Welcome to the Neighborhood

NINE

this is three chapters in one

ONIKA POV

I was on my way to the restaurant when I my phone started ringing. When I saw it was Beyoncé calling, I started to get nervous.

I answered anyway, maybe it was something about our kids. "Hello?"

"Are you busy?" She didn't even say hi back.

"Yeah, I'm on my way to my restaurant." I love that. My restaurant.

"I'm in need of a favor, I'll pay you."

"You don't need to pay me but what?"

"Thanksgivings coming up and you're a chef and all so I was wondering if you could help me learn to make a couple side dishes. I made a bat with Kelly."

"What's the bet?"

"We bet 5 that she won't be able to tell what I made. I'm confident that she will be able to but she has no faith in me."

"5 hundred?"

"Thousand. I'll give you one if I win."

"Oh, then I'll definitely help you." She doesn't have to ask me twice.

"When are you going to be home?"

"Probably not until 9:00."

"Great. Come over at 10:30."

"Wait-" She hung up on me. I was going to say I didn't think it would be a good idea to go over to her house that late.

I'll just have to mentally prepare myself before I go.

I was nervous but when I got home, I took a shower to get the food smell of me and got dressed in something more casual.

I don't know why I was as nervous as I was. The only time we ever did anything, we were drunk. It was just a dumb drunk decision.

"Calm down. It was just a friend helping out a friend. It won't happen again." I told myself over and over before I rang her doorbell.

She opened the door in Ivy Park sweatpants and a tank top. "I thought you would've been late, I'm surprised."

"Hello to you to." I don't know why she can't ever just say hi.

"Sorry, hi. Come in." She moved out of the way and I walked inside.

She's nicer to me now, I could definitely get used to this.

"So I didn't know what to get so I bought basically everything." We walked into her kitchen and the entire island was covered with grocery bags. I walked more in and I saw bags on the floor too.

It looked like she bought the whole grocery store.

"We could've just used the stuff you had here. This was probably really expensive."

"I only have chicken nuggets and dry noodles, it wouldn't have been much help."

Hm so maybe her wife doesn't know how to cook. Duly noted.

"Did you buy potatoes?"

"Mhm. Like five bags." I guess she could use these for thanksgiving too.

"Okay, we'll let's start with making mashed potatoes. I don't think you could mess that up."

I was wrong. A couple minutes later I started smelling something burning so I checked the pot and she forgot to put water in the pot. She was just burning potato skin.

We tried again and I was actually there to help her this time. I put too much faith in her at first.

The whole time she was paying very close attention. I don't think she was actually paying attention but she kept staring at me. She made sure we were always making physical contact one way or another.