‘Fine, fine, whatever bitch,’ the Yam put her hands up in surrender. ‘You wanna feed your narrow ass this unnutritious junk, that’s on you.’

‘Unnutritious?’

‘It’s Latin. They teach us all that fancy shit at law school. I missed you, G.’

A pitcher of slushy strawberry margaritas appeared on the table even though Gehna hadn’t noticed anybody having asked for it—fabulous stuff like that just seemed to happen around the Yam.

Even though she wasn’t drinking, Gehna poured for both of them to put some distance in time between herself and the Yam’s openly expressed affection. How does she just come right out and say things like that? I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry. Those three are the hardest to say. The Yam’s family was a large, raucous bunch that fought easily and made up just as fast. They cursed, they cried, they touched each other in passing. Gehna couldn’t remember a time when her own family had shared a meal that wasn’t heavy with the weight of things unsaid. She both envied, and was embarrassed by, Yamini’s quick and easy demonstrativeness. They’d been close long enough for the other girl to sense Gehna’s discomfort.

‘Aww, did the widdle girl feel shy?’ The Yam grabbed Gehna’s hand and caressed it. ‘I weally weally wuv you, you widdle widdle—’

They did the beaver-fight thing again after Gehna jerked her hand back. The Yam swallowed half a margarita and wiped her mouth. ‘Right. Moving on to important matters. Did you ever bang that guy? Your brother’s friend. Imraan? No, it was something else. Eram? Eram, that’s the one. Did you hit that yet?’

Gehna shook her head in disbelief.

‘What? What’d I say?’ the Yam said.

‘Five minutes. Not five fucking minutes in the door and already you’re talking about boys. If this were a movie scene, we would’ve been panned by the critics for flunking the Bechdel test.’

‘Pfft! Bechdel shmeckdel. Dat Hollywood need to start writing strong female characters and paying dey lead actresses same as dey men. Until dat day come, ain’t stickin’ no scene in no movie with coupla white girls discussing menstrual cycles or whatever gonna change shit.’

Gehna didn’t disagree with her about the need for stronger roles for women, but she also thought that basic standards like the Bechdel were important because they forced people to pay attention to what was missing. She chose to let it go. The Yam spent most of her evenings in a stuffy law library, so who could blame her for wanting to keep it light? Talking about sex was fun. Talking about feminist perspective, not so much.

‘What I wanna know,’ the Yam continued, ‘is did you get gone down upon? That Eram boy seem like he the sensitive type that would enjoy going way down to coochie town.’

‘How would you know? You haven’t even met him.’

‘No doubt, no doubt, but he came with you when you told your parents. How dat go by the way? The she-wolf rip you a new one?’