Page 58 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“You heard me.”

She shook her head and sat back in her chair. “Explain it to me one mo’ ’gin, because I know damn well you didn’t just say you’re about to go to that girl’s family and break up with them one-by-one. I just know that’s not what I heard!”

Sucking my teeth, I tossed a balled-up napkin at her. “I ain’t say that shit, and you know it.”

Mercedes tossed her hand into the air, her shoulders inches away from her ears. “That’s basically what came out of your mouth.”

“Not even close.”

“Eh.” She made a so-so motion with her hand and then cleared her throat before pressing a hand to the base of her throat. “I respect them too much to ghost them, so I’ll just let them know in person that I won’t be in their lives anymore.”

A shriek burst from my lips before I busted out laughing. “Mercedes! Why the hell did you use that sex line, phone operator voice to imitate me?!”

“Uh, duh. You have that nineties Toni Braxton, Grace Jones thing going on. Don’t play dumb.” Her eyes rolled to the ceiling as if she was annoyed with me, her clear exasperation cracking me up.

Bringing her warm brown eyes back to me, she pursed her lips. “I know what you’re doing and it won’t work. I’m not so easily distracted.”

My laughter petering off, I sighed and reached for my drink. I took a long sip of the hot coffee, taking the time to get my thoughts together because I knew that Mercedes wasn’t going to let this go without breaking down each and every word I’d said. When I’d stalled for as long as I could, I placed the glass back beside my half-consumed plate of fish and grits and shook my head.

“I just don’t want to offend anyone.”

I could feel my friend’s gaze on me but I refused to look at her. Mercedes had a way of looking into my soul when she wanted to find answers, and I wasn’t in the mood to be dissected.

“You’re doing a lot of emotional labor for a bigot.”

Shocked, my eyes flew up to meet hers. She was waiting for me, her arms folded on the table, her face the picture of concern. Groaning, I leaned forward, propping my elbows on the table as I buried my face in my palms.

“In their defense, they probably don’t even know that she’s like that.”

Somehow, she heard my mumbled words perfectly fine because she responded, “Well, are you going to tell them?”

Immediately I shook my head. “Absolutely not. That’s not my place.”

“And why not?!”

Her shout startled me, and I sat up to face her. The concern had been replaced with anger.

“Why isn’t it your place? You were just moaning about how you have to let them down easily because they love you and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. Saying that you love them so much and hate to lose them, but you won’t even tell them the real reason you’re dipping out on them.” Pinning me with a confused look, she continued. “You love them but you’re gonna lie to them with a straight face? That’s love?”

Sensing that she was only getting warmed up, I held up a hand, trying to stop her while she was ahead. “That’s not—”

She powered on as if I hadn’t said a word. “If you don’t say something, who will? And, furthermore—”

“Furthermore?” I sat back, impressed. She was pulling out the dissertation-level jargon on me.

“Furthermore,” she emphasized, rolling her eyes—likely at the teasing lilt in my voice—before continuing, “your decision to keep silent is a direct contradiction to the characteristics you constantly claim them to have—”

“How is—”

“You can’t say the Thomases are good people, inclusive, and accepting, but be afraid to continue engaging with them simply because you want to avoid Cyn.”

“That’s not it at all. That’s a very base-level understanding of what I’m telling you. They can be good people and I not deal with them anymore. Besides, how good can they be if biphobia came out of their ranks?”

The look on Mercedes’s face was skeptical but I waved her off.

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine. And honestly, there’s only one person I expect to get any real pushback, but it won’t be too bad. Just you watch.” Mercedes had met the Thomas clan a couple of times at barbecues, but she didn’t know them a fraction as well as I did. It was best to let them each know individually that I was leaving out. If I tried to tell them all at once, they were liable to team up and overwhelm me with their protests. One thing I didn’t want to deal with was too many people trying to convince me why I was making a terrible decision according to them.

I had a soft spot for the Thomases because of what they represented to me. They were the family unit that I hadn’t had in so long, and losing them was going to be hard—I couldn’t afford to be influenced.