2. Two Truths and a Lie
“Shit, you burn hotter than the skillet you just threw me on,” I reply. Naomi is sharp-tongued, intelligent, unbothered, and lethal with one-liners.
“Well, if you weren’t crawling in here like regret in a T-shirt, fresh off the walk of shame on a Sunday morning.”
Naomi doesn’t miss a thing. She’s got eyes that can sniff out guilt before you’re convicted.
Late twenties, deep brown skin, shoulder-length braids, and a laugh you hear through walls.
The first person I met in Atlanta and still my best friend—a freelance writer and editor by trade and full-time bullshit detector by birthright.
“You got someone in there still?” she asks, angling her head toward my half-open door.
I step in and nudge it shut with my foot. “No. He left.”
Naomi checks her watch with a theatrical sigh, meaning she’s about to deliver another line. “And it’s not even noon. That’s a record for you?”
“I need to shower and clean up,” I say, closing the door and turning the lock like it might shut out more than neighbors.
“Uh-huh. Well, get your tragic ass cleaned up and dressed,” Naomi shouts through the wooden door. “We’re getting lunch at two o’clock. The usual spot.”
The usual spot is a diner over on Myrtle, where Mateo works in the mornings. Naomi likes the corner booth. I like that no one asks how your night went unless you’re bleeding.
“I’ll meet you there,” I shout back. “Let me rinse off the evidence of my poor decisions.”
She chuckles, deep and sharp. “I’ll bring holy water. In case you miss a spot.”
~
By the time I walk in, Naomi is already sitting at the one table that doesn’t wobble.
She’s mid-rant about a manuscript she’s editing—some sad suburban memoir full of “we almost divorced, but then we bought a boat” nonsense.
Her iced tea sweats on the table beside a page full of underlined sentences and passive-aggressive edits.
Mateo walks over just as his shift ends, pulling his apron off like he’s shedding a costume.
“Y’all don’t wait for nobody, huh?”
Mateo Cruz has the kind of body you get from working two jobs and skipping the gym—solid, average, nothing flashy.
Still, he wears it like he doesn’t owe anyone an apology.
He’s got a bartender’s smirk that never bothers to become a smile and eyes that track people like he’s figuring out where they’re most likely to tilt.
Mateo and I hooked up once, but it didn’t work—too much deflection on my end and too much honesty on his, perhaps. We’re better like this: part friends, mirror, and commentary.
“Sit down, pretty boy,” Naomi says to Mateo, sipping her tea. “Danny here is about to confess something.”
My stomach drops when she says this. For a split second, I think she knows.
Somehow, through walls or instinct or whatever sixth sense Naomi walks around with, she saw me freeze on that sidewalk or spotted me duck into the café’s shadow like a coward.
She knows who Kevin is and that he’s in Atlanta now.
Naomi knows I saw him and that I am not okay.
But then I catch the direction of her comment, toward my apartment door and Rick’s exit. She means him—last night’s mistake, not this morning’s surprise.
The panic drains as fast as it came, leaving something colder behind. Guilt, maybe. Relief’s ugly twin .
“I’m not confessing anything,” I say, wiping the condensation ring from her glass off the table with my napkin.
Naomi lifts her cup like she’s toasting a lie. “Mm-hmm. You walked in like someone just pulled your file from the archives.”
Mateo leans in, chin in hand. “This is about a guy?”
“What guy?” I ask too fast.
“See?” Naomi says. “There it is.”
I could keep dodging. Make a joke. Pretend it’s about Rick and call it a day. But the lie’s already in my throat, half-swallowed and sour. What’s the point of having friends if I keep spinning stories for an audience that already sees through the curtain?
Besides, saying it out loud might make it real. And real might be what I want.
A sigh escapes as I stare into my water like it might tell me what I’m actually feeling. “Fine,” I say quietly. “I saw someone today. From before.”
“From Bayview?” Mateo asks.
I nod once.
“Old boyfriend?” Naomi prods.
“Old… friend,” I say, knowing it’s not entirely true—not in the way they’re hearing it.
Naomi tilts her head. “Uh-huh. One of those ‘friends’ you don’t mention that creep outta your apartment in the middle of the night with their dignity half-buttoned? Like the one this morning?”
Naomi’s not wrong. I glance up. “No,” I reply.
Mateo arches a brow. “So? What’d he say? ”
“I didn’t talk to him.”
Naomi’s eyebrows lift. “You mean to tell me you had a trick last night, showed him out, and then ‘ran into’ another ‘friend’ and screwed him, too? Cause boy, I’mma gonna tell you, I heard you two banging last night. That was no ‘old friend.’ Sounded like somebody you left your mark on.”
“You saw a friend from Bayview but didn’t say anything to him? Why not?” Mateo asks, staying focused.
“He was with someone.”
“Someone serious?” Mateo asks casually as if the answer doesn’t matter. “Like a date serious, or like a boyfriend serious?”
“They looked… close,” I answer.
Naomi leans in again. “So what’s the problem if he’s just an old friend from Bayview? Why didn’t you say hi to him?”
“It’s… complicated,” I say, not fully understanding why I didn’t say hi.
“Was this the guy in Bayview you told me about, right?” Mateo asks.
The nod comes before I can stop it, like I’ve seen a ghost—only it’s the ghost of bad decisions past.
Mateo and Naomi exchange glances before she asks, “So, how did it feel to see him?”
I try to be neutral. “Strange. Familiar. Like a scene from a dream I forgot I had.”
Naomi’s voice stays gentle, but there's a knowingness in it. “Dreams don’t walk into diners with boyfriends unless the universe is stirring your pot on purpose. ”
Mateo shakes his head. “You sure it’s not just nostalgia? Sometimes, we rewrite what hurt into something that almost worked.”
I don’t answer. They didn’t know what happened.
Naomi taps her nails against her glass. “You can’t live in the past, chasing who you used to be.”
I exhale slowly. “It’s not that serious. I’m just curious.”
She gives me a look like she’s seen too many people mistake the match for the fire. “That’s what folks say right before they burn the whole damn house down.”
Mateo studies me. “So, you’re going to try to track him down?”
I shrug. “I haven’t decided.”
That’s a lie. My heart made up its mind the moment I saw Kevin—it’s my courage that hasn’t caught up.
I tell myself I haven’t decided, but the truth is quieter than that—more patient.
It waits in the places I don’t look: in the silence, in the water, in the spaces I keep trying to clean.
I can lie to Naomi. I can even lie to myself.
But eventually, the part of me that still remembers how it felt with Kevin will find a way to surface.