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She locked her phone and slid it back into her purse, grinning. “Right about what?”

“Juvie,” I muttered.

“Excuse me? What did I miss between the photoshoot and the youth center? Yeah, spill it!”

I sighed and walked beside her toward the beef. “I don’t know, Lene. Something doesn’t feel right. Since the blog shit, we’ve been talking more, but mostly about business. We might talk a little outside of that, but nothing crazy. The photoshoot was regular. His fiancée came. Everything was cool. She was cool.”

“Sooo, what else? You’re not telling me anything. What’s bothering you?

I stopped walking. “He still knows me, Lene. He knows how to piss me off. He knows how to make me laugh. He knows how to find me when I’m overwhelmed. Not just in the physical sense… Mentally, he knows where I go. And every time he got close, he found a reason to touch me. I don’t even know if he realized he was doing it. If the youth center wasn’t enough, it was him sitting on FaceTime with me for the forty-five minutes it took for me to make it home.”

Selene stared at me for a second, then shook her head. “Damn, Sav. I hate to say we told you so, but we told you! Y’all got too much unresolved shit to work through. And I know you. You gon’ fuck around and get somebody hurt, and it’s probably gonna be you.”

“It’s not like that. We haven’t done anything. It’s just… I don’t like the way I feel.”

She laughed once and strolled off. I walked behind her, waiting for her to say something. We walked down two more aisles before she turned to me. The way Selene looked at me made the guilt worse.

“Savannah, I’m telling you this as a person whose marriage is still hanging on by the skin of my ass. I’ve done my share of dirt, and most of it starts just like this. Once you do anything that even remotely feels like you did something wrong, you’re already caught. If Emery could hear your thoughts, could he handle it? Does he even know who Juvie is to you?”

I walked around Selene and snatched a box of pasta from the shelf. How could I defend myself when I’d spent the last few days fighting my feelings? Something was festering beneath the surface with Juvie, and I wasn’t sure how to pull away.

Selene giggled as she brushed past me. “That’s what I thought. You hiding shit from that man. You playing with fire.”

“I love Emery, Lene.”

“And I loved Khalil when I was riding some other nigga’s dick.”

“Selene! It’s not like that!”

“Oh, I didn’t say it was. I just know how bad this shit can get. Don’t worry. I won’t tell Mommy, and I’ll tell Shaina not to tell her either.”

I rolled my eyes, then pushed the cart. “Good. Because I don’t need a fuckin’ intervention.”

Selene burst out laughing, tossing a bag of rice into the cart. “Girl, Mommy would have us on her couch with a glass of wine and her joint so fast.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t tell y’all shit now.”

“You don’t have to, but you better get this shit in order before it gets worse.”

Selene and I made it through another two aisles before the conversation finally died down. I was still irritated, but at least she had stopped interrogating me every five seconds. We turned toward the frozen foods, and I almost walked straight into somebody’s cart.

“Damn, Juicy. You still don’t watch where the hell you goin’?”

Ms. Janette, Juvie’s granny, stood there in a black Moncler coat, gold hoops, a freshly lined blonde fade, and long black nails wrapped around her cart handle. She had on oversized shades even though we were inside Kroger, and somehow, she still looked fly as hell.

“Ms. Janette?”

She pushed her shades down her nose and slowly looked me over. “Well, who the fuck else would I be?”

Selene choked on a laugh beside me. Ms. Janette abandoned her cart and pulled me into a hug before I could say anything else.

“Look at you, Juicy. Still pretty. Still looking like Marley spit yo’ ass out.”

I laughed and hugged her back. “You ain’t changed at all.”

“And why the hell would I? I been fine.”

Selene lost it.