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I rolled my eyes at her bad poetry despite knowing that she’d been right about the control part. Malakai getting under my skin so easily was freaking me out. He was essentially a strangerand he’d also proved himself a Fuckboi by saying he’d used the kiss to prove a point. So why was I letting him get to me in a way that had me acting out in public? That wasn’tme.I was never at the center of campus drama, yet within a few days of meeting him I’d drawn attention that I couldn’t control. It wasn’t directly hisfaultbut there was something unbridled in the energy between us.
Aminah nudged me. “Have you seen what they’re saying about you on the socials?”
I groaned again. Thankfully I’d had the presence of mind to put my phone on flight mode before I went to bed. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Aminah, I get it. They think I’m a back-stabbing snake. Can we talk damage control on Monday, please? I cannot deal with it right now.”
My best friend slinked her phone from a silk pocket as her fingers tapped and slid across, deftly conjuring information up. “Um, no. I mean last night it wasdefinitelythat, don’t get me wrong, but look at this.”
She pried my hand from my eyes and forced me to look at her phone screen. I peeked at it tentatively, immediately faced with a GIF of me pouring the drink on Malakai’s lap. The caption above it read: “Maybe Kiki snapped! I have to stan!”
Aminah’s grin was wide as she nodded excitedly. “Uh-huh. Look at theBrown Sugarsocials—peoplelove it.When they saw you kissing,they thought you snaked them, but when they saw youturnon him, they saw it as vengeance. The tide turned pretty quickly after that. The girls love it. I bet Simi islivid.It backfired beautifully. People are saying that Malakai got a taste of his own medicine and you were the perfect person to dose it.”
I frowned, trying to process this information when my gaze snagged on another picture. It was a picture of Malakai and I sitting together, my legs crossed, head tilted, with a smirk on my face. Malakai was looking at me intently, smile sharp and slanting. Our knees were inches apart. It was blurry but I saw it clear as crystal,feltit clear as crystal, the warm heat in my belly returning at the memory of how light and easy our conversation had been. I forced it to cool. It was all bullshit. Part of his game, and it was my fault for being duped.
My eyes dropped to the caption and I read it out loud: “Two can play that game.” I raised an eyebrow and smiled reluctantly. “Huh.”
Aminah smirked. “Hot, right? The sexual tension in this picture is mad. Look at the way your eyes are lit up.”
I held up a hand. “Okay. First, it was the flash; second, with love, you are so annoying; third—”
“Has Killa Keeks got an idea?”
“How do you know?”
Aminah grinned at the look on my face. “Last time you got this look we joined the French society so we could get a subsidized trip to Paris, because you found out it was on the Beyoncé tour.”
The plan worked, too.Yeah,we’d missed a team-building dinner with fellow students called things like Penelope Arbuthnot and Barclay Harington, but somehow we got over it. It was a win-win situation. We got to go see Beyoncé, while also having the opportunity to reenact the “Apeshit” video in front of the Louvre.
“Okay, so . . .” I turned to face my best friend properly, swivelling myself on the bed and crossing my legs under me—she did the same,listening intently, expertly filing her nails without looking, her face warm with interest.
“I was just thinking that all thisattentionwould be a cool thing to harness. Remember I told you that the summer program Dr. Miller wants to put me up for requires me to build or grow a media platform? I could use this to generate more ratings somehow.”
“You mean... like you mentioned the other night? The thing I encouraged but you shot down?”
I smiled at her pointed brow. “Not exactly that. I mean that was going to be a debate, a battle of the sexes thing. We need a hook, astory.I’ve been thinking about how popular Simi’s blog is and it’s because people love a narrative, and they alsolovelove. Or its idea, anyway. Imagine how interesting people would find it if I wasactuallydating Malakai. And that thing at FreakyFridayz was just... like a fight. What if I capitalized on that interest that surrounds new couples? Like, actually make our relationship the show? Feeding the gossip straight to them, instead of going through a third party likeThe TeaHouse.”
Aminah froze. “Stop. I’m getting chills.”
“Right?The only complication is that it’sMalakai.Not only can we not stand each other...”
“Is that true, though?”
“I definitely poured a drink on his crotch.”
“Okay, so, the fact that you poured it there and not on his head shows where your mind is at, like maybe you thought there was a fire there that you needed toextinguish.”
I stared at my best friend, bemused. “You are not taking another psychology class. I forbid it. Anyway, there’s no way he will agree to it.... Let’s move on. Wassup with you and Kof?”
Aminah immediately rose from my bed, adjusting her gown around herself primly. “I don’t know. Whatisup with me and Kof?”
“Oh. So that wasn’t you up there last night by the DJ booth being his hypewoman?”
“Hypewoman? Ew. I am hismuse. Also given that the music really determines how live the party is, all I was doing was making sure people were having a good time by bringing the best out of Kofi. It was an act of kindness. I’m basically Angelina Jolie. A devastatingly beautiful humanitarian.”
“Right.” I couldn’t really argue with her reasoning. Aminah Bakare was truly amazing. My sis was a mistress of marketing, a PR princess, a spin savant.
Aminah twitched a shoulder in petty triumph and flounced toward my door. “I’m giving you forty minutes to get ready, bitch. Aaron awaits and I have a line I wanna test on him: ‘Is that a pin machine in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’”
I laughed. “Poetry. I think I’m just gonna trace his tattoo slowly and go, ‘Did that hurt?’”
