I shook my head. “And guess I’ll have to find a new best friend who won’t toss me away so easily.”

“I’m not tossing you away, I just got questions. Like can First Ladies strut?" she asked. “Because how you gonna be an AKA and not strut?”

“Are you serious right now?” Before she answered, I continued, “Let me break this down for you. First of all, I’m not interested in being a First Lady since I grew up as a First Daughter. That was enough firsts for me. And besides, I don’t know what’s happening with me and Jeremy.”

“You don’t know?” She turned toward me and walked backward. “Who’s acting like they’re in fifth grade now? Let me break this down for you. You and Jeremy finally kissed. Jeremy told you he wants to take your friendship further. And I say, ‘Hallelujah, it’s about time.’ You two have been playing footsies -”

“We haven’t been playing anything.”

“- for too long now,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “You started with the kiss last night, you might as well let him hit it tonight, then tomorrow, it’ll be all official,” she said as if she’d just solved all the problems of the world.

“I’ve already told you, I don’t want to be married to a pastor.”

“Well first of all, he didn’t ask you to marry him, he just kissed you.”

“If you weren’t my best friend, I’d punch you in the eye right now.”

“And second of all, Jeremy Williams is a tall mug of hot chocolate, so whatever hang-ups you have about the church -”

“I’m not hung up about the church.”

“- you need to get over it,” she continued. “Look, if he wants you on his arm as he becomes the youngest pastor in New Orleans, you need to hop on that gravy train. He’s fine and he’s gonna be rich? What’s there to think about?"

I sighed, but it was only to keep my emotions inside. As much as I hated to admit it, I was excited about the prospect of where our relationship could go from here; but there was so much to think about. First, I didn’t want to stay in New Orleans. I had my life mapped out. After graduation in a few weeks, I would start working at Walker-Hughes, one of the largest consumer marketing firms in the country where I’d interned over the past two summers in D.C. I was going to work with them for exactly five years before I started my own marketing company. My company was going to be ahead of the curve with this growing digital marketing industry and by 2015, I planned to have offices in the top five markets. For all of this to happen, I’d have to be in a big city on the East or West coast.

So my plans didn’t line up with this new desire of Jeremy’s. Plus there was the fact that yes, we’d kissed, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Jeremy and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss anything at all. Once he got the call from Reverend Lewis, I didn’t want to interrupt him in any way, so Aaron brought me back to campus and I hadn’t spoken to Jeremy since.