Page 24 of Silver Linings
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You?” Kena is shocked. He’s never known me to back down. I tend to be singularly focused when I set my sights on someone. It’s been the same song and dance since college—we have fun for the night, and then I’m gone before they think to ask for my number. Easy. Satisfactory. No messy feelings involved.
“I don’t think he’s interested.”
“Really?” A large, bright smile stretches wide across Kena’s ebony face, and suspicious glee lights up his eyes.
I slap his arm. “Don’t look so happy about it, asshole!”
“I feel for you.” I cast a scowl his way. “I do! That man is…” He whistles and fans himself. “He’s probably the hottest man I’ve ever seen you go after. I mean, his tattooed arms alone?—”
You should see his abs.
“Do you have a point?”
“I just think the pining is good for you. It’ll build character.” He pats my arm.
“I amnotpining.”
“Tell that to your face. You’re pouting.”
“Well, you can wipe the smug look off your face. He’s not interested. I’ve all but climbed into his lap, and he’s not taking the bait. I think he might be hung up on someone back home.” I think about the look on his face when I started to pry.
Makena looks contemplative. After over twenty years of friendship, I can always count on him to help me see a situation clearly. After my dad died and my mom left me with Nan, I learned leaning on people would only end in heartbreak. Nan was all I had until Kena’s family moved into the building. As kids, we ran around the building together, had park play dates, and went to the same school. As teenagers, we ravaged bodegas and used our fake I.D.s to get into bars. As college students, we were still ravaging bodegas after a night spent going to those same bars, onlylegallynow. He wore me down overyearsofpersistence, so I let him in, and it became a party of three. Him, Nan, and me. That was all I needed. All I wanted.
“Why don’t you try being his friend first?”
I slow blink. That’s certainly a novel idea. “Friends…” I repeat slowly, as if he asked me to explain quantum physics to him.
He places his hands on my shoulders and crouches down a little to meet me at eye level. “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but if heishung up on someone else, you don’t want to get in the middle of that mess. Maybe he just needs friends right now. Invite him to hang out with us soon and get to know him—asfriends. If something is going to happen between you two, it will.”
“You have to stop watching those ’trust the universe’ TikToks. They’re rotting your brain and making you use logic.”
“One of us has to be the voice of reason, and we both know it won’t be you.”
I groan. “I hate how fair that is.” I take a deep breath and push it back out. “Okay, you’re right. I’m going to let it go.”
He grabs my free hand in his and holds it up between our chests, affectionate to a fault as he stares in my eyes. “You are SilverfuckingJames, you don’t chase after men. You arealwaysthe prize.”
I stare into the deep espresso eyes of my best friend in the entire world, one of the only people on this planet who knows me beyond surface level niceties. I nod so he knows I understand what he’s trying to tell me. It’s what he’s been trying to tell me for two decades. I’m worth sticking around for, I’m worth loving. But hearing and understanding are two different things.
So, I deflect.
“You have got to tell me what hand lotion you’re using.”
Half an hour later, I’m getting out of a taxi with a billion bags of groceries because I overbought while at the store like I always do and couldn’t lug it all home on my own. Thanking the driver, I hoist a few bags on each shoulder and then grab the rest in my hands, making my way into the building. I go to grab one of the doors when Tony runs over, looking flustered as he shoulders the door open to help me get through with my bags. And then I hear it. The raised voices.
“Keep your gremlin in line!”
“Don’t call her that,” a voice growls back.
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”
Mrs. Evans and Simon are yelling back and forth at each other in the lobby while the rest of us watch on in horror.
“What’s going on?” I ask Tony as I set my groceries down.
“Mrs. Evans is on a tirade because she claims she can hear Isla running around their apartment late at night, and it’s disturbing her, since she’s in the unit below them.”
