Page 13 of Honey and Spice

I stepped forward just as Malakai finally deigned to speak. He pushed off against the wall he had been leaning against, put a hand on each of the ladies’ arms, and spoke to them at a decibel level I couldn’t catch. I paused, stepped back, and watched both girls immediately relax, their breathing slowing as Malakai spoke to them with an affable, casual face, as if a minute before the whole ecosystem of the party hadn’t been put into jeopardy. The belligerent looks on both women’s faces faded as they listened to him, their frowns slackening as they began to nod grudgingly, throwing each other wary looks of respect. Eventually, their tight, petty faces loosened enough to release smiles and jocular eye rolls, the three of them engaging in ostensibly friendly conversation for a few more moments before Shanti and Chiomahuggedeach other, smiled at Malakai, and then migrated to their respective tribes, rejoining the main body of the party.

My jaw almost sagged. That had never happened before. Not in our ecosystem. Crossing two girls? Malakai should have got eaten alive. I had no idea how he had managed to finesse that situation.

“Um,” Aminah’s voice piped up over a new Wizkid song. “Whatdid I just witness? Did he justcalmBrandy and Monica down? After his very cute yansh was on the line?”

“Jeez, Aminah—”

Aminah cackled filthily. “What? It’s rightthere,Kiki, I have eyes. He hasbum. Nothing wrong with appreciation. Love the peng, hate the sinner—”

“Not a thing.”

“Totally a thing. As someone from a blended Christian and Muslim home, I am qualified to say it. It’s in the Koran and the Bible.”

I shrugged. “Okay, well. Pretty sure that’s double blasphemous.”

Aminah smiled. “No offense but you’re from a monoreligious background and therefore less cultured than I am. Anyway, how did he do that?”

I held still and sipped my drink as I watched Malakai immediately get distracted by one of his boys coming to greet him, hand claps and back slaps exchanged, palms sliding across each other and punctuated by a click, a universal mandem handshake, all smiling, white teeth glinting in the violet and pink lights. He was quickly joined by another one of his boys. He nodded, playfully squaring up, not missing a beat in the exclusive dance of Cool Boy Social Interactions. You couldn’t be taught the moves; it wasn’t something you learned. It was something that lived in you and was brought forth. He’d only been here about a month and somehow he was alpha of a crew. He was making a statement: he was comfortable, here. He wasplayingwith me.

Malakai was slick, so silken in his movements, that when his gaze snatched in my direction again, it was so casual it took me a moment to realize that it wasweirdthat he was looking at me like he was—the light in his eyes bounding in its deep dark setting, lips curved dangerously. It was a continuation of a conversation.

He mouthed “Hi” through lips that curled into something like a hook that curved into the bottom of my belly and yanked a sharp, searing feeling through it, right up into my chest. The corner of my mouth flicked up despite myself. This was slightly alarming. Was Ismiling back? Why was I smiling? How did I stop?

I tore my gaze away from him, the feeling in my belly subsiding to a mere warm tingle, hoping that the break would force my smile to dissolve. When I glanced back again, he was still looking at me. His smile beamed something beautiful, something lethal, as white as the light you probably see when you die. This was apt, because I was sure I was going to. I couldn’t believe he’d caught me doing a double glance at him, like I wasinterestedor something equally heinous. My face felt hot. But then he looked back to his friends, jumping back into conversation with them, like the silent exchange between us had happened in a suspended vacuum that existed outside of reality. Now he was back in his reality, wherebeautiful girls ran up to him and he smiled easily, politely. It wasn’t the same smile he gave me, though. It wasn’t the R&B smile.

“Um, ma’am, you just eye-fucked.” My best friend’s voice brought me around. Sound seemed to rush back in—rap, laughter, jeering, screeching, and the cheering for a dance battle going on in the corner all mingling with the heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I cleared my throat and shifted my feet on chunky-heeled ankle boots. “What?!”

Aminah’s shiny plum lips were spread apart in glee. “And it was hot too. The two of you, with your seductivitis eyes. Oozing lust.”

