HANNA
“So, how’s your life? Fill me in.”
I take a sip of my coffee and look at my best friend across the table. With it being Thursday morning, she and I are back at our normal coffee shop. She’s continuing with her annual tradition of wearing a different piece of holiday clothing like she does every year during the month of December. Today, it’s a black sweater vest lined with hand-woven Christmas trees with lights on them.
“Mm, it’s a lot of the same.” I shrug as nonchalantly as I can muster. I have yet to tell her about how Miles slept at my place a few nights earlier or that I fired him as my client.
“Santa doesn’t bring toys to children who lie,” she says with enough attitude for the entire coffee shop to feel. She purses her lips out at me and curls one of her brows. “I can see it in your eyes, something is going on with you.”
“It’s nothing. Everything is very muchthe same.” I shake my head at her but hold my cup in front of my mouth so she can’t see my smirk.
After crawling into bed with me, Miles and I slept the restof the night uninterrupted. I had patients early the next morning so, much to my dismay, I couldn’t stay in bed all day with him like I wanted. After waking up with him next to me, I simply watched as he breathed at a steady pace. Up and down. In and out. He finally opened his eyes when I reached a finger across and began to trace his features with it. Smiling, he stretched an arm out and pulled me flush into his body. I still remember how he smells several days later.
“So then why did you ask to meet me back at our normal time? I thought we had to meet earlier because you have to see the sexy fireman at this time?”
“I’m not seeing him as a patient anymore.” I hold my breath after I answer her question and wait.
“Why?” She leans into the word. “Did he quit or something? Men are so dumb like that, thinking they can figure their shit out on their own. You know, if that was true, God would never had made women—” She freezes mid-rant and stares at me blankly.
“You said you aren’t seeing himas a patientanymore?” she clarifies. Her eyes grow and I can see her connecting the dots in her mind.
“That is what I said.” The smirk I’ve been fighting is starting to win. I wrap my lips around my teeth and stifle a laugh.
“So are you seeing this sex god of a man in different ways? Naked, I hope?” she exclaims loudly. So loudly that the older woman sitting at the table next to us looks up from her magazine and glances at us.
“Rae, keep your voice down,” I hush my friend. I can already feel my cheeks burning red.
“Well, I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s been a minute since you–you know,” she says, narrowing her eyes on me.
I scoff. “Oh, like it hasn’t been awhilefor you too.”
“Actually, it hasn’t,” she replies quickly, giving me a confident look. My jaw nearly detaches from my face.
“What!”
This has us both trying to stifle our howls. There aren’t enough people chatting to muffle our conversation and the playlist every coffee shop seems to use is doing nothing to drone us out either. Anyone paying close enough attention would easily hear two grown women acting like teenagers talking about sex over coffee.
“Let’s just say my future husband knows how to treat a woman right.” She smiles.
“Oh mygosh,” I gush. “I’m so happy for you. So Leon is working out then?”
I know they have gone out a few times because of the texts we exchanged but I didn’t realize they’d slept together.
“Leon is working, doing, blessing, and succeeding,” she sings. I laugh when she brings her hands in front of her in a prayer position and lifts them towards the sky.
“I knew going out with him was a good idea.”
“Sweetie,Iknew going out with him was a good idea. I just hate the fact that my mother willlove him. I’ve done a pretty good job over the last thirty-six years of going against everything she’s wanted for me. And here I am rolling up with a man she would have designed for me herself if I’d let her.”
“So what did she say when you told her about him?” I ask, bracing myself for the words of Rae’s mother. Rae is outspoken and confident in every sense of the words. But her mom? Look out.
“Oh she doesn’t know he exists,” she chirps before hastily bringing her coffee to her lips. My mouth slowly falls open again.
“Youlittle chicken,” I say slowly, gawking at my friend. “You haven’t told her about him? But you met him back in October when we went to the bar. You’ve been seeing him all this time and you haven’t told her about him?”
“She doesn’t need to know about him until I have a ring on my finger.Thenshe can know about him. But enough about me, I wanna know about you and the sexy fireman.” She waves a hand at me, indicating that we’re moving on in our conversation.
“Would you stop calling him that? His name is Miles.”
