Page 137 of Curvy Girl Summer

“But then you talked to Ahmad about him, and all of a sudden, you stopped being interested?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. Ahmad may have pointed the flaw out, but Lennox talked himself out of things with me all on his own. But in other news, I have a date on Friday.”

“So, you don’t think there’s more between you and Ahmad?”

“It doesn’t matter one way or another.” I explained his wedding band ruse and that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. “So, no matter what type of chemistry we have, all we can ever be is friends.”

“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

I frowned at her calling me out like that. “Both.”

“Just checking,” she clarified, laughing lightly. “So there’s no Lennox?”

“Nope.”

“And no Ahmad?”

“No.”

There was a moment of silence before she replied, “Yeah, I’m not buying it.”

“It’s the truth!”

“Okay, yeah. I believe you,” she said in a dry, sarcastic tone that made it clear she, in fact, did not believe me. “So anyway, you said there’s some sort of date? With who?”

“His name is Ty. He’s cute—he’s thirty-five. And he owns his own trucking company.”

“Are you going to ask him to be your date for Saturday?”

“I know he’s free on Saturday, but it depends on how everything goes. We planned our date last week and we were supposed to meet at Onyx tomorrow, but that was before everything got weird with Ahmad. So, I’m going to have to change it to another place.”

“Why are you changing locations?”

I let my head rest against the back of the chair. “Because I don’t want to run into Ahmad.”

“I thought there wasn’t anything between you and Ahmad.”

“There’s not.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Ahmad and I have been having weird energy lately.”

“Because you still have feelings for him, or because he has feelings for you, or…?”

Her sentence trailed off, and the hint of a question hung in the air.

I lifted my head and cleared my throat. “I don’t know. It’s weird and not the energy that should be around my date.”

“But if you’re friends and just friends, it makes the most sense to go to Onyx.”

I considered what she said. “Yeah, I get that. But I just don’t want to deal with—”

“You’re going to meet a strange man who drives long distances for a living somewhere random?” Jazmyn screeched. “Okay, cool, I guess I’ll just pick out my outfit for the news when they come to interview me about you being a missing person.”

“Come on, Jazz,” I snickered.

“I’m serious! I’ll be sure to let the reporters know that you had an alternative place you could’ve gone safely. But instead, you decided to meet Ty—that’s his name, right? Ty?”

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