Page 48 of So This Is Love

“No!” I say, laughing. “I’m serious, we really do just talk. We spend a lot of time together at his place, watching tv or movies.”

I leave out the part about how much my body involuntarily reacts to his presence and how talking with him, even for a short while, is the highlight of my day. Because none of that matters.

We’re. Just. Friends.

“Mhmmm,” Cass says, disbelief in her tone.

“It’s true. You were there for everything that happened with Devin, I’m not ready to go through something like that again. Especially someone that’s as well known as Bry-, I mean Sonny, is.”

Cass notices my slip up, but doesn’t acknowledge it.

“You’re right, I was there for Devin,” Cass says. “But what happened with Devin isn’t going to happen again. You can’t give up on finding love just because of one ain’t shit nigga.”

“Love? Nobody said anything about love.”

“Girl, he sold out our entire inventory and sent you flowers unprompted on release day. He may not be in love now, but he damn sure could be if you gave him a chance.”

“Just because the chance worked for you doesn’t mean it will for me,” I argue back. “We’re just friends.”

“For now,” Cass says, her tone serious as if it’s already a foregone conclusion that Bryce and I will end up together.

“Anyway,” Cass says, shifting the conversation. “I wanted to ask you if you thought that he would be interested in doing any promotional work withLovely Day?”

I chew on my bottom lip. “I don’t know. Are you sure that’s something you’d want to do?”

“If he truly loves the product as much as he said that he did it would be great to do some actual promotional work with him. It’s one thing to seek someone out to try a product and give a review but for them to authentically like it on their own is even better.”

“That’s true,” I reply, hesitantly.

“We could do a photoshoot and have some small videos as well. We haven’t done one of those in forever and you’re so good at them.”

Cass gets a far away look in her eyes as she talks and I can tell she’s planning and organizing in her head at a million miles a minute. Cass loves to plan and once she gets started she’s all in.

My phone buzzes and I reach into my purse to grab it. I shake my head at the fucking coincidence when I see the name that is on the screen.

“It’s him isn’t it,” Cass says with a little squeal. “I’ll give you a minute to talk. I’m going to go tell Rose to get started on the paperwork.”

“Your ears were burning huh?” I say in reference to him calling while I was talking about him.

“You were talking about me?” he asks, a grin coming to his face. “All good things I hope.”

“Something like that. We just finished looking at the new warehouse location

“Y’all found one you like? That’s amazing.”

“Yeah it’s pretty great and has everything we were looking for.”

“Now tell me why you were talking about me,” Bryce says.

“We were talking and you just came up,” I wave my hand in the air to signify the insignificance of it.

“Bullshit,” he says, calling my bluff.

I sigh dramatically.

“Well, since someone decided to post aboutLovely Day,” I say with a fake stern look. “It left people with questions."

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think about how it would draw attention from the people you work with.”

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