Page 60 of Tenderfoot

“You’re cool with her, I’m cool with her,” he murmured.

“Oh my God, they’re so cute, now I’m pissed they took so long to get it together,” Shanti bitched.

Jessie was watching me closely. “Are you good?”

“I’m upset someone broke my mushroom.”

Neither Jessie nor Shanti said anything.

“The one on my coffee table,” I explained.

“Yeah, babe, we know what you’re talking about,” Jessie replied, her eyes going up to Javi, back to me, and she raised her brows.

“Well, just to repeat what I said last night, I didn’t think it was a date,” I said, and shrugged. “But it turns out it was.”

Javi chuckled.

It sounded way nice.

Shanti grinned.

Jessie blew out a huge breath.

“Can I make Harlow breakfast now?” Javi asked in a tone that meant, Get out, I’m making Harlow breakfast now.

“All right, hermanito,” Jessie returned and looked at me. “We’ll talk at work.”

“Really, we’re okay,” I assured her.

“But we’ll talk at work,” she echoed.

She was right, I had things to say, to her and Raye.

I nodded.

Then I remembered something I’d lost track of in the course of me losing my mushroom.

So I asked, “How did things go with Kev last night?”

I wasn’t fond of the expressions on their faces before Shanti shared, “He didn’t show. And he’s not answering his phone or replying to texts.”

“Eric or Cap know that shit?” Javi queried.

Jessie, unusually, shuffled her feet uncomfortably, and this was unusual because Jess wasn’t often uncomfortable. She was a woman who had it going on.

Javi didn’t know her as well as me, but he still knew her enough to know that wasn’t right, which was why he asked, “What’s the deal?”

When Jessie didn’t say anything, Shanti did.

“After you all left, we had a kind of…situation last night.”

I tensed. “What kind of situation?”

“Eric showed and he laid down the law,” Jessie shared.

I felt my mouth open in shock.

Eric was totally a mellow guy.

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