Page 46 of Two’s Better

“You good?”

“What?” She snapped her head up to look at me, almost guiltily.

I fought the urge to laugh, jerking my head in the direction of the dish she was currently dunking in the semi-clear water like she was trying to drown it. “Seems like something’s bothering you.”

“Oh. What? No. I’m fine,” she dismissed, though she did gentle her movements.

I let her be. When—or if—she wanted to talk about it, she would.

We continued working in silence. Once I was done with the washing, I decided to take over the drying since Bernice was being absolutely no help.

“You shouldn’t have accepted this shift if you knew you were going to be hungover,” I couldn’t help but scold lightly. She was damn lucky we didn’t have a handler today.

“I really, really need the mulla,” was Bernice’s muffled reply. “Just let me know when Karen starts heading toward the kitchen again.”

Fiona and I snorted, even though that was literally our host’s name. The sink we were using was right by the back door, with a window above it that looked out into a section of the garden. Every time Karen approached, we’d know.

Fiona finished rinsing and grabbed one of the provided kitchen towels to help me dry. We’d been instructed to leave the dishes neatly arranged on a wide, three-tiered rack currently pushed to a safe corner of the kitchen; under no circumstances were we allowed into the cupboards. The memory of the order made me inwardly roll my eyes.

Bernice had her cheek pressed to the counter now instead of her forehead, which meant I could see her face. It looked like she was genuinely about to fall asleep. Damn. I didn’t think she was a big drinker. When we got home, I was going to talk to her in private, just to make sure she’d simply had a fun night and she hadn’t drank so much because something was wrong.

When Fiona and I finished drying—we had a fancy little cart where we could wheel the clean dishes from the sink to the designated drying rack, because Karen didn’t want us walking with the dishes in hand, risking them slipping and breaking—I noticed her glancing repeatedly at Bernice’s slumped form.

I thought she was going to say something pointed again, but instead she looked at me, lowered her voice to almost below a whisper, and blurted, “I kind of fucked Tamara and Ezra last night.”

I literally choked on my saliva. If Fiona hadn’t been blessed with cool, dark brown skin, her cheeks would probably be a telling shade of red. Instead, I saw her blush in the way she couldn’t meet my eyes, in the way she was pursing her lips.

“You want to elaborate on that, maybe?” I prodded when I got my voice back, my tone lowered to match hers.

“Okay.” She took what seemed to be a deep, fortifying breath. “So. Remember their housewarming thing last Friday?”

“Yeah ...” I said encouragingly.

“We kind of ... did a thing that night. Had sex. Whatever.”

“The three of you?” I asked just to be sure, taking care to keep my expression neutral.

“Yes.” She sounded pained.

I tried not to laugh again; she looked so forlorn. I hadn’t expected this, though. Not in a million years. I’d known the three of them were close, but not that close.

“They’d ... kind of, maybe, initiated it then. But last night, I’d been the one who—” She stopped to take several deep breaths. “It just—it feels—it felt like I’d used them for my pleasure. I don’t know. I feel so—fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Hey.” I stopped stacking the dishes, gave a cursory glance outside the kitchen window for any signs of an approaching Karen, then walked around the rack so I could pull her into my arms. She was empty-handed so I was able to hold her properly. Unlike my gorgeously fat self, and Bernice, who was mid-sized, Fiona was what Nigerians would refer to as telenge. Or in English, petite. I was able to completely envelope her in my arms, and I hoped she found my embrace comforting. When she’d stopped trembling, I pulled back to meet her eyes. “Did you put a gun to their heads?”

She looked so genuinely befuddled my laugh finally escaped me.

“You said you felt like you’d used them,” I explained with mirth.

“Oh.” Her throat bobbed with a swallow. “I mean—no. No, I didn’t put a gun to their fucking heads.” Her lips twitched.

“And I’m sure there was enthusiastic consent all around. Unless—?”

“No, there was,” she said immediately. A glazed look came over her eyes as she obviously thought back to whatever had happened last night. With her best friend and said best friend’s boyfriend, apparently. And here I’d thought my relationship with Uzezi was the only one in shambles. “It was ... enthusiastic all around.”

“There you go,” I said, perhaps a little too cheerfully. “I don’t think you used them. What if they feel like they used you?”

“What? No,” she scoffed immediately. “They would never do anything to hurt me. And besides, they weren’t the ones who—” She clamped her mouth shut, blushing again.