“Spill it,sis, and I want all the details,” she said as soon as the door closed behind us.
“Are you?—”
“Wait. Before I sit down, have y’all been fucking on this bench?”
She was referring to the bench in front of my bed, and we had used it numerous times for our dirty deeds by this point.
“Umm, you might want to sit on the floor.”
“Skye! Are you for real?”
The mixture of shock and disgust on her face was hilarious, as if she and Kilo didn’t christen every room and surface when they moved into their new home.
“I am. Sit on the ottoman. We haven’t christened that yet.”
She shook her head as she eased onto the ottoman. I sat on the bench she’d decided to steer clear of.
“I’m listening.”
Before I could give her those details, I had to be honest about the feelings I’d had for Knox for some time and had kept to myself for months.
“Knox has occupied real estate in my mind for months. In other words, I haven’t stopped thinking about him since our date,” I confessed, and it felt good to come clean to my best friend.
“Girl, what? If you say y’all been messing around for a year, I’m really gon’ be questioning our friendship, and not on some joke shit.”
“I told you it started a few weeks ago when he came to give me a consultation for the patio.”
She eyed me suspiciously, as if she were connecting the dots.
“That’s about when you started acting funny and avoiding me. I didn’t see you for at least four days after his first visit.”
“You want to know why?”
I grabbed my phone and went to the pictures I’d taken of my neck and chest. I gave her my phone, and her eyes widened almost immediately.
“Damn, sis. He definitely left his mark. I can’t imagine how much makeup you had to use to cover all that.”
She gave me back my phone.
“It was ridiculous, and I’ve requested he not do that again.”
“If he’s anything like his brother, good luck. Sis, I got questions. Why didn’t you tell me you liked him?”
“Umm, because I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman. What do I look like, liking somebody?”
She frowned. “I didn’t know you had to stop liking people at a certain age, but go off.”
“You know what I mean. Saying it out loud . . .”
“Forced you to deal with your feelings?”
She hit the nail on the head.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“What made you finally decide to woman up and stop living in denial?”
“First of all, just because I didn’t tell you doesn’t mean I was in denial.”