Kenney walked into Shipwreck with Shayna and me on either side of him, like he thought he was pimp of the world. When he escorted us to the same table that he and I usually sat at, I wondered for the first time if they actually reserved it for him. Drama looked over and smiled at Shayna. She smiled back and turned her twenty-four karat grin my way.

"He looks so cute up there!" she whispered, but not low enough to avoid Kenney's all-hearing ears.

"Yeah, yeah," he teased. "What about me?"

Shayna and I just looked at him and then at each other. Simultaneously we decided to ignore him and turned our attention back to Drama, who gave an upward nod to Kenney. Then Kenney rose from his seat and started walking toward the stage. Shayna and I looked back at each other in confusion. How was Kenney just going to bust in and roll up on stage like that?

"Yeah, I'd like to call my man Mo' Betta up to assist with this next one," Drama said, grinning, and chuckled when Shayna burst out laughing.

"Mo' Betta?" she asked me. I just shrugged.

"He's gonna help me out wit' a little somethin' that might take some a y'all back. And I'd like to dedicate it," he turned to us as Kenney slowly climbed the steps to the stage, "to a very beautiful young lady who told me that she only wants to be my friend today."

Shayna gasped and covered her face while Drama got a chorus of "Aws!" and "Drama, you ain't gotta be my friend!" from every other girl in the audience.

He ate it up, giving the crowd a good five minutes to heckle Shayna and praise him. I expected her to get angry, like I would have, but to my surprise she started laughing like it was the best joke she'd heard all day.

When Drama saw this, he winked at her. "But I still love you, girl. I ain't mad atchya." Then he started grinning wider and handed a microphone to Kenney, while placing his own back onto the mic stand and readjusting it.

As soon as they were situated, Kenney closed his eyes and opened his mouth as wide as he could.

"The very first tiiime..." he began, "that I saw your brown eyes..."

The entire audience went wild. One girl jumped up, almost knocking her man over and screamed, "No he didn't!" Shayna and I couldn't stop laughing.

"Your lips said hello and I said hi," Kenney continued to sing.

Drama harmonized the "hello" and then joined in. "I knew right then you were the one..." He looked right over at Shayna, whose smile instantly froze.

"What is he doing?" she asked me through clenched teeth, never once taking her eyes away from Drama.

"I'd say a heck of a good job! Who knew they could sing?"

Those boys got me that night. Sure Kenney was always goofing around acting like he could sing, but who knew that all this time he really could sing and was just acting like he couldn't? I couldn't believe my ears. The two of them sounded just like that group Shai, singing all four parts of the song. They even remembered all the words! Every last one. Nobody remembered all the words to that song by then. It was crazy.

I looked over at Shayna. She was so totally in love.

I knew it.

Ah well, I thought to myself. Another one bites the dust.

Kenney may have been able to sing, but he should have left the high notes to someone else. His hilarious falsetto brought me out of my thoughts. It was all I could do not to fall for "my guy," too. Because, as you've probably already guessed, I've always been a sucker for a man who knows how to put on a good show.

"And if I ehhhv...." Kenney was singing his little heart out, "...fall in love with you...ooh, ooh, ooh..."

Drama joined in. "I will be sure that the la-dy is truuuue..." Well, maybe they didn't remember all the words.

"And if I ehh..." Kenney again with that opera signing. Those two had the girls fanning themselves by now.

"...ver find a looooooove so truuuuuuuuue...ooh, ooh, ooh..." You better believe Drama was going to make this song last as long as possible. "I will be sure that the lady's just like yooooouuuuuu-oooooohhhhhh!!!!!!!!"

By the time the boys were done dragging out that last note, they had everyone in the room jumping to their feet. It was like Showtime at the Apollo in Hampton, VA that night. I looked over at Shayna. She and I were the only ones still sitting. I think we were both too dumbfounded to move. Eventually we did get up, though, just as the applause began to die down.

Then, right when Drama put his mic down and we thought we were safe, Kenney stepped front and center. Shayna and I quickly sat back down. "Yeah, I'd like to dedicate this one to someone special, too."

"Aw shoot," Shayna said grinning.

"Aw shoot is right," I whispered to her. "Kenney's about to embarrass the hell out of somebody. Let's act like he's not talking to me."

Shayna saw the mischievous glint in "Mo' Betta's" eyes and agreed. We leaned into the table like we were talking about something else, but that only made Kenney talk louder.

"I call this...She Drinks Too Damn Much." He tried to hold back a chuckle as the bass player started picking out chords and Drama began beat boxing into the mic.

