Chapter Twenty

Yes, No, or Maybe?

I hated pull-ups with every fiber of my being, but they were the one exercise that didn’t allow me to think of anything else while doing it. There was no room to worry about the state of things with Poppa when I was mentally coaching myself through my least favorite body-weight cycle. Being a big bitch was all fun and games until you had to do a vertical on the pole, then you needed to be a big, strong bitch.

Hence, the pull-ups.

“Come on, Jucee!” my trainer called from behind me. “Give me two more. I know you have it in you! Let’s finish strong!”

I definitely couldn’t be in my head when I was getting yelled at—excuse me—enthusiastically motivated like this.

Concentrating all of my brainpower on my breathing, I sucked in a breath and released it as I slowly pulled myself upward until my chin was above the bar. As much effort as it took to go up, it was even more difficult to lower myself at the same pace as I gone up. The last thing I wanted was to tear a muscle or yank my arm out of its socket by dropping too fast. Once I was hanging back down, arms stretched above me, Jaz patted my hip.

“One more. Don’t rest too long. Let’s go!”

Nodding, I sucked in a breath and repeated the action one final time. This time, instead of hanging when I came down, I released the bar and dropped to my feet. As soon as I was standing, I allowed my knees to buckle and dropped down dramatically, falling first to my knees and then onto my side before laying spread eagle on my back.

Jaz stood over me, laughing at my antics.

“You made it. Good job.”

Stepping over me, she disappeared out of my peripheral, likely to go check on one of the other girls, while I once again focused on my breathing. Today’s workout had kicked my ass, but I’d loved it. Not only for the distraction, but for what I got out of it. The sound of weights clanking, feet pounding treadmills, and low music playing was all around me.

I gave myself thirty more seconds to cosplay a log before I rolled onto my side and pushed up on my knees. That’s when I heard the commotion. It was the “oohs” that got me; they indicated something eye-catching was happening and my feeling of missing out kicked in. Twisting to look over my shoulder, I searched the room until I found the cause for commotion. And then I promptly gasped.

Mouth gaped open, I stared wordlessly as Poppa strolled her fine ass across the gym to stand in front of me. She held a bouquet of artfully arranged fruit in one hand and a paper shopping bag in the other, the unmistakable Crumbville logo stamped on the front.

My heart was beating fast as hell as someone stepped up to grab the bouquet so Poppa could grab my arm and help me to my feet. No wonder everyone was on their high school cafeteria steeze, coming from other rooms in the gym. This felt very much like receiving a promposal from your crush during the busiest lunch period.

Once I was upright, Poppa reached to hug me, but I immediately stepped back, putting my hands up.

“I’m sweaty!”

There’d been a quick flash of hurt in her deep brown eyes at my retreat, but then she blinked and it was gone, replaced with a narrowed glare.

“When have I ever been put off by your sweat, Jucee?”

The inflection in her words had my heartbeat drop below my waist as visions of her licking the sweat from my back as she—

“Ooh, she nasty,”murmured Mercedes, pulling me out of my torrid thoughts. I turned to her, meeting her eyes as I twisted my lips to the side and gave her a knowing look.

Poppa was a lot of things and nasty was absolutely top of the list.

I laughed to myself before stepping into Poppa’s outstretched arms. This was so far from lowkey that you would’ve had to zoom out on the map to see them both. And though this public display didn’t fix anything at all, I loved a good spectacle. Get your grovel on, baby girl.

“Mmhm,” Poppa whispered into my ear, her fingers digging into my waist, “she real nasty.”

At that, I pushed back from her. Sex with Poppa was so easy. Too easy. Easier than it should’ve been, considering that I’d gone into it knowing how she felt about bisexual women. But that was why I knew I had to pull back, because if I let her, Poppa would fuck me into a raggedy amnesia-like, post-coital stupor that would have me giving her goofy grins and thinking we had it all.

Hell naw, I’d be damned!

“What are you doing here?” I asked the obvious, taking the proffered bag of assorted, freshly baked cookies as she turned to retrieve the bouquet from Shay, the gym’s owner.

Fruit in one hand, Poppa grabbed my bicep and led me over to an empty corner.

“I came to apologize.”

I quirked an eyebrow, folding my arms across my chest as I jutted my hip to the side. “And you thought doing it in public was the best course of action?”

“Man,”she drawled, sucking her teeth, “I ain’t studdin’ these folks and you ain’t either. I know you like this type of shit, stop playin’.”

