Page 18 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

Laughing, I clutched my stomach and nodded.

“Yeah, man. I’m starving.”

“What a coincidence,” chimed Cody, popping up on my right with a plate of ribs and sides in his hands. “These have your name written all over them.”

My eyes lit up at the sight of perfectly smoked meat, seasoned baked beans, grilled corn, and dirty rice. I lifted my hands, palms upward and ready to receive my blessing.

“Thank you, Cody!” I cooed once the plate was securely in my hands. I didn’t hesitate to raise a rib to my mouth and take a bite.

“Seriously?” scoffed Poppa. “I waited on you and you gon’ take food from this fool?” The look in her eyes gave me pause. It wasn’t the normal exasperation that I saw when her and Cody went back and forth, but I didn’t quite know how to categorize it. It was almost something like jealousy, but that didn’t make sense.

“Sowwy,” I murmured with a full mouth, finding it hard to be truly apologetic with the succulent meat still on my tongue. “You heard my stomach.” Sliding my gaze to Cody, I dipped my head.

His cheeks bloomed as he bit his lip, giving him a boyish appearance. Quicker than I could blink, he hugged me to his side and planted a kiss on my temple before stepping back. Ignoring Poppa’s glare, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“You should let me take you out sometime. Let me show you how many more of your needs I can anticipate and meet without you asking—” licking his lips, he winked at me “—or having to point me in the right direction.”

Cody was nothing if not persistent, but I couldn’t deny that he was also smooth as hell. If I was another woman, that line might’ve had my panties in hand, ready to transfer ownership. Another thing I couldn’t deny was his attractiveness. Despite being the baby of the Thomas bunch, Cody was both the tallest at over six feet, and the biggest with years of playing football through high school and college working with genetics from his father to make him broad and solid. Where Poppa looked like their father and Caleb taking after their mother, Cody was a perfect mix of Mr. Marvin’s mahogany skin and sleepy, deep brown eyes and Mrs. Carissa’s thick black hair and dimples.

To put things simply, Cody was a problem in the best of ways.

But someone else’s problem.

Several someone elses’, actually. He didn’t lack for female attention, which is why I was certain his fixation on me was solely his attempt at needling Poppa. She’d made it clear that he’d ruined friendships for her when they were teenagers, and she refused to let him do that to her as an adult. I thought the whole thing—his constant flirting and her reactions—was funny as hell.

Huffing, Poppa walked off, traversing the final few feet to the table where food was in buffet trays over lit butane cans. Shaking my head, I headed after her, chuckling when Cody fell into step with me.

“You need to leave her alone,” I stated before biting into the perfectly buttered ear of corn from my plate.

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

Not having an answer for him, I just shook my head again and went to sit at one of the picnic tables. I learned early on that this was about and between them and didn’t really have much to do with me at all, so I did my best to stay out of it. Once I settled down and started to eat, Poppa slid an overloaded plate on my right and climbed onto the bench seat, accidentally on purpose bumping my elbow as she got situated.

Smirking, I waited for her to finish before grabbing my last rib.

“You done flirting with my knucklehead brother?”

Dropping the rib, I threw my head back and hollered.

“Who’s buggin’ now?” I asked.

Her face was to her plate, but I saw her cheeks lift as she grinned, indicating that she wasn’t really upset.

“Definitely still my parents.”

All I could do was laugh. Poppa knew damn well that I wasn’t checking for Cody, and she likely knew he felt the same way. I was an only child so I didn’t understand it, but this was probably just a way they played with each other. As long as no one was genuinely mad at me, I didn’t mind it.

The companionable silence that we’d fallen into as we ate was interrupted when Amani ran up to me, hope and excitement all over his face.

“What is it, baby?” I asked, wiping my fingers on a napkin and turning to straddle the bench so that I could pull him up to sit between my legs.

“Mommy, can I spend the night?”

My eyebrows rose. “You just spent the week at your daddy’s house, baby boy. Aren’t you ready to come home with Mommy?”

Jumping off of the bench, he took off across the yard, running up to Nana Cherry. I stood to my feet and followed his path. When he spun on his heel, preparing to run back to me, I caught him around the waist and lifted him into the air, tickling his sides as I cradled him in my arms and approached the circle of elderly women.

“Whose idea was this?” I asked, my lips curved into a smile. There was really no telling when it came to those two.