Honey and Spice(37)
“I definitely heard a toot there.”
“It was more like a beep.”
Malakai’s eyes flashed. “You know, dating me would launder your rep too.”
“Sure. If they think I’m with you it justifies the kiss. It’s great PR for both of us. The show can be a special episode we do every couple of weeks. People can write in, ask questions, we can debate and your presence will hopefully pull in the straight male demographic. Plus Dr. Miller said she wants me to step outside my comfort zone, and how better to do that than to work with someone I’m fundamentally opposed to.”
“Aw, shucks.”
I smiled and Malakai shook his head. “Why don’t you date, again? It kind of doesn’t make sense. You’re fi—cute. You’re smart and you have a reasonably tolerable personality when you’re not slandering an innocent young Black man.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but there was too much and it was too dense, too heavy to haul out even if I wanted to. I pulled out the easiest response. “I don’t want to give myself to someone who doesn’t know what to do with me. I . . . don’t want to lose myself.”
Malakai was staring at me like he had a million more questions. The question marks were hot, piercing, and singed my skin, so I broke his gaze and looked ahead at Aminah and Kofi, hands brushing against each other’s tentatively, as they walked side by side, playing with the promise of what might be.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I added, “I think romance can be great in the right context, but it’s so rarely the right context.”
Malakai nodded. “I hear that.” He said it in a way that felt like he really did hear that.
We were nearing the east side of the park now, my sense of smell acting like a compass—spiced scents held in the breeze, curry and patties and fried chicken.
“Okay, so what’s the deadline on all of this?” Malakai asked.
“How long do you think shooting the film will take?”
“About eight weeks?”
“Great. So maybe we could break up by the AfroWinter Ball in December? My deadline is in January, so that works well for me too.”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “And this is what you need me to do for you to agree to work on my film? It’s nonnegotiable?”
“Nonnegotiable,” I confirmed.
“If we do this, you know you have to socialize, right? I’m a friendly guy.”
“I noticed.”
His smile was wide. “I’m talking parties, events . . . you have to chill with the masses in order for us to be believable. You gotta come out of your tower, Rapunzel. And not just for FreakyFridayz. You ready for that?”
Nope. “Obviously.”
“Well then. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your braids, girl.”
I rolled my eyes.
Malakai grinned in self-satisfaction. “Man. This is gonna be fun.”
Chapter 10
You have 9 missed calls from BIG MISTAKE.
BIG MISTAKE: You moved mad on Friday. You know that? (read)
BIG MISTAKE: Kiki you know I got love for you still. Lets stop being silly. You can still be my queen. (read)
BIG MISTAKE: You know what? Fuck you and fuck him. You ain’t that fine to be moving like this. (read)
BIG MISTAKE: I know you miss this . . . (click to save image)
BIG MISTAKE Has Been Blocked.
I shuddered and immediately flipped my phone over so my screen was lying flat on the library desk, exposing my faux-marble phone case. It was irritating that Zack was intruding upon my place of peace, Whitewell Library. It was a listed building and the oldest on the campus; ornate and Gothic, with dramatic high ceilings and looming, yawning atelier windows, which caught and refracted seraphic beams of light. It was my favorite place in Whitewell, both theatrical and practical, a place of windows and universes compacted onto pages.
Reading Zack’s texts here almost felt sacrilegious. Since everything that had happened on Friday I’d forgotten about him. He seemed so irrelevant to what had manifested from our interaction. Zack was a nonentity, a nonfactor, and the blurry phallic graphic he’d just sent me only compounded that.
I took a deep breath, opened my laptop, and whirred it alive. I had work to do. My . . . delicate relationship with Malakai could blow my project up. We needed a concrete plan.
I picked up my phone and texted the number he’d given me on the Saturday we agreed to work together.
Keeks: Hey. We need to have a meeting to figure out logistics, schedules and terms. Let me know when you’re free.
There. Brief. Polite, not overly friendly, and enough full stops to make known that I was all about the business. Just as I pressed send, a flyer showed up in front of my phone. I looked up to see Adwoa Baker, events coordinator for Blackwell, face grim, holding it out. I blinked at it, refocusing.
Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter? Which is it?
A debate between Whitewell ACS and Whitewell Knights
I snatched the flyer from her. Adwoa was an ally in the Blackwell cabinet, the rest of it being made up of hand-picked members of Zack’s immediate clique. Adwoa was a politics and journalism student who I shared an international relations module with; she lent the cabinet some semblance of competence and was one of the few people I spoke to who wasn’t Aminah. She was five foot two, with a tolerance for bullshit that matched her petite frame, sported a small bubble gum pink ’fro and a constellation of cartilage piercings. She was also my sparring partner in seminars and was a free agent in relation to cliques.