Page 51 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“Not on my damn brother, Jucee! You know how I feel about that!”

It was my turn to shrug. “Nah, I know how you felt. Today it seemed like you didn’t care, and if you don’t care then again I ask, what’s the problem?”

“You already know what the problem is. I shouldn’t have to say it every time.”

Oh, she really had me fucked up today. “Wait, so you want me to consider your feelings when you can’t even respect me enough to look me in my face and speak? Girl, be for real.”

Canting her head to the side, she nodded. “Let’s talk about speaking for a minute. Did you really have to help Mercedes with something tonight? Or was that just an excuse?”

Rolling my eyes, I walked over to the digital display on the wall and scrolled through the playlists for the right one. I had a couple of favorites when it came to giving private dances, but I wasn’t in the right mindset for either of those. Annoyance ran through my veins and I needed something that was going to calm me down so that I could make it through this hour with Poppa and the next two hours of work. I chose Mercedes’s mix and turned back to Poppa. After what happened on the floor, I barely wanted to look at her. My feelings were still smarting from the sting of her dismissal, and now my hackles were up thanks to this surprise attack. Tryna keep a cool head while dealing with the myriad of emotions she’d invoked in me over the past few days was giving me whiplash and a hell of a headache.

Hands on my hips, try as I might, I couldn’t help the heavy dose of attitude in my voice when I asked, “Does it really matter?”

Her brows furrowed. “If you felt like you had to lie to me about something so basic, then hell yeah, it matters!”

Blowing a breath out through my nose, I counted to ten.

“Listen, I get that, but things have been weird between us lately and I didn’t know how else to get out of going to your house to watch a movie tonight.”

If I hadn’t been staring right at her, I would’ve missed the way her eyes widened with surprise before she shuttered her expression from me. Fuck. This is exactly what I had been trying to avoid, which was why I’d lied in the first place. She wasn’t open to hearing anything that pointed out the flawed way we’d handled this. I got that she wanted things back to the way they were, but trying to do that was exhausting the hell out of me.

“Poppa, now isn’t the time for this. I’m at work and I’m supposed to be dancing.”

“Well, shit,” she drawled, a hard edge to her voice. “If this is the only place I can get the truth out of you, then maybe this is the right time.”

I reeled back as if she’d slapped me. All of the sacrifices I’d been making to make sure she was good and that’s how she wanted to play it? I was in hell, grappling between wanting so much more from her and accepting that she wouldn’t ever be able to give me that, and she couldn’t even give me the space to process this change in our relationship!? I was working on her terms, tiptoeing on eggshells to keep from spooking her, living a half-life with the “something more” that she’d asked for, and she couldn’t even understand that I needed a breather. Absolutely not.

Shaking my head, I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Nah, not while I’m on the clock. You know I leave the personal shit at the door when I’m at Sanity.”

Her answering shrug was nonchalant as fuck. “You’re still getting paid—what difference does it make?”

“It’s not about the money,” I shouted, fully incensed by her callous words. Did she think she owned my time because she’d paid for a dance? Had she forgotten that I could walk out of this room whenever I felt like it and there wasn’t shit she could do to stop me? How could she ever fix her mouth to say some shit like that to me? “It’s about the principle!”

“Oh, you wanna talk about principle now? How about we start when you lied to me today? Huh? How about that?”

I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. We didn’t do this. We didn’t fight—never had a reason to. This wasn’t us.

But...we also didn’t lie to each other, and kiss in the mouth, and we definitely didn’t fuck. So maybe this was us when we stepped outside of the bounds of our friendship. And maybe Poppa was right, and we did ruin our friendship to an extent.

That thought hurt me more than fighting with Poppa did, and it effectively took all of the wind out of my sails. Shoulders sinking, I licked my lips and offered an olive branch.

“Do you want the dance?”

She stared at me, not saying anything for a minute. What killed me was that I couldn’t decipher what she was thinking. It was such a foreign concept for her to actively hide herself from me, and it was an even further point of proof at how far removed we’d gone from our norm in such a short amount of time. Was she coming to the same conclusion as me? Did she realize that maybe we’d crossed a line that we couldn’t uncross, no matter how much we—she—tried to pretend we didn’t? I had no idea. And that fucked with me.

So, when she nodded and sat in the center of the wall of couches, I was genuinely relieved. I hadn’t been sure what path she would choose, but I was going to make the best of it. I could salvage this moment and hopefully we could have an honest conversation with all of our cards laid out on the table in a day or so.

Ciara’s “Body Party” shuffled on, and I rolled my shoulders back in an attempt to regain my focus. I was at work and I was here to dance. So that’s what I would do.

Swaying from side to side, I let the music wash over me, getting me in the zone. Private dances were about selling a fantasy. The point was to transport the other person into another reality—one where they could actually have everything that was on display in front of them. To make them feel deserving.

In that moment, in the Tranquility room with Poppa, the fantasy I was selling was one where everything was exactly as it had been for the three years that we’d known each other. One where we’d never slept together and there was no sexual tension keeping things from being normal. Where we were friends and friends only. It was a fantasy because we’d never be there again. No matter the outcome of that future conversation that we needed to have, Poppa & Jucee of old was no more.

So right now, I was going to pretend.

And it was fine. I danced around the room, first with my back to Poppa, trying to lose myself in the music and forget the bullshit plaguing me, and then facing her, appreciating that the shadows in the room fell perfectly across her face when she was seated so that I couldn’t see her eyes and read them on purpose. I danced toward her as the music transitioned into “Tell Me” by Usher, climbing over her similar to how I’d done to Cody just half an hour earlier, but having more room to move as I wanted. With my hands on the back of the couch behind her using it as an anchor, I rolled against her, throwing my head back and running a hand along my skin from my neck to my navel. Sliding down her body, I pushed her knees apart and massaged her thighs as I danced in front of her.