Shayna started tearing up, she was trying so hard not to laugh, and finally shook her head apologetically. "Sorry girl. I gotta hear this."

I graciously flipped her off, and then Kenney, nice and high so he could see it, then tried to sink as far under the table as I could get without leaving the chair.

"She drinks too much," Kenney began. He was flowing, but I think he was making up the words as he went along. I wondered how Drama knew that Kenney was about to start freestyling and needed help. "What's up wit' baby girl Acts like she can hold her liquor Ends every night sicker and sicker She needs a hug Needs some love Needs to know she could fly like a dove If she tried..."

Suddenly, I wasn't laughing. What was this fool trying to say?

"...I could have cried When I saw the sistah Dropped off on the side Of the road Brotha told her to walk Her ass home..."

"Uh, maybe he's not talking about you," Shayna said doubtfully.

"Better not be." I shot Kenney a dirty look.

But, of course, he just kept right on going. "...after he treated her like a ho One thing's fo' sho' Never woulda happened If she'd let me through the do'..." He paused for effect and grinned out at some hoochie sending him silent panties from a table in the middle of the room. "...to her heart From the start We'd never part..."

That's about when I tuned him out. He was up there for another few minutes, long enough to pass himself off as the kind of guy that every girl should have been with in the first place, and then finally took his seat. I wouldn't look at him.

"I can't believe you guys sang If I Ever Fall In Love Again!" Shayna whispered as soon as Kenney sat down. "What were we? Like middle school when that song came out?"

"Somethin' like that." Kenney looked over at me. "Yeah, Drama...he's a fool, mayne."

We both laughed. "You were up there too, son." I countered.

"Yeah, but I was freestylin', what we always do. Drama's ass," he chuckled and readjusted his super throwback Kangol, "that fool had me singing lovesick puppy songs from the 90s."

"And we loved it," Shayna said quickly and stressed the word "we."

"Yes," I looked over at her, "but we did not appreciate that 'drinks too much' crap you came with after that."

Kenney laughed and laughed, but he didn't say anything else about it. After the last "up and coming" did his thing on the mic and most of the audience had filed out, we finally left, too. Drama took Shayna's hand on the way to the car.

"So...did you like it?"

"Oh yeah," she answered breezily. Then she looked over at him. "But...just because I'm holding your hand doesn't mean I changed my mind."

"Not yet," Drama nodded with a smile. "Not yet."

Shayna put her other hand on his arm and acted like she was pushing him away, but I knew her well enough to know that she was actually feeling the muscle rippling just beneath his shirt. Then she laughed flirtatiously. "Arrogant! You make me sick!" She snatched her hand away from his and stepped to the side. "Get away from me!" Drama just laughed and grabbed her hand again.

Kenney and I didn't have too much to say to each other when he took me home. Shayna rode home with Drama. I finally did ask Kenney, however, how they both managed to have cars on campus, being freshman.

"All in the smile, baby girl," he drawled. "All in the smile." Then he squinted at the dorm as we pulled into the parking lot, like he couldn't see, and pulled his glasses out of the glove compartment.

His hand accidentally brushed against my knee when he did it, which was probably the whole reason that he all of a sudden needed his glasses, but I tried to laugh it off. "Thanks for taking me Kenney."

"Did you have fun?"

"I always do." We smiled at each other a second too long before I gave him a quick hug and hopped out of the car to meet Shayna at the back door. We always went through the back door, since it was usually rigged to stay unlocked.

When we got up to our room, there were about five voicemails. All but one of them was from Collin.

"What's up with this guy?" Shayna asked as she handed me the phone to listen.

"I don't know..." I involuntarily smiled at the first message.

"I think a better question is...what's up with you? You like him now or something?"

Hanging up the phone, I decided that I had to tell somebody the truth. Why not Shayna? "Yeah," I sighed. "I always liked him. I was just mad at him."

"For what?"

"Oh," I shrugged. "Just some tenth grade stuff."

"Tenth grade?"

"Yeah, remember? He's the one who used to live across the street from me back home. We used to spend every day together every summer." I smiled wistfully.

She smiled back. "Looks like I'm not the only one in lo..."

I quickly snapped back to reality. "In what? Not the only one in what?"

"Nothing." Shayna picked up a Newsweek and started to read. When she felt my gaze still on her, she put the magazine down, grabbed her stuff and headed for the shower.

I decided to leave her alone about it...although we would get back to the whole Drama and, apparently, "in love" situation later.

