"Crushed-velvet papi, ehn, gyaldem can't rest around you!!" I was happily teasing Boyd who'd just changed into his final form for dinner.

He was doing a little dance to my taunting.

"Fine boy! Finish us! We are your vegetables!" I mockingly cry at him as he poses and then decides to do a spin

The fact that we'd won the same shade of red... great minds!

We'd dressed up for the gram, don't judge us. I had twelve followers to flex this reunion for! A loud crash in the kitchen interrupts us, Boyd stopping mid-spin

He turns to me as if to check that I'd been expecting a loud crash in the kitchen and then motions me to stay behind him as he heads for the kitchen cautiously. I was hoping I hadn't left the kitchen window open again but my neighbour with the pretty cat had moved out and I couldn't think of another animal that could've wandered in. I grab a candlestick, chucking the candle off and following Boyd.

He was mad protective, and he'd already asked if I'd heard something about three times before. I don't know how dangerous California was but it was probably a bird or something. He opens the kitchen door with a bang, something coming towards him so fast I don't catch it. He grabs it mid-air, growling as he throws it right back. I'm a bit shaken by that, crouching in fear. We had home invaders! The terrifying sound of a wounded animal fills the kitchen. Boyd had hit it!

"Ya fucking walloper!!!" I hear an old woman screech, her voice mangled in pain (you fucking dick!)

It all happened so fast I was half expecting my kitchen to go up in flames, instead all that's there is the woman's anguished groans . Boyd must have hit her something ferocious. She was proper vexed! I start thinking of all the neighbours I might have with a senile nan who'd maybe wandered into my kitchen.

"He caught me in my baws the radge wee shite!" The woman was crying, clearly at someone else who whispers something back (in my balls the crazy shit)

Boyd looks at me in question, I shake my head. I wasn't hiding an elderly woman in my kitchen. I didn't know for the life of me who it could be. It clearly wasn't my grandmother...

"Who the fuck are you?" Boyd demands, his demeanor was eerily calm as if he was talking to a petulant relative he was about to put in place

Nan had five seconds before he harmed her proper. If she knew what was good for her she'd out herself. Boyd was of the streets!

"Get tae fuck, arsepeice!" The woman sobs, obviously deeply wounded and bereft (fuck off you anus!)

"Who the fuck are you?!" I hear the familiar voice of a rinsed tonk reply, forcing me to move from behind Boyd to the scene before me, my candlestick held tightly in my grip

I knew that voice... My grip on my candlestick lightens as I flip on the kitchen lights, just to be sure I hadn't gone insane. Would you believe it, Hervé was curled up on my kitchen floor moaning like an animal at the slaughter, his face all the colours and his balls cuddled into his hands... and standing a few metres from him, Luca was holding a sieve... a bloody sieve!

My kitchen was in shambles! My utensils, fruit and some decor pieces were strewn on the ground, just all over the place. Unless I was imagining all this! I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

"Hervé?" Boyd wonders

"Mxm! Why didn't you say so? I thought you was a wasteman! I was fixing to knock you up a bit innit?" Boyd announces, moving towards poor injured Hervé

"Boyd?" Hervé cries weakly

Wait... how does Boyd know Hervé?

"And Lucas... boy I would've murdered you innit! I thought you guys were royalty bruv! What're you doing sneaking into baby girl's kitchen like dat?" Boyd adds, dapping up an equally shocked Luca who'd lost some function in his mouth

Boyd knew him too? WHAT WAS GOING ON??

"It was his idea that jobby-flavoured fart lozenge!" Hervé announces, pointing a strained finger at Luca, who takes the opportunity to lean against the counter and turn his gaze to me as if he'd caught me in some kind of idiotic ploy and not the other way around (shit flavoured suppository)

"Hey baby..."Luca coos, lowering his dangerous mighty sieve that he was going to filter through bad vibes with, his eyebrow raised

"Sorry to have...ruined your...intimate... dinner there." He adds darkly, he pushes his hair off his face, pushing past the shock of seeing Boyd and the injury Hervé had incurred to make some kind of point

I'm... speechless. I didn't know what to say to this absolute nutter. He'd clearly lost his entire mind.

"Baby??!!" Boyd demands, dropping the frozen peas he was handing to Hervé

He turns a wide inquisitive gaze to me, as if to warn me that this better not be what he thinks this is. I open my mouth but still nothing comes out, not even a squeak. I didn't even know where to start with all this...

"Funke's never mentioned you." Boyd is saying to Luca in a rather menacing way that if you ask me is a bit dramatic

Luca is about to say something back when the doorbell rings. I don't miss a beat, turning for the door in the hopes of having a few seconds to myself to decide if I was angry or utterly tickled. I had so many questions! How did they get up here? Had Hervé actually attempted to take Boyd out using a Lemon? What was Luca's plan for the sieve he was gripping onto? Why were they even here? What had Luca even tried to accuse me of? How did they all know each other? Would Hervé recover from his injury?

I'm still grappling with the situation in the kitchen when I open the door to Mum, Aunt Simon and Lola standing there. Did this apartment block have security at all or was I just paying for the pigeons that watched me through my kitchen window?

"Surprise!" They chime, as if I could take any more surprises tonight!

"Lola had the brilliant idea to tell security we were coming to see a free apartment, otherwise you'd have gotten your surprise fetching us from the ground floor, Hallelujah!" Aunt Simon says, pushing her way into the apartment happily

"Is this my baby the star architect in her penthouse suite!" Mum coos lovingly, kissing my cheeks and pulling me into a hug

Lola smiles tightly at me and mentions that she's hungry but also on a diet so she hopes there's something she can eat in this my big shot house. I'm about to close the door when a harassed looking woman in a suit calls after me, warning me that she'd shown a gay couple the house underneath mine and they had sneaked off and possibly climbed into my house.

