Kashmere glanced at me through the mirror before slipping the straps off her shoulders and stepping out of the sexy lace outfit she had on. She changed into a nightgown and slid it on, still not looking me in the eye.
I couldn’t help myself. I got out of bed and stood up, my heart pounding harder than I wanted it to. “If y’all had sex, just say that. I ain’t gon’ judge you. I just… I wanna know the truth.”
She turned to me finally, and her face was calm, but her eyes told the truth. They were still heavy with him.
“I said we talked,” she repeated, but even her voice wasn’t holdin’ weight no more.
I took a slow step closer, not out of anger, but because I knew her. I knew every version of Kashmere, and this one… This version was unraveling in front of me.
“Did he kiss you?” I asked, softer now. “Did he touch you like he already knew your body?”
Kashmere didn’t answer. She looked down at her hands, and her silence told me everything.
And it hurt in a way I wasn’t ready to admit.
Because no matter what we said about coming here for money, the truth was, there were parts of us neither of us was prepared to give to Pressure. And now he had a part of her I knew she wasn’t getting back.
I exhaled slow and leaned against the wall, feeling that tight pull in my chest.
“You fell for him already, huh?” I asked.
She looked up at me then, and this time, she didn’t bother hiding it. The softness in her eyes was loud. It was written all over her face.
She tried to smile, but her lip trembled a little and she caught it before it fully showed.
“I don’t know what it is,” she whispered, “but it’s… different with him.”
That’s when I knew… Pressure had her.
Not just her body, but her spirit.
I’d felt it too, that night in his room, laying in his bed, pressed against his chest, feelin’ his hand on my waist. It wasn’t even sexual, but it was intimate in a way that left me wide open. Now my best friend had experienced the other side of him—the side I hadn’t.
She climbed into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, facing the wall, like she didn’t want to keep talkin’.
I walked back to my bed and sat on the edge, still lookin’ her way.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said quietly. “We were supposed to get the money, show face, and bounce.”
“I know,” she said. “But it doesn’t feel that simple anymore.”
“No,” I whispered. “It doesn’t.”
I laid back down, my eyes wide open, my body still and my mind spinnin’.
The room was silent, but everything had changed, and the scariest part wasn’t that she had fallen for him.
It was that I already knew… I was falling too.
That afternoon, I decided to skip brunch and stay in my room.
I told myself it was because I needed rest, but the truth was I just didn’t want to be around anybody. I didn’t want to deal with the other women, the noise, and especially not Kashmere. We hadn’t said much to each other all day, and even though we werestill sharing the same room, it felt like things between us had changed. It wasn’t necessarily cold, but something had definitely switched.
I caught her glancing at me once while she was getting dressed earlier, like she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, she swallowed it down and walked out without a word… and I didn’t stop her.
I didn’t know how to talk about the thing that was bothering me without sounding like a hater. It wasn’t even just about Pressure anymore. It was about the fact that she wasn’t being real with me. We came here together, was supposed to be on the same page, but ever since she came back from his room smelling like his cologne and floating like she’d been touched by God himself, she’d been acting different. Maybe I had too, but at least I wasn’t hiding behind lies.
I laid in bed with the comforter pulled halfway over me, staring up at the ceiling while trying to keep my mind from drifting. I missed Zurie. I missed hearing her little voice, seeing her face light up, or when she’d beg me to sit and color with her even though I had a million things on my plate. I would’ve given anything to watch one of her old videos or scroll through pictures of her smile, but our phones had been locked away since we got here. All I could do was replay those memories in my head and hope she was okay.
