“Not a thing.”
“Totally a thing. As someone from a blended Christian and Muslim home, I am qualified to say it. It’s in the Koran and the Bible.”
I shrugged. “Okay, well. Pretty sure that’s double blasphemous.”
Aminah smiled. “No offense but you’re from a monoreligious background and therefore less cultured than I am. Anyway, how did he do that?”
I held still and sipped my drink as I watched Malakai immediately get distracted by one of his boys coming to greet him, hand claps and back slaps exchanged, palms sliding across each other and punctuated by a click, a universal mandem handshake, all smiling, white teeth glinting in the violet and pink lights. He was quickly joined by another one of his boys. He nodded, playfully squaring up, not missing a beat in the exclusive dance of Cool Boy Social Interactions. You couldn’t be taught the moves; it wasn’t something you learned. It was something that lived in you and was brought forth. He’d only been here about a month and somehow he was alpha of a crew. He was making a statement: he was comfortable, here. He was playing with me.
Malakai was slick, so silken in his movements, that when his gaze snatched in my direction again, it was so casual it took me a moment to realize that it was weird that he was looking at me like he was—the light in his eyes bounding in its deep dark setting, lips curved dangerously. It was a continuation of a conversation.
He mouthed “Hi” through lips that curled into something like a hook that curved into the bottom of my belly and yanked a sharp, searing feeling through it, right up into my chest. The corner of my mouth flicked up despite myself. This was slightly alarming. Was I smiling back? Why was I smiling? How did I stop?
I tore my gaze away from him, the feeling in my belly subsiding to a mere warm tingle, hoping that the break would force my smile to dissolve. When I glanced back again, he was still looking at me. His smile beamed something beautiful, something lethal, as white as the light you probably see when you die. This was apt, because I was sure I was going to. I couldn’t believe he’d caught me doing a double glance at him, like I was interested or something equally heinous. My face felt hot. But then he looked back to his friends, jumping back into conversation with them, like the silent exchange between us had happened in a suspended vacuum that existed outside of reality. Now he was back in his reality, where beautiful girls ran up to him and he smiled easily, politely. It wasn’t the same smile he gave me, though. It wasn’t the R&B smile.
“Um, ma’am, you just eye-fucked.” My best friend’s voice brought me around. Sound seemed to rush back in—rap, laughter, jeering, screeching, and the cheering for a dance battle going on in the corner all mingling with the heartbeat pounding in my ears.
I cleared my throat and shifted my feet on chunky-heeled ankle boots. “What?!”
Aminah’s shiny plum lips were spread apart in glee. “And it was hot too. The two of you, with your seductivitis eyes. Oozing lust.”
“First of all, gross. Secondly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just happened to be looking in his direction and he just happened to be looking in mine. What you just saw is literally just how eyes work. It’s biology.”
Aminah’s long, dark, mascaraed lashes narrowed into pincers as she shot me an incredulous look. “Oh? Sorry, Ma. Biology. Is it also biology that you’re blushing right now? I know it’s dark and I know you’re a chocolate honey but I can tell when you’re blushing. It’s one of my superpowers. It happens so rarely. Last time was when we watched that new Michael B. Jordan action movie, where he was running around, tiddies out. I could feel the heat just, like, radiating off you. Made me sweat out my edges. . . . Tell me, Keeks, do you want Malakai to help you sweat out your edges?”
I swallowed my snort. “I’m putting you in a time-out.”
Aminah made a sudden scoff of disgust, which doubled as a warning alert as to who was approaching me. I smiled through gritted teeth as Zack stopped in front of me. He was looking at me through heady hazel eyes, bottom lip tucked into his teeth in a way that would have been sexy if I didn’t know it came from an assiduous desire to be sexy, a precalculated equation, tried and true. He was wearing a pale blue shirt with a tiny man playing polo embroidered on it, his pungent cologne swilling through the air.
Zack stood back, silently allowing his gaze to scan my form up and down and up again in slow strokes. He wanted me to know what he was doing, biting his lip like that, looking at how my body poured into a black bandeau crop top and black midi-skirt, the perkiness of my ass kicked up a little by my boots. I calmly watched him perform his thirst. Finally, he dragged his eyes back to mine, shook his head slowly, and hit me with the pièce de résistance. “So you really just came here to murder me tonight.”