Page 17 of Keeping Busy
“You came back exactly the way I would expect a goody-two-shoes to come back.”
“Goody-two-shoes? Is that what you think of me?”
“More so before I saw you in that dress last night.” His head was down, reading and responding to text messages.
“That dress really made an impression on you, huh?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I hated that fucking dress?”
“Sure didn’t look like that to me.” I couldn’t help commenting.
“Yo, that dress looked good as hell on you...and that was my main problem with it.”
“And I thought your main problem last night was keeping your hands to yourself.”
His head flew up, and our eyes locked. He cocked his head to the side. “Are you trying to get something started, Mecca? I mean, you’re sitting right next to me on this baby ass couch, clearly you don’t realize how little effort it would take for me to pull you into my lap if you want this work. You wanna see how much of a problem I was having keeping my hands to myself last night?”
I blinked rapidly, surprised that he took things there and by how his words put butterflies in my stomach and made my vagina grow warm. Of course I wanted that work, all those muscles pressed up against me? Hell yeah. Legs in the air, mouth wide open humming his name? Yes, please. But I wasn’t here for that. Couldn’t be here for that. Busy and I were doing business. We needed to keep things on the level.
I licked my lips. “You can keep that work to yourself...for now, Busy.”
He grinned at me, showing me the dimples that I found so attractive. “For now?”
The tension that had amassed in just those few seconds between him asking me if I wanted “this work” and me responding, seemed to dissipate.
I grinned back at him. “I said what I said.”
He watched me for a few seconds, his eyes sweeping over my face and landing on my eyes. Then he searched them, like he was trying to decipher some secret code that was lost inside my irises.
I broke the eye contact first. “I went on Instagram today. Saw the pictures from the benefit.”
“Oh yeah?” He turned his attention back to his phone.
“Yeah, I kinda had to after Clarke called me this morning cursing me out about them. She had a lot of questions.”
“I got four words for you: Don’t. Read. The. Comments.”
“Yeah, Clarke read some of them to me. The ones she read weren’t too bad. I’m sure she skipped the ones where I was getting dragged.”
“Fuck those people.” He said dismissively waving his imaginary haters away with his hand. “They don’t know you, or me and if I see some shit like that, I’m airing motherfuckers all the way out. How are you feeling about Joya’s thing? You feeling like we can pull this off in front of your cousins?”
“Yeah, we just need to make sure that we stay leveled up.” I sighed heavily.
“What’s up? Why’re you sighing like that?”
“We need to talk to my parents, Busy. I can’t mislead them. I can’t have them thinking that I’m in some serious relationship with you, when it’s just an arrangement. A ruse. And knowing my mother, the social media junkie, she’s been on Instagram today, and has already seen the pictures.” I paused. “Here’s the thing, my father enjoys being difficult with the guys we bring home. I’m not just talking about me and British, either. I mean, all of my cousins, all of the Watson girls and the girls on his side of the family. He doesn’t like the guys any of us introduce him to, and he won’t like you.
Don’t waste your time trying to win him over. Don’t compliment me, or try to be charming or anything like that. He shuts that kind of thing down, rudely. Just be polite and treat me with respect in his presence. You need to appeal to my mother. Compliment her, but not too much, that will only piss off my dad. Oh, and we need to pick up flowers. You need to bring my mother flowers.”
“That’s a lot of damn rules, Pudding. When do we need to see them? Will they be at Joya’s thing?”
“Nah, that’s just for the cousins. We have to ride out to my parents’ house...in Winnetka.”
“And where does Joya stay?”
“Lincoln Park.”
“From downtown, to the suburbs, back to the city.”
