Page 26 of The Plus One

“Yes. Because last night can’t happen again.”

Ace stared at me like he was waiting for the rest. “You already said that.”

“Well, now it’s official.”

He laughed. “Aight. What else?”

“Nobody finds out. Especially Markel.”

His face changed at the mention of Kel. “Why you keep bringing that nigga up?”

“Because you’re his best friend.”

“And you’re his ex. Neither one of those things got shit to do with what happened between us.”

“It has everything to do with it.”

“To you.”

I opened my mouth to argue but stopped. He wasn’t completely wrong, but I damn sure wasn’t about to tell him that. “Whatever. The point is nobody needs to know. And we go back to how we were before.”

Ace looked at me. “How were we before?”

“Normal.”

“We barely talked.”

“Exactly.”

He laughed. “You fucked me and now your solution is pretending I don’t exist?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

“Ain’t no other way to say it.”

“Fine. We can talk. But no flirting. No touching. No sex. And definitely no acting weird around everybody else.”

Ace nodded slowly. “So basically you want me to act like I didn’t have you—”

“Ace!”

“My bad.” He laughed, holding his hands up. “Anything else?”

“No. Those are the rules.”

“Aight.”

“And stop saying aight.”

“Aight.” I flipped him off and headed toward the bathroom. “Kema.”

I turned around. “What?”

“You forgot one.”

“One what?”

“Rule.”