“To come help me do what?”
“Help you get the bra off.”
I throw a hand on my hip. “Look, me and him not doing nothing together, if that’s what you tryna get out of me with these little questions and shi—”
“Chill...” She chuckles, walking back to me and holding a dark blue dress against my body.
“You probably should do that. You the one asking all these ridiculous ass questions.”
She laughs harder, pulling back. “I just asked if you wanted him to come help you. I know how uncomfortable it can be to have a stranger see your body, so I—”
“So your solution is to suggest for him to come?”
“I don’t swim in those waters, Lourdes.”
“I told you, it’sPhat,and swim in what waters?”
She snorts out a tiny laugh and swipes a tongue across her glossy bottom lip. “I like pussy. Ace is just the homie.”
“Oh,” I squeak.
My brain and face are never in sync, so my eyes get big at her suggestive comments about my body and my mouth is about to run before she stops it.
“You’re good. I wouldn’t disrespect Ace like that.” Her eyelids dip as Ace pushes into the room with a thick-bottomed glass and a blunt that he hands to her.
I wait on him to gasp and run out like Bryson did once when he stayed over and burst into my room by mistake, but Ace just strolls up to us.
I keep hearing all the shit he’s talked since I been with him—putting Twitter on ice, fancy galas, and the way he called Planet Acemine. All of it makes me cover my stomach and shift under his gaze.
Cree lights up and the nastiness I thought I saw in her eyes reveals itself for what it really is—concentration. She’s trying to turn me into that romantic Kibbe shit she talked about.
A cloud of smoke billows through her nostrils as she nods her head to the bass thumping throughout the condo.
“Tu bebe es tímida.” She nods at Ace.
“Sí, estoy trabajando en ellao,” he replies in that swaggy Barcelonan-nanny taught accent I’ve replayed a hundred times in my head since that day at the bookstore.
I’ve probably came to it just as many times.
Cree curls her hand around mine, peeling it from my skin and running her finger across the ugly welts Ace always induces. “That looks dumb painful.”
“They don’t hurt that much,” I mutter.
Ace slides onto the floor behind us with his legs cocked open and his back against the foot of the bed. “You sure about that?”
I feel like a skittish animal at the zoo. I curse all of God’s light I admired because it’s showing Ace all my imperfect parts—my soft stomach, thighs, ass, and those hives he’s in charge of.
“She need another fit, Cree,” he says, staring at my reflection in the mirror. “¿Cuánto por otra hora?”
“Depends...” Cree sighs, deep in thought. “What’s the occasion?”
Our eyes meet in the mirror, and he picks the cup up, smiling over the rim. “Her first date.”
“Nowwhat are you talking about?” I roll my eyes. “Just because I never been to a gala before don’t mean I never been on a date.”
Offense is my automatic response to everything that makes me uncomfortable. I’m sweaty, itchy and now I think he’s insinuating this gala is my first date. Itis,but I can’t admit it in front of Cree, no matter how much of a lesbian she claims to be.
“You still haven’t looked at your phone, huh?”
