❝oh, the less i
know the better.❞
JUL 23,
two months and twenty-three
days after the funeral.
STIRRING
her spoon in her bowl of milk, nisha sighed as she waited for her best friend to finally pick up her call, her phone propped up against a glass of orange juice. she had already pressed his name four times and the rings had followed, all of them leading to the same thing: the boy's voicemail. she really wanted to tell him about her date last night, but if he didn't answer then it was going to be difficult.
trying one last time, promising herself that she would let go afterwards if jude persisted in not picking up, her screen was finally shared with her best friend's. the young woman's vision was greeted by an apparent haze in the boy's bathroom, as he frantically passed a white towel over his bare torso where drops of water dripped and found their way to his waist, where a pair of shorts then came to hide his upper legs.
"finally," she asked with furrowed brows, pretending to be annoyed, "i've tried to call you at least a hundred times," exaggerating the numbers, jude huffed excessively and rolled his eyes at his best friend's words.
"i was literally under the shower, and shut up," the brum accent that he shared with nisha, having grown up together in the same environment, came out greatly on the insult he hurled at her and made the young woman raise her eyebrows higher than she would have thought, "you've only tried like, twice," he added and ended the debate here.
with a hairbrush in his hands, the young man began to maneuver his hair in any way he wanted after taking care to dry it. the woman's eyes scanned his movements carefully and when he brought the brush up to his chin to brush away what little beard he had, she couldn't contain her laughter. this made jude frown and now questioned her with his eyes, wondering what was so funny.
"what were you even trying to brush?" she asked him between two mocking laughs that didn't stop and echoed all the way to jude's microphone, who took great offence to his best friend's attack on his looks.
just before pressing the red button that would end the call, the young man took care to offer her his best middle finger before definitively ending their conversation. all the more amused by his actions driven by his fragile ego, nisha continued to laugh alone —even though he was no longer at the end of the line.
when, after many attempts, the boy's annoyed face finally reappeared on the young englishwoman's screen, a mocking smile was still present on her lips despite her failed attempts to hide it. to please him, nisha invented a nice lie about her joke and declared in a falsely honeyed voice, "i was just kidding judy, i love the tuft on your chin. so virile from you!"
"i swear nisha, i'm about to hang up again," he threatened her as he moved a finger close to his screen, right next to the same red button he had not hesitated to press a few moments earlier.
"but you won't, because i have stuff to tell you," nisha waggled her eyebrows suggestively and jude huffed, because he hated to admit that she was basically right and that even though what she was about to tell him would hurt him more than anything else, his curiosity was far too strong for him not to hear it.
"so?" asked jude before shoving his toothbrush into his mouth, eagerly waiting for his best friend to tell him more about her date the night before.
