morning, and because I knew I’d fucked up, I had to eat every blow. I ran my hands down my face, pulling in a deep breath as I did so. As I released it, I stepped over to her car and leaned against the driver’s side door.

Dropping my head back against the car, I stared up at the canopy of trees. She was in my peripheral, but I couldn’t look her dead on while I said the shit on my mind. It was bad enough that I’d initiated last night. “I woke up this morning, looked over at you, and I panicked.”

She gasped. Just a single, sharp inhalation that managed to convey quite a bit.

“You regret it.”

The words were so soft they might’ve wanted to be a whisper when they grew up. Three little words that slid from her lips with unfettered conviction and quickly struck a chord inside of me. Pure, uncut bullshit that had me immediately twisting my head to face her. The only thing I regretted was the fact that I caused the hurt she was so poorly hiding.

“Hell no! Seeing you lay there, in my bed, where you’d been a million times, fucked with me. It was the same as always and also something I’d never experienced in my life. You were naked and sexy as fuck, looking and smelling delicious, and snoring like you always do and I’d wanted to spread you open and go again.” Closing my eyes, I shook my head at my admission. “And that’s when I realized how far gone I was. I’d forgotten who you were, and I had to reel that shit in.”