Somehow, I ended up returning Collin's phone call. This was a first. I don't know why I did it, but as soon as I heard his voice and the reaction he had to me calling him, I knew that he knew he had me. But it was too late. Once a boulder starts rolling off a cliff, you can't stop it. There was nothing I could do but roll off the cliff with it. Incidentally, it wasn't that hard for him to get me to meet him for dinner at the waterfront the next night.

I was expecting a bag of fast food or something typical like that when I met him out there, but I should have known better. I also should have known better than to fall for the candle lit picnic that he had spread out when I found him waiting for me by the sea. He had always been the type to go all out when he was trying to win anybody over. Not just me.

But I did fall for it, and he knew I would. I always did. I tried to play it off like I wasn't impressed when he gave me his jacket as the wind shifted, and I tried to look the other way every time I was almost captivated by those deep, candy coated eyes. I tried not to let his words land directly on my heart when he told me again that he was sorry, and that he had never stopped loving me, and that he would always be available to me for whatever I needed him to do. But I couldn't...and I was...and they did...and...he got me, y'all. He. got. me. I'm talkin' fairy tale, meant to be, don't know why I was trippin' head over heels movie-style in love with this fool. I mean, he got me.

Again.

But then...

My dumbass had to go and tell Kenney about it the next day. I don't know why I couldn't just tell Collin how I felt about him, instead of trying to play hard to get and running to tell everyone but him. I guess deep down...way in the back of my mind, I knew that I shouldn't get back with him, and I just wanted somebody else to tell me so.

"Hmm..." was all Kenney said.

"So...what do you think?"

"About what?"

"About all that...picnic and chivalrous stuff."

"Did he kiss you?"

"None of your business. What does that have to do with anything?"

Kenney looked away, and then looked back at me, "So...did he?"

"No."

I peeped that he was trying to hide the fact that maybe he was wrong about the guy. But at the same time, he kind of also knew he was right.

"Well...?"

"I think..." he chose his words carefully. "He's trying to get you back."

"I already know that."

"Then what?"

"I mean...what do you think about me doing that?"

"Getting back with him?"

"Yeah."

He looked at me like that was the dumbest question he'd ever heard.

"Why would you even ask me that when you already know what I think?"

"Sorry." I looked away.

Kenney, true to form, was getting more pissed by the minute just listening to this high school nonsense. It was my own fault, really. I knew what I was doing before I even started the conversation.

"You're grown. Do whatever you want to. You already know how I feel about it. Whatever happens...that's on you."

"Yeah, maybe you're right."

Kenney shook his head in disbelief and sighed loudly. What else could he do?

He had already told me a hundred and one times that he didn't trust the guy. Now here I was coming to him with some bull like this. Kenney deserved better than for me to take his opinion and throw it back in his face, like it didn't even matter what he said one way or the other, and I knew it.

We didn't talk very much the last few weeks of school. Then again, neither did Collin and I. I tried to avoid him at all costs, while it seemed that Kenney was doing the same to me.

I realized that maybe it was the other way around and that I was avoiding Kenney, though, when he walked up to me one day while I was sitting on the yard, watching families reunite to bring their now more mature and experienced sons and daughters back home.

"Hey stranger," he said and sat down next to me.

"Hi Kenney."

"So...what's up with the 'tude? You still mad at me for telling the truth or what?"

I smiled at him. "Naw. You started trippin' first."

He put an indignant hand to his heart. "Me? No ma'am, I did not..." Then he gave in first, as usual, and stuck his hand out. "Truce?"

I shook it. "Truce."

"I missed you."

"I missed you, too. Don't ever snap on me like that again."

"Then don't ever start asking me dumbass questions like that again." He retorted.

"Ok. I won't."

"Promise?"

"Promise." We shook on it. "So, when is your family coming to get you?"

"Oh..." he shook his head indifferently. "I'm not...leaving 'til...next month." I knew him well enough to know when he was pulling answers out of thin air. "I decided to stay with my Aunt Jasmine for a while, help her run the club. Plus, I hear she's got this new boyfriend. Need to keep him on his toes."

"The usual, then?" He chuckled. I shook my head. "Kenney, you're such a blocker."

"Only when it comes to the women that I love." When I looked over at him, he blinked at me absentmindedly and stood up. "Here's my aunt's number." He leaned over to write the number down in my notebook. "Call me sometime."

I tore a sheet out and wrote my parents number down for him. "No, you call me."

He smiled. "I might." Then he gave me a bear hug. "Be safe."

"Ok. You too."

He took my hand. "No, I mean it. Be safe."

"I will."

"Promise?"

I looked up at him and smiled reassuringly. "I promise."