I picked up another pillow and buried my face in it as I leaned back against my headboard. If Aminah was saying I’d been “extra” that meant I’d moved chaotically mad. I felt a tug on the pillow. Seconds later, Aminah managed to pry it from my hands, forcing me to look at her. She bashed me in the face with it.
“Oshey, Nollywood, can I finish? It was a little extra but it was exciting, Keeks. You lost control. I have never, ever known you to lose it like that. Even when you’re pissed off it’s, like, measured. This was different. I loved it. You let go and let that drink flow into Korede’s lap. It was kind of iconic.”
I rolled my eyes at her bad poetry despite knowing that she’d been right about the control part. Malakai getting under my skin so easily was freaking me out. He was essentially a stranger and he’d also proved himself a Fuckboi by saying he’d used the kiss to prove a point. So why was I letting him get to me in a way that had me acting out in public? That wasn’t me. I was never at the center of campus drama, yet within a few days of meeting him I’d drawn attention that I couldn’t control. It wasn’t directly his fault but there was something unbridled in the energy between us.
Aminah nudged me. “Have you seen what they’re saying about you on the socials?”
I groaned again. Thankfully I’d had the presence of mind to put my phone on flight mode before I went to bed. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Aminah, I get it. They think I’m a back-stabbing snake. Can we talk damage control on Monday, please? I cannot deal with it right now.”
My best friend slinked her phone from a silk pocket as her fingers tapped and slid across, deftly conjuring information up. “Um, no. I mean last night it was definitely that, don’t get me wrong, but look at this.”
She pried my hand from my eyes and forced me to look at her phone screen. I peeked at it tentatively, immediately faced with a GIF of me pouring the drink on Malakai’s lap. The caption above it read: “Maybe Kiki snapped! I have to stan!”
Aminah’s grin was wide as she nodded excitedly. “Uh-huh. Look at the Brown Sugar socials—people love it. When they saw you kissing, they thought you snaked them, but when they saw you turn on him, they saw it as vengeance. The tide turned pretty quickly after that. The girls love it. I bet Simi is livid. It backfired beautifully. People are saying that Malakai got a taste of his own medicine and you were the perfect person to dose it.”
I frowned, trying to process this information when my gaze snagged on another picture. It was a picture of Malakai and I sitting together, my legs crossed, head tilted, with a smirk on my face. Malakai was looking at me intently, smile sharp and slanting. Our knees were inches apart. It was blurry but I saw it clear as crystal, felt it clear as crystal, the warm heat in my belly returning at the memory of how light and easy our conversation had been. I forced it to cool. It was all bullshit. Part of his game, and it was my fault for being duped.
My eyes dropped to the caption and I read it out loud: “Two can play that game.” I raised an eyebrow and smiled reluctantly. “Huh.”
Aminah smirked. “Hot, right? The sexual tension in this picture is mad. Look at the way your eyes are lit up.”
I held up a hand. “Okay. First, it was the flash; second, with love, you are so annoying; third—”
“Has Killa Keeks got an idea?”
“How do you know?”
Aminah grinned at the look on my face. “Last time you got this look we joined the French society so we could get a subsidized trip to Paris, because you found out it was on the Beyoncé tour.”
The plan worked, too. Yeah, we’d missed a team-building dinner with fellow students called things like Penelope Arbuthnot and Barclay Harington, but somehow we got over it. It was a win-win situation. We got to go see Beyoncé, while also having the opportunity to reenact the “Apeshit” video in front of the Louvre.
“Okay, so . . .” I turned to face my best friend properly, swivelling myself on the bed and crossing my legs under me—she did the same, listening intently, expertly filing her nails without looking, her face warm with interest.
“I was just thinking that all this attention would be a cool thing to harness. Remember I told you that the summer program Dr. Miller wants to put me up for requires me to build or grow a media platform? I could use this to generate more ratings somehow.”
“You mean . . . like you mentioned the other night? The thing I encouraged but you shot down?”