“First of all, gross. Secondly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just happened to be looking in his direction and he just happened to be looking in mine. What you just saw is literally just how eyes work. It’s biology.”

Aminah’s long, dark, mascaraed lashes narrowed into pincers as she shot me an incredulous look. “Oh? Sorry, Ma.Biology.Is it also biology that you’re blushing right now? I know it’s dark and I know you’re a chocolate honey but I can tell when you’re blushing. It’s one of my superpowers. It happens so rarely. Last time was when we watched that new Michael B. Jordan action movie, where he was running around, tiddies out. I could feel the heat just, like,radiatingoff you. Made me sweat out my edges.... Tell me, Keeks, do you want Malakai to help you sweat out your edges?”

I swallowed my snort. “I’m putting you in a time-out.”

Aminah made a sudden scoff of disgust, which doubled as a warning alert as to who was approaching me. I smiled through gritted teeth as Zack stopped in front of me. He was looking at me through heady hazel eyes, bottom lip tucked into his teeth in a way that would have been sexy if I didn’t know it came from an assiduous desire to besexy,a precalculated equation, tried and true. He was wearing a pale blue shirt with atiny man playing polo embroidered on it, his pungent cologne swilling through the air.

Zack stood back, silently allowing his gaze to scan my form up and down and up again in slow strokes. He wanted me toknowwhat he was doing, biting his lip like that, looking at how my body poured into a black bandeau crop top and black midi-skirt, the perkiness of my ass kicked up a little by my boots. I calmly watched him perform his thirst. Finally, he dragged his eyes back to mine, shook his head slowly, and hit me with the pièce de résistance. “So you really just came here to murder me tonight.”

“One can only hope.” Aminah’s voice was drier than cassava as she levelled an even, unimpressed stare at Zack, a boy she hadn’t been able to stand since the time they went to the same boarding school.

Zack chuckled, rolled his tongue in his mouth, and nodded slowly. “Aminah. How are you? I didn’t see you there. Blind to bad energy.”

My eyes flicked up to the ceiling. Aminah slid her head to the side, an arm under her breasts, an elbow propped on it, sharp-taloned azure nails wrapped around her glass. “That makes no sense, you goat. Also are you nose-blind to bad energy as well? Is that why you can’t smell the stink of your own cologne? What is it, Eau de Prick?”

Zack stilled, his smile stiffening. His charm was defective around us and it always threw him off. It was like he forgot every time, and every time he went through the same kind of reckoning that to us he wasn’t an automatic knee-weakener and panty-wetter. I grinned as Aminah turned to me and kissed me on the cheek, whispering, “You good?”

I looked back at Zack. “I can handle him.”

She nodded, threw Zack the stinkiest side-eye, and kissed her teeth as she walked past him, flicking her hair as she made her way over to Kofi’s DJ booth.

Zack stepped closer to me. “You didn’t wanna come say hi to me? I know we had a fight but I thought we’d have a truce seeing as it’s mybirthday.” I called Zack Kingford My Guy because I thought it would distance me from the reality that I had been hooking up—even admitting it to myself was embarrassing—with a truly jarring person. Didn’t work. We all had our vices.

In the far corner of the bar, by the DJ booth, were three beat-up leather sofas arranged in a C-shape with a black center table in the middle and three artificial candles flickering on it, a self-designated VIP area. Every month I tried to discourage its creation, tried to open it up, and every month it was colonized by the same squad before anyone else got a chance to sit there—Zack’s boys, dressed in weaker iterations of his outfit. With them, in between them, leaning against walls, sitting on the arms of the populated sofas, on the laps of Zack’s tribe, were the pretty girls who had made the contraband banner that was stuck on the wall above them. It read, in nineties’ hip-hop-style graffiti,Happy Birthday, King Zack,with a wonky crown slipping on the axis of theAin his name.

I smiled. “I had no idea it was your birthday and it wasn’t a fight, Zack. Also, you know this is not what we’re supposed to do with our access right? This is meant to be a communal area. No VIP shit.”

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