“I guess you have to go,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly subdued. Goodbyes were always strange, but this one felt especially hard. “Well,” I added, “you have my number.”
I didn’t need to look at Ricky to know that he was doing that overly intense staring thing again.
“Yeah,” he said. He stepped closer, like some part of him resented the space between us. His gaze dropped rapidly to my mouth and then traveled back up to my eyes, and I tracked it, sucking in my bottom lip instinctively. He was going to kiss me. It would be a perfect kiss to close an almost perfect day, just awkward enough with my hands full of funnel cake that we would probably share a laugh afterward, and I would definitely fall for him then.
I couldn’t let that happen. I stepped away abruptly.
“Can I see you again?” Ricky said, undeterred.
I tilted my head, considering.
“Are you asking me out on a date, Ricardo?” I said teasingly, tracing the raised swirls of the Waterbender symbol on my pendant.
Suddenly, the air between us grew cold. I watched Ricky’s expression cycle between panic and chagrin before evening out to a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
I knew that look. Fucking hell. I thought about what I’d thought of him, when he’d first bent over to ask me if I was okay: No way is a guy who looks like that gonna be single—
“Um,” he said. “Sorry. No, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea . . .”
It was always me with the wrong idea. Always me somehow “reading into things”—
“But I’m already seeing someone.” He looked away, chewing at his inner cheek. “Sorry.”
Even expecting it, I felt like I’d been slapped.
Ricky had the nerve to look put upon, like I had done him a disservice by daring to define what we had in romantic terms. To think that I’d thought of him as sweet, childlike, even, when he was really just another fuckboy wasting my time. Old Angie would have given him what for. How would your girlfriend feel knowing that you spent all this time and money on some random chick? The fuck is wrong with you?
But I wasn’t Old Angie anymore. Being with Frederick had taught me restraint, and I knew that cussing out the boy who, only seconds ago, I had been prepared to make out with in the middle of an art fair on Halsted probably wouldn’t make me feel better. So, instead, I bestowed him with my most dazzling smile.
“On second thought,” I said cheerfully, “please lose my number.” I shoved the rest of the funnel cake into his hands.
“Angie,” Ricky started.
Too bad for him. I’d already heard every excuse in the book, and despite his creative talent, I doubted Ricky could come up with an original one. Turning on my heel, I found a space in the throng and practically dove through it, marching my way toward my car. Over the music, I could hear Ricky call after me again. The audacity.
Turning on my phone, I scrolled to Nia Johnson and hit “call.”
She picked up after one ring.
“About time, girl,” she said. “You coming home?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I said, gritting my teeth. “But I have to tell you about my day. Because you will not believe this shit.”
Four
“In conclusion, you are way more reliable than any man will ever be,” I said to Nia, stomping up the stairs to our shared apartment. On the other side of the door, I could hear Nia cackle.
“Yeah, well, I could have told you that,” she said. “I can hear you, hang up.”
I unlocked the door, toeing my shoes off and flinging them in the general direction of our shoe rack. The moment I crossed the threshold, I felt a warmth settle into my bones. Momma hated that I called my apartment in Hyde Park my home. “This house right here is your home,” she liked to say, but I hadn’t felt like myself in Naperville in a long time. Home was a cheap two-bedroom walk-up that I shared with my best and oldest friend and occasionally a foster kitten I would try to convince said friend to let me keep. Within its walls, I was no one’s eldest daughter and no one’s older sister and I didn’t have to prepare a tray. I could just be Angie Appiah, without edits.
“Honey, I’m home!” I shouted, throwing my hands into the air.
“Wifey!” Nia yelled from the kitchen. She hustled to the door to greet me, her T-shirt dusted with flour, and pulled me into her arms. I sank into her softness like a best friend–sized marshmallow.
“You’re like a puppy, you know that?” I said. “You always act like you’re scared I won’t come back.”