And now here she was, positively twirling through the front door.
“Honey, I’m home!” she sang. I shrugged off my blanket to go greet her and stopped in my tracks at the entryway. Nia looked . . . amazing. Like, “done up” amazing. Her curls glistened with mousse, and her makeup was especially done, complete with contour and red matte lipstick. She was twirling in a green vintage dress that billowed around her, looking for all the world like the poster child for the pretty fat girl performative femininity she was always railing against. It was not an outfit one wore to improv on a Tuesday.
“Okay, so I know you’ve got something to tell me, but first I have a confession,” Nia said.
I crossed my arms and looked her up and down.
“Clearly. Who’s the girl?”
At my invitation, Nia launched into a long description of her new sweetheart, a person named Shae, interspersed every few seconds with a declaration of how “cool” they were. I guided Nia to the couch and grasped her hand as she spoke, my chest seizing intermittently with quiet despair. The last time Nia had been this goo-goo-eyed over someone was with Ulo, and that was two years ago. My best friend had been falling in love and I’d been too deep in my books to notice.
“They’re a copywriter, like, full-time for a PR agency. But they also write poetry on the side.” Nia leaned forward and added, in a whisper like a secret, “They’ve let me read their work and oh my god. They’re just incredible. The things they can do with words . . . ugh! Girl!” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Makes me wonder what else that mouth do.”
“They sound great, Nia,” I said. “Where’d you guys meet? In improv?”
Nia bit her lip.
“Well, no. Um. Actually, we’re . . . uh . . . taking the class together.”
I blinked owlishly at her. Nia tucked her hair back behind an ear, as sheepish as I’d ever seen her.
“You mean the class you’ve been taking for two weeks?” I swatted her arm. Suddenly the getup made sense. “What. The. Hell?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I was going to tell you, but you’ve been busy. And also. I may have broken a cardinal friendship rule. I did it for the pussy, so I know you’ll forgive me. So tell me you forgive me first?”
I laughed. Nia took my hands out of my lap and held them, looking up at me with sad puppy eyes until I stopped.
“No way, you crazy girl. What did you do?”
“Well. You know at the Beyoncé concert”—my pulse quickened, somehow already knowing where this was headed—“me and Camila started chatting. And somehow it came up that I liked women, and so Camila, bless her heart, did that thing. You know, the ‘I know a lesbian’ thing . . . and I tried to brush her off. But then she showed me a picture.”
Nia held up her phone. On the screen was a person just as cool as Nia had described. They had a clean undercut, with thick silver-beaded dreads piled into a bun at the top of their head. Their skin was a smooth, even slate, the undertones so cool that they looked more blue-black than brown. They had an angular face, all high cheekbones and sharp eyes; even in the pictures where they were smiling, they looked fierce. I could see why Nia kept calling them cool. They reminded me of a Final Fantasy character.
Behind the phone, Nia was beside herself.
“Look how hot they are!”
“They are hot,” I agreed. “So . . . Camila set up a date?”
Nia squeezed my hands in hers.
“Well . . . No. Camila didn’t.”
Just as I had feared.
“No.” I shook my head. “No way. Nuh-uh. No.”
“They’re really good friends, okay, and Ricky offered to introduce us, and it was just gonna be a one-off—” She paused, noticing how I had not stopped shaking my head. “Okay, Angie, I get that getting Ricky to set me up wasn’t cool or whatever, but shouldn’t you be happier for me?”
I threw my hands up in resignation.
“I chewed Ricky out today, Nia,” I said. “He tried to say hi to me and I tore him up.”
Nia dropped her hands into her lap, her expression shifting quickly from annoyance to delight.
“You. Did. Not. Right there in the hospital?” When I nodded, she squealed and kicked her legs. “Angie. Oh my god, Angie, why?”
“I don’t know why,” I said. All the righteous indignation I’d felt this morning had since dried up, leaving only uncertainty and shame. Why had I yelled at him? Between Diamond and Shae . . . none of Ricky’s close friends seemed to be guys. Maybe Ricky just started all his friendships with dogged pursuit and lingering gazes. Maybe . . . I’d only seen romance and tension because I’d wanted to.