She stared at me, waiting on me to deny it, but all I did was laugh. There was no need to lie when she knew me as well as she did.

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky I was done with my workout.”

She grinned and slid her hand from my arm, up my shoulder, and down my side, scorching a heated trail onto my skin with the soft caress.

“Except it wasn’t luck. I had some help with that.”

I followed the jut of her chin toward the front desk where Shay stood with her eyes on us. When she waved, I frowned, causing her to burst into laughter. Swinging my eyes back to Poppa, I shook my head.

“I can’t do this with you here.”

She took a step toward me. “I know—”

“No,” I emphasized with a shake of my head. “You don’t. This isn’t a conversation I can have with you in public, even with all of this.” I held up the paper bag and gestured at the vase in her hand.

“I know,” she repeated, gripping my waist and stepping closer still. “I didn’t come here to talk like that, I swear. I just came because I wanted to see you smile.”

Ugh, those sweet words wrapped around my heart and squeezed.

“Poppa...” I trailed off, not even sure what I wanted to say, but feeling like I needed to say something.

“Shh,” she murmured before leaning in and dropping a kiss onto my lips. I could be mad about her shushing me another time but at that moment all I wanted to do was siphon her unique flavor from those pillow-soft, plush-ass lips.

“Awww!”went up around us, making it clear that, while we’d moved out of the center of the gym and the women had started returning to their equipment, we still held everyone’s attention.

Poppa broke the kiss before I did, her eyes open and on me as I swiped my tongue across my bottom lip like I was licking Cheetos dust from my fingers after emptying the bag into my mouth. She moved her hand up from my waist to cap the back of my neck.

“Go shower and get dressed. I’ll follow you home and then take you to lunch so we can talk. Is that aight?”

Hell yeah.

The list of things that weren’t aight concerning Poppa was very short—but those few items were pretty damn significant.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, “that’s aight.”

Rubbing the side of my neck with her thumb, and simultaneously increasing the pulsation between my thighs, Poppa smiled, dropped a swift peck at the corner of my mouth, and took the paper bag from me. She then nodded toward the hall where the showers and sauna were located.

“Take your fine ass on.”

I rolled my eyes at the command, but you know what else I did? I took my fine ass on across the gym toward the hall, stopping first at the front desk where Shay sat on a stool, a smug grin on her face, looking pleased as punch. Propping my hands on my hips, I glared at her.

“You set me up!”

There wasn’t an ounce of shame visible on her face. In fact, she preened a little, clasping her hands over her heart and lifting her shoulders.

“I did!” she practically mooned.

Her lovesick reaction was cartoonishly funny, so of course I busted out laughing.

“You’re not even ashamed of yourself, are you?”

She tossed her head back as she joined in on my laughter.

“Girl, I’ve been watching you mope around here for weeks with a perpetually downturned smile, sad as a plant without the sun. Why in the world would I be ashamed of helping your girlfriend publicly grovel when it was clear that whatever was wrong with you was her fault?”

Shay stared at me, waiting for a response that I didn’t have. There were several parts of her statement that I needed to address, most importantly, the assumption that Poppa was my girlfriend. But oddly, that was the one part that I didn’t want to correct. I liked Shay assuming that me and Poppa were a couple. I liked hearing her referred to as my girlfriend even when I knew it was untrue. My foolish heart struck again.

Dropping my defensive stance, I nodded my head and blew out a breath.

“You have a point,” I conceded. “I guess I should be thanking you.”

Tilting her head to the side, Shay eyed me. Then she leaned forward, her palms flat on the desk as she held my gaze.

“Hey. If it’s not what you want, know that it’s okay to say no.”

Eyes wide, I blinked at her. Unperturbed, she continued.

“Even if you wanted it before, but now you’ve changed your mind, you can say no. Nothing is set in stone.”

My lip trembled as a wave of gratitude slammed into me out of nowhere.

“I appreciate you so much for this, Shay. Thank you so much for looking out for me.” My voice was a little thick with unshed emotion, but I couldn’t help it.

This went beyond standard client satisfaction. Shay wasn’t giving me this talk simply because she wanted to retain my business at her gym; she was doing this because she genuinely cared about me. All of the worrying I’d done over the past few weeks, the hand-wringing as I thought that I would have no one left who loved me if I completely cut off the Thomases, was all for naught. Here was another example of the community I’d built in this city.

“Listen, if there are people in your ear, forget about them. Forget this whole display. None of that shit matters if you don’t want her.”

