Chapter 5
I hoped Diamond would hurry the fuck up. We were sitting on some random brownstone steps, waiting. The darker it got the colder it got.
“Smoke this. You need to calm down and warm up.”
I stared at the vape pen Ayo had seemingly pulled out of nowhere.
“What is it?”
“Purple Urkle.”
“You still a weedhead.” I laughed, set my bottle down, and took it from her.
She used to spend all her money on weed in college. She’d smoke before she ate. It was the one bad thing the good girl did.
I inhaled. The vapor hit my lungs smooth and sweet, warmth spreading through my chest. It had been a minute since I’d smoked.
“Did you really stop working for your father after I left?” she asked out of nowhere.
“I stopped before you left. You just didn’t believe me. I never wanted that life.”
“You’d lied before. When you didn’t tell me... when you went missing for days.”
“So had you. You said you would stay.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that. She looked down at her hands, slowly turning the Hennessy bottle between them.
“I kept up with you. I knew about the IT stuff before you told me earlier,” she admitted after a moment.
“Did you?”
“Yes. I still have the magazine from when your company made the news a few years back.” Her gaze moved over my head. “The locs were better. You looked hood debonair in those pictures.”
I laughed. “Hood debonair?”
“You know what I mean.” She smiled. “Expensive suits. Gold chains and fangs. Locs. Like a king who could still catch a body if somebody looked at him wrong.”
“You studied those pictures pretty hard.”
“For professional reasons.”
“Being a lawyer requires you to study me?”
“Yes.” She took the vape back from me. “We investigate criminals.”
I laughed. “You missed me and got nosy.”
She inhaled slowly, holding my gaze while the light at the tip glowed.
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“I didn’t keep up with you,” I said.
She sucked her teeth. “You’re being mean now.”
“Not necessarily. It just hurt too much at first. I worked through it, though.”
Headlights cut through the dark before she could respond. A black SUV pulled up to the curb.
Diamond leaned out the window, her eyes scanning us.
"Y'all look like you've been through it," she said, her eyes trailing down to the bottles sitting beside us, a quarter gone from each. "Oh, you drunker than before?"
"Something like that, and no," I replied.
"Get in. I’m hungry."
Ayo stood first, brushing off her dress. I followed, grabbing the bottles from the steps.
The back seat of the SUV was warm, smelling like Diamond's expensive perfume and the faint hint of weed. She was in the front passenger seat and twisted around to look at us.
"So," she said, her voice dripping with curiosity. "Y'all catch up good?"
"Good enough," I said.
Ayo just smiled, saying nothing.
Diamond's eyes flicked between us.
"Uh-huh. I'ma need details later." She turned back to the driver. "Let's go."
The weed and whiskey had Ayo loose in the seat, her head tilted against the window, watching the streetlights blur past. I could see her thinking, chewing on her bottom lip the same way she used to in college when she was about to say something she knew would annoy me.
"Y'all still treating y'all relationship like a friendly fuck?" she asked, her voice slightly slurred.
Diamond whipped her head around, eyebrows raised. "Here she go."
"I'm just asking." Ayo shrugged, but there was an edge beneath the casualness. "It's been years. Y'all still doing that? Or did you finally figure out that ain't how normal friends act?"
I leaned back in the seat, letting out a slow breath. "We ain't done that in months. She's married now. Her and Malik closed their shit. They official."
Ayo hummed, something unreadable in her voice. "Interesting. So she settled down? No more free pussy for you."
"Damn, Ayo," Diamond cut in. "You really gonna do this right now?"
"I'm just trying to understand from before." Ayo turned to look at me. "Because when we were together, she was always around. Always in your face. Always had some reason to call you at two in the morning. And I asked about it. Remember? And you said y'all were just friends.”
I remembered. The arguments. The way she'd get quiet and tight-lipped whenever Diamond's name came up.
"I told you then. We weren't fucking when me and you were together. She was just a friend.”
"Friends who fuck each other when they're bored?"
"Ayo—" I warned.
"I'm not judging." She held up her hands. "I'm really not. I just think it's funny that you didn’t tell me before we got together."
Diamond laughed from the front. "You sounding real bitter.”
Ayo's jaw tightened. "I'm not bitter. I'm curious. That's different."
"Is it, though?" Diamond turned around fully, facing us.
"Because it sounds like you're still holding onto some shit that happened nearly a decade ago.
You left him, remember? You packed your bags and walked out.
It ain't have shit to do with me. You don't get to be mad about what he did after you were gone or even before you were there. The nigga was faithful to you. That’s all that matters. "
"I'm not mad."
"You're definitely mad."
Ayo looked at me, searching my face for something. I didn't know what.
"I used to be mad. It bothered me that you could be with me and still have her in your back pocket.”
I stared at her. The streetlights flashed across her face, catching the gloss in her eyes.
"You never told me that," I said.
"Because it didn't matter. You weren’t going to stop being friends with her.”
The car was quiet. Even Diamond had nothing to say.
Because I wasn’t. Diamond was my day one.
Known her since I was seven and her moms started working for my pops as a cleaner.
She was as important to me as Indigo—maybe more, if I was being real.
I could still remember her at fifteen, standing between me and my daddy’s cane, staring that nigga down and daring him to come through her to get to me.
What we had was marrow deep; it just wasn’t romantic. Even Malik understood that.
She nodded. "I know," she said softly. "Don’t get me wrong. It’s not something that bothers me now. Shit I've been through and done... I just wanted to get that off my chest.”
"That's fair."
She looked at me, surprised. "You're not gonna argue?"
"Ain't nothing to argue about. You feel how you feel. I ain't gonna tell you you're wrong for feeling it."
She stared at me, and something in her expression shifted. Softened.
"You've changed," she said.
"I've been through some shit."
We sat in silence as the car pulled up to a building with light spilling out of the windows. Music filtered through the walls—Afrobeats, something with a heavy bassline.
Diamond turned back to us. I could tell she had an attitude, but she tried to keep her voice light. "We're here. Y'all done with the therapy session, or you need another lap around the block?"
I looked at her profile.
"Now you mad?"
"I ain't mad."
Ayo laughed. "You're definitely mad."
"Fuck both of y'all." She said pushing open the door and getting out.