Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
AZARA
“I kissed him.”
I did rather more than that, but saying I’d nearly had sex with the man I could barely tolerate just a few months ago didn’t quite slip off the tongue as easily.
Nakia’s dark brows shot up, her words faltering into a stunned silence. She’d been going on about the latest issue of The Gilded Truth where it had come to the author’s attention that the beloved Prince Anthony, the heir apparent to the British throne and who’d just gotten engaged to his long-term girlfriend, had kept a secret bank account to funnel hush money to his mistress who was currently with child.
The repetitive mention of the scandalous secret affair combined with the fact that I’d spent the past week replaying the images on a loop since I didn’t have work to distract me made it impossible to keep a lid on my own Pandora’s box. I’d been holding onto it for a little over two weeks now and if I went any second longer, I would burst.
“You did what?” Nakia said, blinking repeatedly as if she couldn’t believe me.
“I kissed the hot doctor,” I repeated, louder this time and using the nickname they’d given Michael so I wouldn’t have to say it again.
Her eyes widened even further and shame crept up my neck. My hands came up to cover my face, mortified by my confession.
The sound of something clattering on the floor snapped our attention to where it came from. Hazel stood in the middle of the modern kitchen with her mouth hung open. She’d been making brownies and her whisk was now laying on the floor, the front of her silk pajama top covered in the chocolate batter.
All three of us were over at Nakia’s place for our monthly get-together. Hazel had just come back from Belize, where she had been for the last three weeks on her honeymoon, so we’d opted to stay in instead of our usual night out. She’d insisted on making it a themed-night, hence the over the top sleeper sets we were each wearing.
“When was this?” she said, abandoning her task and rushing to take a seat in the vacant velvet high chair next to me.
“Two weeks ago,” I grumbled into my palms.
She slapped my arm. “And you’re just telling us now ?”
“Oi,” I yelped, grabbing the spot where she’d struck me. “You didn’t have to hit me. And I am telling you now ,” I said, emphasizing the last word by mimicking her offended tone.
I could have texted them about it since we messaged each other almost daily in our group chat, but I’d deleted the thread each time. I’d even debated telling them at all, since I’d spent the last two weeks convincing myself that what happened between Michael and I didn’t mean anything.
That it was just a silly indiscretion, and come daylight, I’d come to my senses and realize it could— should —never happen again.
But why, even after successfully avoiding him as much as possible since that night, could I still remember it so vividly.
How naturally his lips moved against mine?
How my body ignited under his touch?
How his reverence made me crave more?
“We’ll talk about how blasphemous it is that you’ve kept this secret from us for so long later, but for now we need details,” Nakia said, cutting through my reverie.
“Yes, you traitor. Come on, spill it,” Hazel chimed in.
Brilliant. I was getting attacked from both sides.
I really didn’t want to dish out the particulars of my poor decision-making, but seeing as I was the one who’d brought it up, I knew if I didn’t give them a play by play, they’d never let me off the hook.
So, I let out a deep sigh and relayed what had happened that night, keeping the intimate bits to myself. Some things were better left unsaid. Admitting I’d kissed him was embarrassing enough as it was. Not because I hadn’t enjoyed it, but because it’d happened not only once, but twice.
And if my pager hadn’t gone off with an emergency, I can’t pretend that more wouldn't have happened.
“Oh, this is absolutely perfect,” Hazel said, clapping her hand excitedly.
“You mean this is my worst nightmare,” I retorted.
“No, this was meant to be,” she said, her face practically glowing.
Of course she would think that. Hazel believed in cosmic love and firmly believed that transcendental connections existed. I always found her outlook charming. Not so much when it was aimed at me.
I pinned her with a spare-me-from-your-woo-woo-nonsense look, as I scrambled for a rebuttal to squander her hopes. She just ignored me, her eyes flicking past me.
“You owe me,” Hazel boasted, her grin widening.
Nakia groaned beside me, and when I glanced over at her, she had a rueful expression on her face. “Does it really count if he kissed her first?”
Hazel shrugged. “Then you should’ve been more specific from the start.”
“Fine. I’ll wire you the money tonight,” Nakia replied with a dramatic sigh.
I sat there, watching the interaction with stunned disbelief, my gaze bouncing between the two of them. Until it clicked.
“Hold on, did you two bet against me?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly phrase it that way.” Nakia glanced at me with mock innocence while Hazel also chimed in at the same time.
