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"You wanna go to breakfast?" Jelani asked Sakari and Amber as they sat in the two girls' dorm, around 12, two days later

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"You wanna go to breakfast?" Jelani asked Sakari and Amber as they sat in the two girls' dorm, around 12, two days later. "Well, brunch,"

Amber had come to see them, because she arrived later the night before and wanted to sleep as soon as she was done unpacking. The girls met Amber later on in the last year of school—at one of Khi's football games.

She meshed with the two easily, and although she was on the cheer team and didn't get to hang out as much because of practice and travel games, she did as much as she could while they were all together.

"Um, yeah," Sakari shrugged. She didn't know what time Khi wanted to come over, or what he wanted to do but she was sure he could wait.

At that exact moment, he texted her.

stupid💙🤞🏾: tootieeeeee
: yes?
stupid💙🤞🏾: wyd today?
: getting breakfast w. amb and jeli, why?
stupid💙🤞🏾: you wanna go to the mall with me and Trae later?

Before she could reply, Jelani's snickering snapped her out of her focus on the messages. "What I miss? What happened?" she asked, looking between them both.

"You, Ms. Girl! All smiling at your phone," Jelani teased. "Who texted you?" she asked with a smirk, already knowing who it was, but just wanting her to say it.

"My mama, thank you very much. My little brother is walking around like a big boy, and she wanted to show me," she lied, not wanting to admit that Mekhi had her smiling like that. Of course, her best friend knew he could—and had seen it happen.

"Mhm, okay ma'am," Amber chuckled. "So what are we gonna eat? I have a meeting with the team at like 3," she checked her phone.

After the girls decided what they were gonna eat, Amber waited in her car for the other two girls to get changed of their lounge clothes and into something a little more presentable, and take their bonnets off, officially starting their days.

"Jeli, you okay?" Sakari asked, glancing over at her friend as she swiped lipgloss across her lips. Jelani looked over at her and briefly, Sakari could see that she wasn't.

Over the summer, Jelani had gone through a particularly hard breakup. She and her longtime boyfriend had been through a lot, and the relationship ended—while it was a decision between the two of them that it should happen, they were both still very hurt by the separation, and were dealing with it in their own ways.

Jelani, personally was dealing with it by not dealing with it at all. After a day or two of crying about it, she had pushed it to the deep crevices of her mind, and Sakari had been trying to get her to open up since June.

"I'm okay, Kari," she smiled gently. "Don't worry yourself over me," she waved Sakari off, looking around for the hoops she just had on the other day.

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