SALUBRIOUS

SB55

Nasiem Fareed

2:15 pm - July 25th 2024

Acquiring the perfect ring for Dakota was on Nas' mind nonstop. Being that he knew her inside and out, he knew exactly what kind of ring she wanted, but he also knew that her style changed a lot. So to be sure, he found himself searching in other places and grabbing subtle hints. The couple talked a lot and let each other in on random details all the time, this is exactly how Nas knew that Dakota wanted her ring to be princess cut. Nas was going about this in a secretive way, in hopes of everything remaining a surprise. Nas still wasn't sure when he'd pop the question, but he still wanted to have the ring in his possession.

After taking a scroll through Dakota's twitter likes, he decided to put his searching to an end and go somewhere he knew he could 100% find an exact model of what she'd want—Pinterest. Dakota had a board that was dedicated to the dream life that she aspired to have. A lot of her free time went to scrolling through the app and adding pins to her dream life board.

"I'm back." Dakota announced as she walked through the doors of the tattoo shop, urging Nas to quickly shut his MacBook. Of course, his sudden action gained a suspicious look from Dakota. "You okay?" She questioned while handing him his small cup of ice cream, from a stand that was in the same plaza as the tattoo shop. Its closeness had them craving it a few times out of the week.

"I'm straight." Nas answered while nodding his head. He removed the plastic lid from his ice cream cup, and stabbed his spoon into the ice cold creamy goodness. "Why you close the laptop so fast like that?" Dakota questioned. Fuck, Nas thought to himself. He knew this would be the hardest part. Their relationship was very transparent, they kept hardly anything from each other, so keeping something so major from his best friend seemed impossible.

"I ain't mean to—I guess I was ready to give you all my attention." Nas somewhat lied. He mixed his ice cream around a little bit before taking his first spoonful. The ice cream stand's most stand out flavor was their butter pecan. It was a big hit due to there being no pecan chunks in it, which was something a lot of people enjoyed. Nas was one of those people. He appreciated the ice cream keeping the nutty flavor without the chunks of pecan.

"What's on the laptop?" Dakota questioned. Nas looked up from his ice cream to see Dakota staring back at him. He let out a brief chuckle while reaching over to grab the napkin she placed beside him. "It's just some work stuff, baby." Nas replied before wiping his mouth.

"Why you acting like that? Like you ever had to question my loyalty or something." Nas spoke. While his secretiveness wasn't in vain, he still didn't want Dakota's mind to wonder to infidelity. "You the one closed the laptop like it was something that you didn't want me to see on it." Dakota replied, causing Nas to chuckle. Little did she know, there was definitely something on it that she couldn't see, but not for the reason she believed.

"That's my fault—you know a nigga be jumpy sometimes." Nas replied with a slight chuckle. Unfortunately, Dakota wasn't chuckling or smiling with him. "Yeah, I know." She dryly replied, causing Nas to sigh. He got up from his seat in front of the tattoo bed, and moved closer to her.

"Cmon, baby. Don't act like that—you trust me, right?" Nas voiced before sitting his ice cream to the side. He then used his hand to gently grab her face by her chin and direct it towards him. "You trust me?" He quizzed again before kissing her lips.

"You know I trust you...it's just unorthodox for us for us to keep shit away from each other." Dakota explained. "I'm not keeping nothing away from you baby, I told you it's work." Nas lied. He hated lying to Dakota, whether it was a little white lie or not.

"Look." Nas spoke while getting up to grab his laptop. Once he returned next to Dakota, he opened it up. Relief washed over him once he saw that the website refreshed, landing him back onto the homepage and no longer on Dakota's profile. "You know I be on here looking for default shit when people come in and don't know what they want." Nas announced, which was somewhat true.