“We totally did.”
I was on my feet a second later. “I can’t believe this,” I said, my eyes wide. “Aren’t best mates supposed to be on your side?”
“Wasn’t aware they were sides,” Hazel quipped, “And of course we are on yours, but even you can’t deny that this was bound to happen.”
“Which, as we’ve established, did happen,” Nakia added.
I scoffed and perched myself on the back edge of the sofa, folding my arms across my chest. I opened my mouth to counter her ridiculous notion, but no words came out.
Instead, I collapsed backward in a soft thud onto the cushions with a frustrated groan. “Great, the two people I trust the most, conspiring behind my back.”
I lay there upside down, arms flung wide to either side, legs dangling in the air as I stared at the cornice plaster ceiling that reminded me of the architecture back home.
I wonder how difficult it was to find someone to…
“Why are you lying upside down?” Hazel’s voice cut through my wandering thoughts, her tone full of amusement.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I muttered.
Alright, it was a bit dramatic but laying like this always seemed to help me think. That was how I did most of my studying when I was in school. When I was younger, I’d convinced myself the more blood flowed to my brain, the better it would absorb the information.
There was no scientific foundation to my theory, but it made sense to me. And hey, it worked. I’d been top of my class and had become a cardiothoracic surgeon.
Maybe it’d help with this too.
“If it makes you feel better, it was just a snog,” I heard Nakia offer. “What?” she added in a hushed tone and I’d bet Hazel was giving her a disapproving stare.
Oh, but it was far more than just a simple kiss.
The moment my lips met Michael’s, I knew I was in trouble. Over the last two weeks, I’d constructed a belief that the earlier incident wasn’t as good as I remembered because surely what transpired between us couldn’t have been that good.
What a lie?
I should be repulsed by the thought of him. He was the embodiment of everything I hated, so why did the mere thought of him send fire coursing through my veins.
Somehow, over the course of these past months and the compulsory time we’d had to spend together, the abhorrence had unexpectedly dulled.
God, what was wrong with me?
I could hear the sound of their footsteps approaching before they both lowered themselves to the ground, sitting on either side of me. Hazel’s delighted grin remained intact, clearly enjoying every second of this. Nakia, on the other hand, looked almost concerned, but I knew she was equally relishing this.
Nakia chuckled softly. “Never seen you so bothered about a man,” she remarked, leaning against the cushion to my right, resting her face against her fist.
“I am not bothered ,” I countered, but we all knew it was a blatant lie.
I’d never had boy problems before. I’d been too busy with studying and then it was clinical rotations and then it was residency. I had no time for anything else, let alone men. I’d never even given one more than a few hours of my attention because it was really all I had.
It had always been about getting a fix and scurrying away.
To me, men were a headache that I didn’t want to deal with.
And for years, it had worked perfectly for me.
Why did this one have to mess it all up?
Both gave me pointed looks and as much as I’d like to keep my head in the sand, and ignore whatever these wings flapping things that erupt in my stomach every time I merely thought about Michael, even I knew it was pointless.
I flipped over and planted my face into the plush fabric with a deep, exasperated groan. “What do I do?” I mumbled, my voice muffled by the cushion.
Nakia was the first to respond. “What do you want to do?”
I moved my head to the side just enough to peer up at her. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking the question, now would I?”
She shook her head at my attitude. “You’re overthinking this too much. It’s not like you have to marry the guy. You should just fuck him and get it over with.”
“ Nakia ,” I hissed as I sat up, sitting cross-legged. “Can you stop suggesting I sleep with the man.”
“What? I’m just saying. Don’t act like a prude. You’ve had sex before. Casual sex. Why should this be any different?”
She rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Hazel.
“If only she would have listened to me the last time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation”.
“You know I’m right here.”
“Stop baiting her, ” Hazel reprimanded her.
“Listen, I wouldn’t have quite put it like that, but whatever,” she said.
“You know when Eddy and I started, it was?—”
“We know,” Nakia and I groaned simultaneously.
If we didn’t interrupt her, she’d go off forever about her sex life with her now husband and we’d unfortunately heard about it one too many times.
“Well, excuse me for wanting to be helpful.” Hazel feigned offense, folding her arms against her chest, while Nakia shook her head.
“All we’re saying is, you kissed him. What’s crossing a few more bases?”
I might have done that already, but I wasn’t about to tell them. Fragments of that night flashed in my mind, but I hurriedly pushed them away. Although that didn’t stop the warmth creeping up my body at the memories of that night.
