Deliverance (Fem x Stem)

40

Teyanne Sully

Gia arrives just as I'm about to win Lilliana over. I groan in my head but let her go slowly, rushing to get dressed. Lilliana puts on my shirt, and starts walking to the door, fixing her hair. I roll my eyes playfully and settle on my sports bra and pants.

Lil girl stole my shirt.

I walk out the room stretching to find Gia with some Whataburger bags and Sonic cups. "I figured y'all wanted sumin to eat," she shrugged. Lilliana took some of the bags from her and helped set up our food at the table. Gia eyed us two.

"Looks like y'all got comfortable since you called," she comments, smirking. Lilliana tries to hide her blushing, pulling out a carton of fries. "I'll only stay to eat then," Gia says, still smirking. "And you owe me some gas money, Teyanne."

"I- Wha," I stutter.

"Yup," Gia laughs. "Or I can take it outta yo paycheck."

"That's cruel," I whine, coming to sit down at the table. "I'm just playinggg," Gia says in a sing songy voice. "What y'all wanna watch on TV?" she then asks. I go and pick up the remote, flicking through the channels and stations on our fire stick."We got Netflix, Roku, whatever Roku means, Hulu, Tubi, Amazon...YouTube," I look at them, waiting to see what they wanted to watch.

"Netflix, I wanna finish watching Bridgeton," Lilliana comments. "Ian seen it since I left Christiano."

"Hell nahh, ian finna watch white people dance around in ball gowns," I flick to something else. "They have a lot of black people in it, and it's actually a cool show," Gia argues. I could already see it was about to be a two versus one battle unless I found something we all could watch. "What about Ares, or Sabrina, or Goosebumps?"

"Ouu, they got the old Goosebumps series on there? I remember watching that when I was younger," Lilliana says excitedly. "Old ass," I joke, clicking on Goosebumps. I settle down into my seat and rip my bag open, eating my food inside of it.

"This shit is good," I say after my second bite into the sandwich. "Yeah cause I spit in it," Lilliana says. My mouth falls wide open, even though I know Lilliana was joking. She just usually never made jokes like that. I laughed, taking another bite out of my burger. "You wild mamas."

"Shush," Lilliana laughs, taking a sip of her drink.

"I want some Henny right now," Gia sighs.

"Hey, hey, hey. You acting like for a month you wasn't lecturing me about the bottle and doing drugs," I wag my finger at her. "If I gotta take a break, you do too."

"But nooo," Gia whines, throwing her French fry at me. "Hey, if y'all gon have a food fight, y'all cleaning it up," Lilliana warns. "Yes ma'am," Gia says innocently, then throws another French at me. "You're on," I stand up and start to pick up my entire burger. "Teyanne, sit yo ass down! You know you wanna eat that burger anyways," Lilliana pokes me.

I pout, but sit down with my food, playfully glaring at Gia. "I gotchu," Gia nods, eating her food.

"We'll see about dat," I say, taking a sip out of my drink. "I'm proud of y'all," Gia suddenly says, looking up and gesturing to Lilliana and I. "I hope things work out for the better- seriously." Lilliana and I nod in agreement. I glance back at Goosebumps playing on the screen, even though nobody's really paying attention to it.

After our food is finished, Gia stands up and stretches. "I'll try to come back down next weekend," she informs us. She hugs Lilliana first, giving her a long, tight squeeze at the end. She then comes over to me, then swats me with her empty food bag.