“But I do want her.” Folding my arms atop the counter and dropping my head onto my folded arms, I sighed heavily. “That’s actually the problem.”

Standing to her full height, Shay peeked over my shoulder in the direction I’d come from. I twisted around to see what I could see and found myself ensnared in Poppa’s intense gaze. That look—the undeniable love—beaming from those warm brown eyes struck me dead in the chest.

It was difficult to question things when she looked at me like that.

“Gahdamn,”Shay muttered after letting off a low whistle.

I snapped my head back to her, watching her eyebrows shoot toward the ceiling as she pinned me with a look.

“Baby, I’m not seeing the problem. She clearly wants you too.”

My chest inflated as I inhaled a deep breath. I pushed the air out through my nose.

“It does look like it, huh?” I chuckled softly.

At least this was further proof that I wasn’t seeing things. I wasn’t trying to make something out of nothing just so that my feelings didn’t feel unrequited. It was one thing for her family to say they could see something between us, but it was a whole other thing for someone who didn’t know us as Cyn Jucee to say the same.

That should’ve made me feel better.

It didn’t.

Tapping my nails on the counter, I smiled at Shay.

“I’m gonna go hop in the shower. Thanks for everything, Shay.”

She gave me a soft smile, dipping her chin in acknowledgement. “Don’t forget what I said.”

She’d said many things, but I knew exactly which things in particular she meant.

“Yes, ma’am,” I teased before finally making my way to the back of the gym and into the locker room.

I wish I could say that I took my time and made Poppa wait, but I did nothing of the sort. Pineappling my braids, I shoved the huge bun into a satin-lined shower cap and took my toiletries into a shower stall. Once I stepped into the spray of the shower head, it didn’t take long for my brain to start racing. I was pretty positive that I knew why Poppa had shown up, but that didn’t change me nor my anxiety about her being there. What was she going to say to me and what would happen afterward? I mean, I was pretty certain that I knew why she was there, right? We hadn’t spoken, truly, in a couple of weeks, which was unheard of in the entirety of our friendship. It was obvious she wanted to change that, but a small part of me wondered if she was only here because not only had we not spoken, but we hadn’t been having sex either.

Please stop acting like you’re the only bitch Poppa can fuck.

That thought pulled me up short. Of course I wasn’t the only bitch that Poppa could fuck. I’d seen firsthand, at least hundreds of times, how pussy would literally fall into her lap, so why was I even worried about her being here simply so that we can have sex again?

That was ridiculous.

But that just went to show how all over the place my mind was. Then I had to ask myself, hypothetically speaking, if she was here specifically for the sex, what would I do?

Was I okay with a piece of a relationship with my best friend whom I was in love with? Was I okay with only having half of Poppa’s heart? Would I be okay—would I be able to live with myself—if I took the offering of a piece of her relationship with someone who did not even see the entirety of my being?

That was the easiest thing for me to answer. And the answer was no, I wouldn’t be okay. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself and I wouldn’t be able to live with Poppa. Every facet of our relationship would shrivel and die, and I didn’t want that. So that meant I had to be prepared to walk away permanently.

Fifteen minutes later, after I’d scrubbed from head to toe, I sat on a teak bench and slathered on a shea body butter scented with jasmine and then quickly dressed in a pair of red bike shorts and a Houston Clutch oversized tank top in the team’s red, white, and gold colors. White slides completed the outfit.

After placing my sweaty clothes into a mesh bag with my name on it, I dropped them into the designated hamper and exited the locker room. Thick n’ Fit offered a laundry service for an extra fee and I regularly took advantage of it. I worked out four times a week and those clothes added up. I had no problem utilizing any convenience offered to me.

Back in the main gym, I swept my eyes over to the corner I’d left Poppa in, but she wasn’t there. Instinctively, I looked over at the front desk. There she was, leaning against the counter, one hand in the pocket of her shorts, the other holding her phone, head thrown back as she laughed at something Shay was saying. My gifts were on the counter by her elbow and she looked relaxed and unbothered.

She looked so good.

And she was here.

That counted for something.

Right?

It did. It meant she was willing to make the first move, and that? That was something Poppa didn’t have to do. The fact that she was doing it for me gave me hope that she maybe saw something different for us. She wasn’t handling this the same way that she handled every other situation with every other woman. Hell, most of her interactions with those other women never made it out of the bed buddy stage, so her being here, making a public display, said so much.

The only question was whether or not I was going to listen.