"What did they look like? Mr. Bond and Mr. Goldfinger?" I pry, holding back what I have decided is laughter

James Bond and Auric Goldfinger? Really? The two rinsed idiots really suited each other!

"Beautiful couple, both devastatingly gorgeous. Mr. Bond was blond with brown eyes, taller than Mr. Goldfinger who had dark hair blue eyes. They seemed harmless of course but you can never be too careful. They scaled out the window and got onto your balcony somehow. I've no idea why." Patricia, the realtor says

I assure her I'll look out for them, thanking her for the information as I turn back to the dinner that was bound to be a disaster. Lola and Aunt Simon ALONE were a ticking bomb, adding Hervé and Luca to the mix and then Mum and Boyd...

I consider faking my own death but then turn to my guests, who were giving themselves a tour of my lounge, and by tour I mean Aunt Simon was inspecting things and declaring them unsafe because of an article she'd read from facebook and Lola was agreeing with her as Mum sneered at them.

"Can I offer you something to drink?" I wonder as brightly as I can at them

"Water... but only room temperature...and be sure to sprinkle it with the blood of Jesus first!" Aunt Simon announces,

"Amen!" Lola agrees

"I'll help you Chupsie." Mum offers, not so much asking as she was telling me, and already heading for the kitchen before I can stop her

She reaches the kitchen door before I do, swinging it open and stepping in. I rush in after her, only catching

Hervé squeaking out "Hi Dr. Obatunde.", still on the floor

HOW DID HERVé KNOW MUM?????

"What are you doing on the floor? Boyd, what did you do to him?" Mum asks

Boyd was standing menacingly close to Luca, his fists curled. He'd clearly just turned around when the door opened. The entire thing looked like some kind of renaissance painting.

"just a little accident..." Hervé is saying as Mum looks him over and Boyd explains that it was a tiny accident

I watch Mum command the kitchen, moving Boyd to put some ice cubes together and getting me a tray with water and juice and glasses to send back out to Aunt Simon and Lola. I barely have a second to register the look of complete and utter shock on Luca's face. I'm not even sure what he's thinking, but I set the tray of beverages down and try to rush back into the kitchen.

"Have you prayed over them Funke?" Aunt Simon asks and I try to assure them both that I had in fact prayed over the bottled water and the packet juice that I purchased from a grocery using money as opposed to having been tempted to pick up for free from the back of a demon's van

When I arrive back in the kitchen, Hervé is sitting up, a pack of ice on his crotch, looking less in pain, Boyd is standing next to him, arms crossed against his chest, glaring in the direction of Mum and Luca who are putting my breakfast table back together again, chatting casually about something. I couldn't even begin to imagine what they were chatting about so I move to check on Hervé.

"And here I was thinking this was a social call." I mumble playfully at Boyd as I pat poor Hervé on the head

I should've guessed from the amount of food Boyd had been cooking that it wasn't just me and him catching up.

"There's nothing social about war." Boyd shrugs darkly, his gaze directed at Luca, who was smiling charmingly at mum

"Be nice to him." I softly chastise Boyd, Lola and Aunt Simon were already going to be enough trouble without Boyd trying to throw Luca to the lions.

"You haven't seen him work, sweets... he's...dangerous... and I AM being nice. He's alive isn't he?" Boyd replies, his gaze turning to me with concern and affection

"Hervé thinks I'm being exceptionally nice. Don't you fam?" Boyd prods poor Hervé

"Chupsie... now that you have the prince of Dundee in your kitchen you're not going to formally introduce me?" Mum suddenly asks, as if she hadn't called each person here by name

I'm guessing Hervé is the prince of Dundee. I sigh and smile at mum

"Ma, this is my friend Hervé." I state in opening, a wide gracious smile on my lips

"Hervé's been a patient of mine for a while Chupsie, I know him, and I know Boyd... I was talking about him." Mum says, pointing her eyes rather suggestively at Luca as if to say "I don't see a ring on his finger and you're just there talking to your cousin?"

It was... inevitable that I introduce Luca to my mother...but what was I supposed to say? I kind of like him but he's never heard of commitment? Even introducing him could be the thing that makes it all feel too real and tips him over the edge... I don't even know what he was doing in my kitchen in the first place! I turn briefly to Luca, hoping for some sign, but I couldn't read his face.

"Ma, that's Lucas..." I say, struggling to find the words, should I say he's an architect like me, or that we're work colleagues or that we collaborate from time to time or this was my last week working at his firm or that he's an earl?

"And how do you know Lucas sweetie?" Ma prods gently, sensing my struggle in the ways mothers did

My gaze falls to the floor and I bite my lip, trying to pick something to say, we review eating spots together, we sleep with each other, we wake up in each other's arms almost every day, we cuddle way too much sometimes as we watch trash tv and read books and slow dance and sometimes we have long baths together just talking about absolute nonsense, sometimes he's teaching me Gaelic while never actually telling me what I'm saying and other times he's driving me mad with his demands for every corner of my soul to yield to him...

"I..." I choke softly, feeling tears prick my eyes.

I take a deep breath... and sometimes he breaks into my kitchen in the middle of the night, risking his best friend's life just to accuses me of things I don't even fucking understand...

"I'm kind of in love with him..."

This was going to be a fun night.