Page 43 of Honey and Spice

Malakai spread his arms wide in emphasis. “Exactly.I remember one time I showed her the most emotional episode I could find—”

“The one where his dad disappears again?”

Malakai nodded and smiled. “Gets me every time. You know the bit where he goes—”

“‘How come he don’t want me, man?’” The words leaped out of us simultaneously, as if we’d rehearsed.

Malakai laughed. “Punches me in the gut every time. She didn’t even blink. Her eyes didn’t even get shiny. She said it was overacted.” He paused. “And it’s not like she was incapable of emotion because I saw her get emotional over a werewolf imprinting on a half-vampire, half-human baby inTwilight.”

I snorted as I helped myself to another one of his chips. “Now I know you’re chatting shit.”

Malakai’s eyed widened, and his hands raised up. “Okay, so I’m not a prick for thinking that was weird. When I commented on how creepy it was, she looked at me like I was an idiot and said I was being ‘emotionally basic.’ The only person emotionally basic is Bella, because who the hell would choose a vampire over a werewolf?”

“Facts. But also, my first crush was the Beast, so I’m biased.”

Malakai paused and leaned back, assessing me with a comical expression on his face. As if I’d said something unhinged. “As in the Beast fromBeauty and the Beast?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. He was sexy. Like, ‘Yo. What that snout do?’ Obviously, I didn’t think that then. Just now.”

Malakai seemed stunned. “Rah.”

I tilted my head, looking him up and down. “Oh, what, like you’re so special because your first crush wasn’t a cartoon rendering of a creature that was basically an amalgamation of a wolf and a bear?”

Malakai popped three chips into his mouth. “My first crush was on Nala actually.”

“Okay, see, that’s weirder than my thing.”

“How?”

“Because a lioness already exists. It’s a real animal. An anthropomorphic beast doesn’t exist in real life. Well, unless you count Zack. Oh shit, everything makes sense now.”

Malakai’s rumble of laughter was low and rolling. I really wanted to pull my sweater off because it was warm, not just in the diner but inside my body, under my skin. My blood felt fizzy.

“I also have an excellentTwilightjoke. Ama hated it.”

“Hit me.”

Malakai slid out of the booth, stood up in front of me, and started stretching, like he was about to do a complicated gymnastics set. “I gotta stand up to perform it.”

I snorted again. “Oh, it’s that deep?”

Malakai gave a single solemn nod, face grave. “Yes.”

He cleared his throat as I looked at him with exaggerated attentiveness, and he bellowed, his voice deep with a Shakespearian gravitas, “Wow, it really sucks that Bella chose the vampire over the werewolf.”

I blinked. “What?”

Malakai’s voice slid back to normal, low and gravelly, loose with a slight south London saunter. “Nah, but do you get it? Sucks? Because of the vampire thing? They suck blood—”

“Yeah man, I get it, it’s just...what? Malakai, that’s really, really bad.”

He rubbed his chin as he slid into my side of the booth. “Shit, really?”

I shifted along my seat to allow him in unthinkingly, not even questioning the switch in positions. “Dude.”

Malakai leaned in closer, explaining as a professor would. “Wait, okay then, what about: ‘You would have thought a vampire would have paled in comparison to a werewolf.’”

The laughter had steadily built up inside me and I was doubled over, all but falling onto his legs. I felt tipsy, giddy with something I wasn’t entirely sure of, the butterflies now drunk on the sugar high in my belly. I clamped my hand over my mouth. “Oh... my... gosh... that was... s-so, so bad.... You’re such a fucking dork.” My voice ended in a squeak from the strain of keeping the mirth in. I was too hysterical to be distressed by the fact that I think that what I was doing could have been categorized asgiggling.

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