Both Shanti’s and Chioma’s faces slackened, eyes widening in a way that almost made me laugh.
Shanti uttered a “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
Chioma shook her head and grinned knowingly. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew you had a secret wild vibe about you!”
The only person who didn’t seem amused by my impromptu confession was Aminah. My best friend glared at me. “What are you doing?” She whipped back to a puzzled-looking Chioma and Shanti. “No, she didn’t. She’s chatting shit.” She lowered her voice and muttered in my ear, “Don’t let this Cheetah Girls moment get to you.”
In the past three weeks I’d felt myself getting looser, more unleashed, trusting myself to trust and for some reason I looked at Chioma and Shanti and felt I could trust them. If they were apparently able to venture into friendship after both dating Malakai, if they could say what they thought of me to my face without any real animosity （I kind of liked Shanti’s bite） then I presumed there was something in both of them that I could trust. I was good with the risk.
I squeezed Aminah’s arm. “It’s fine, MiMi. It’s really not that deep.” I ignored her incredulous look and turned back to Chioma and Shanti. “So that first kiss between Malakai and I? It was just a ploy. The guy I was seeing was bothering me that night and I couldn’t get him to leave me alone. Malakai noticed and I noticed Malakai noticing, and we kissed to get him off my back. It just happened. Things just kind of went from there. Turned out we actually got on, and one thing led to another.” Technically, none of this was a lie.
Shanti frowned, puzzle pieces visibly falling into formation in her mind’s eye. “Hold up. The only other guy you were seen with that night was—”
Chioma gasped, her bejewelled hand flying to her mouth, causing her multiple bangles to jangle. “ZACK KINGSFORD?”
Aminah hissed out an angry “Shhh” and glared at me. “You see now? Are you happy? This girl speaks in R&B interlude whispers and all of a sudden she is hollering that goat’s name in the quad!” She put a single lilac-painted finger to her temple and started rubbing in tiny circles. “Chioma, will you please keep your voice down, abeg!”
Chioma, still evidently flustered, managed to nod. “Right, my bad.” She gestured at a nearby bench and we all congregated on it, legs squished together. Aminah reluctantly followed suit, rolling her eyes and muttering something about how this was disrupting our workout routine as she squeezed in between me and the bench armrest.
Shanti sat forward, placed two hands together in prayer, and pointed them at me. “Aite. Okay. Break it down for us.”
My skin began to prickle as I told them about our nine-month fling and what had happened that night. It was clarifying to something ugly, something that made my stomach queasy.
Chioma shook her head, eyes widened in defiance. “Ew. His energy is dark.”
Shanti nodded grimly. “Babe, that sounds so shit.”
I swallowed as truth and realization began to unpick the discomfort I’d compressed. “It was kind of fucked.”
Shanti’s eyes were soft now. “It was fucked. Not your fault for not seeing it. It’s so easy with him. One second, you’re flirting and the next it’s something else you’re not sure of.”
Chioma rubbed my arm. “Right. He’s a dick, I mean, even without the whole debate thing he’s doing with the Whitewell Knights.” Her normally sweet, placid face grew hard. “I wanna figure out a hex for him. How does he even get away with this?”
“He’s rich, light-skinned, and looks like a Calvin Klein model,” Shanti said, procuring a handful of lollies from her pocket and sticking one into her mouth, before offering them to the rest of us.
Aminah nodded as she tugged the wrapper off a strawberry sphere. “Says ‘diverse people’ instead of ‘Black people.’ He never spoke to any of the Black boys in school. They made an effort to, as well. Did a Mandem 101 course the summer before uni with a couple of cousins and decided to do a rebrand that suited him.”
I smiled as I popped one of Shanti’s lollies in my mouth. “Did you know he once referred to himself as ‘perfectly blended’？”
The girls snorted. Shanti screeched, “Like a fucking smoothie?”
Aminah grinned. “Kind of perfect since his brain has no solidity.”
As the girls took turns in delightfully roasting Zack, my phone buzzed and I slipped it out the zipper of my gym leggings.