“Azara Ziani,” Nakia gasped, a knowing spark in her eyes.
Oh shit. So much for keeping that part to myself.
My millisecond hesitation sold me out and unfortunately for me, Nakia and I had been attached to the hip since birth. She practically knew me better than I knew myself.
Her mouth hung wide open before she said, “You didn’t just kiss him, did you?”
“What are you talking about?” Hazel asked, clueless as to what Nakia had figured out. Her gaze bounced back and forth between us for a moment.
She let out a loud gasp when she finally caught on, slapping my knee in the process. “You’ve been holding out on us! You had sex with the hot doctor. Please tell me it was good. Listen, I may be married, but I just know by the looks of him he?—”
“ Hazel .” Her tendency to ramble was adorable but I needed to stop her before she started describing fictitious events in great, explicit detail. “It was… more than kissing, but we didn't sleep together.”
“You’re telling me you showed up at your boss’s house—your hot boss’s house—in the middle of the night, the same boss you spent months butting heads with and didn’t have sex?”
I sighed, the same disappointment I’d felt that night right before I’d knocked some sense into myself rearing its head again. “Work called right before anything more happened.”
“You idiot. You were still on-call?”
Before I could respond, Hazel hushed Nakia with a flick of her hand. “Oh, stop it. Let’s focus on the important part. Was it good?
It was better than that.
I’d had partners before, but I always needed to do extra work to get myself there. With Michael, I barely could walk straight afterward and I hadn’t lifted a finger or had him inside me.
“Yeah,” I confessed quietly.
“ Really good?” They both asked.
“The best,” I said with a heavy sigh. “But it can’t happen again.”
“Why not?”
My feelings or whatever it was I felt toward Micahel were complicated. And complications weren’t something I welcomed in my life.
I already had enough as it was.
My father still wasn’t talking to me and avoiding me whenever I came over to see Zayd, I had to complete my training by next month and let’s not forget that I was still competing against Michael for the role of a lifetime.
Any sort of intertwinement would only bring more complications into my life.
No matter how freeing that night had been. It had been the first time in weeks that my brain hadn’t been running miles per hour.
“You’re overthinking it too much,” Nakia said and Hazel nodded in agreement.
“Understatement of the century.”
Nakia’s brow dipped as she examined me for a moment before she got to her feet. “Come on, get up,” she ordered, motioning for me to stand.
I looked at her confused. “What?”
She pushed her thousand dollar coffee table forward, creating an empty space in front of where I sat on the sofa. “You heard me, get up.” She swiftly moved to grab her phone from the kitchen island before returning to the living room and placing her phone on the table behind her.
A few seconds later, the first few notes of a song I knew all too well started playing around the living room.
“Not this again,” I grumbled as Hazel got to her feet next to my other annoying friend.
Nakia rolled her eyes. “I know you love it. Now, stop pretending you don’t and get your arse up,” she ordered, clapping her hands to the rhythm of the music as she moved from side to side.
Our parents were from the same village in Morocco and this song was played at every wedding or family function we attended. We often were bored with how long they were, but whenever this song came up, we ran to the floor and danced with the other women.
As for Hazel, she’d been around us long enough, she was an honorary Moroccan.
“You’re really gonna make me do this?” I cocked my head to the side as I watched my friends move their shoulders up and down and leaning closer as if to taunt me.
Nakia just nodded in response as the song neared the hook.
With a groan, I reluctantly got up.
“Come on, let me see those shoulders,” Nakia prompted, bumping hers into mine as the notes of the Reggada ? 1 song sped faster and faster. When I indulged her with a small move, she added, “That’s it, that’s more like it. Dance it out.”
I shook my head and let out a laugh as we danced around her living room. Even Shrif, her grumpy cat, who rarely came out when people were over, made an appearance and threaded through our legs as we laughed and swayed our hearts out.
And for a moment, I forgot all about Michael and everything else that had been plaguing my mind for the last several months. But as soon as we plopped down on the couch, sweaty from all the dancing we’d just done, everything came crashing back.
I might have been able to avoid Michael until now, but I couldn’t do that forever. I was scheduled to return to work on Monday and was already dreading it.
That night had clearly been a mistake. I should let it be just that, forget and move on.
Then why was I thinking about when the next time would be?
1 ? Moroccan Arab musical genre and dance