Wedding Blues #5
“Because despite the way this situation came about, I don’t believe I’m okay with you having a second wife or raising someone else’s child.” Her hands were clasped in front of her with an air of unflappability refusing to give me any more of her emotions.
“You would take out your anger on an innocent baby?” Another dig. One meant to get her angry enough to be honest at how much things had changed with us. I might not have wanted to show my cards to my friends but I wanted her to at least be honest with me.
“Of course not. I’ve lived that pain; I wouldn’t inflict it on anyone else.”
“So then what are you saying?”
She balled her fists trying to get herself under control but I knew she couldn’t.
“I’m saying that I’m not okay with having some other woman be used for labor to further your goals all because she’s beholden to a capitalist system.
You literally want to rent a woman’s womb all on the off chance that mine doesn’t work. That doesn’t seem messed up to you?”
“Not if she’s willing.”
“Okay, fair. And then what? You pry a baby that she carried in her body out of her arms? How is that fair to either of them? It’s not. She might have feelings and emotions attached to that baby and it wouldn’t be fair to deprive her of her child.”
“You aren’t asking the right questions.”
She threw her hands up in frustration but continued to play along. “What is the right question?”
“The pertinent question is do I even want to have kids?” My response hung in the air and I could admit that I wasn’t sold on the idea of kids or no kids. I’d never seen myself as a husband so I was taking one new revelation of life at a time.
“So you’re really trying to tell me you don’t.” She didn’t believe me. Still felt as though I were going to be everything she feared given enough time.
“Why must it always be so combative when we speak?” Her head dipped and her fingers stroked the skin of her forehead like she were trying to ward off a headache.
“That question, coming from you? And you don’t see the irony?”
“I must really love my family and my country.” She muttered under breath but it wasn’t low enough for me not to catch it.
“Do I need to know why you’re saying that?”
She rolled her eyes but then smiled sweetly. It was fake as hell. “You already know the reason. I must really have a large martyr’s bone in body if I’m willing to endure the madness that is a marriage to you.”
“I’m madness now?”
“You’re maddening that’s for sure. And that’s putting it mildly.” She emphasized her words not backing down from proving to me I was on her nerves.
“Was that mild or was that a little harsh?”
She glared at me silently and I was sure this conversation was going to take us back the few steps that we’d gained but it felt necessary for us to be something more than two people trying so hard to be together but apart.
“I wonder if you make everyone else that you encounter as exasperated as you make me?”
I scoffed because she’d never seen me in rare form. “I’m pretty sure I do. Am I supposed to care?”
“No. Of course not. God forbid you have an inkling of good manners or being well-bred. That would be crazy.”
I bristled at the way she spoke about me something that always rubbed me wrong because of how my parents’ relationship was. “I’m not a gotdamn horse or show pony.”
She looked down her nose at me wanting to say something hurtful but keeping her wits since we had to live together. “Indeed. So I won’t be thinking you have manners or any of the sort. Now we were discussing children. Do you want them?”
“I haven’t really given them much thought.” I shrugged without emotion, which only further pissed her off.
“That’s… that’s not what you just said!”
“No. I told you that you weren’t asking the right questions. I never gave the idea of fatherhood any thought because I never entertained the idea of getting married.”
Her hands went to grip her hair but she stopped herself from making such an obvious display of frustration.
Asha took a deep breath to compose herself a task I was enjoying watching her do.
Seeing her riled turned me back into an emotionally immature teenager.
I delighted in upsetting her carefully controlled composure.
“That’s two entirely different issues.”
“No, it’s not. In the Consortium, the precursor to fatherhood is always marriage. A wedding and a union. You can’t have one without the other.”
She crossed her arms ready to challenge my declaration. “And if in your wild exploits you would’ve gotten pregnant, what are the consequences? Death and disposal?”
I propped my head up ready for the backlash of what I was about to say. “She would’ve needed to be vetted or yeah, disposed of.”
“You would’ve killed someone because of your own wayward penis?” She looked down at my lap with annoyance but she couldn’t disguise the desire in her eyes.
Wayward indeed.
“No. That was a joke.”
Asha rolled her eyes at my words and even I could tell it would never be funny to her. “Bloody poor taste.”
“Maybe. But that’s also why my dick is highly selective and Plan B’s are something that are always used as precaution afterward. I’m not a fool.”
She didn’t know that I had few people who could say they’d graced my bed. I had issues with relationships and was often too busy to be bothered with trying to seek one out. In the military, it was a quick romp here with someone that also had too much to lose to get pregnant.
“I’ve never taken one.”
My eyes traveled from the top of her head to toes of her perfectly manicured feet. Strong legs, kissable ankles and skin I knew was silky soft were displayed beneath the hem of the cream-colored linen of her dress. “Really? Imagine that.”
“Maybe you already knew that I might be barren.” Her gaze was suspicious testing my honesty and she couldn’t discern it by simply looking at me.
I huffed a laugh because she must’ve forgotten how this all got started.
“I didn’t even know your name until I walked in your office.
Besides, thinking you might not be able to simply because you’ve been celibate for a decade and having a clinical diagnosis are two separate things. I thought you said you were a doctor.”
“You’re insulting my degrees now. Fair enough. I had severe abdominal damage from a situation I was in.”
“You were raped.” I spoke as calmly as I could, the dots to her trauma had always been there but I’d never wanted to put that hell on anyone. Especially not her.
“I was brutally beaten to within an inch of my life and tortured.” Her spine was rigid, the words crisp and efficient detached of emotion. And she never refuted my claim.
Someone has to die.
“So the damage was psychological.”
“The damage was both.” Her teeth were clenched, her body tight but I could see her withdraw within herself. Further away from me.
“Do you want to—”
She laughed and it was heavy with sadness.
“Talk about it? You haven’t earned that yet, Ori Nakoa.
You’ve gone back and forth emotionally and I would need someone who was steadfast if you want a peek into my soul.
You’re consistent with some things but refuse to let me see you.
Until then, the facade is all that you get. ”
Asha plastered a smile on her face a perfect mask of normalcy that I was more than sure hid cavernous depths of pain I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to reach.
There was nothing I could do to make it better and Asha never gave me the chance.
With a courteous dip of her head, she turned on the balls of her feet and walked out of the library.
“Something isn't right.”
Those were the first words that Asha had spoken to me in what felt like weeks but had only been a few days. That was still bad enough.
She’d gone back to that place of distant politeness taking more of her work at the university and communicating more with Alec than me. I had to force her to come in today because we had one last push to get information on the Clancy boy in order to get an arrest.
“What do you see that’s wrong?”
Asha had long since pulled her glasses off her face and she was now rubbing her eyes.
Alec looked at me like I needed to help her and I just frowned back at him, hoping he would leave it alone.
He could sense the shift and wanted me to do something more about it but I had nothing to give her.
She wanted more of me and I was unsure if I could give it.
Consistency with my emotions was a foreign concept and that was what she needed to feel secure.
She’d come from the university and had looked upset when she arrived but hadn’t bothered to give any insight to her emotional state.
“I feel like we’re right and wrong on the reasons she was killed.”
“What do you mean?” I thought it was admirable that she was open to being wrong and having her theories questioned.
“We have found no one else that fits this type of profile. No one that’s turned up with an organ missing. This doesn’t feel like the start of something bigger. It feels isolated. We tried to avoid the idea that she was target but every road seemed to lead to that.”
“An assassination?”
Her nose was wrinkled and she seemed to be thinking over Alec’s words. Weighing them to see if it fit with what was in her mind.
“Not that. Look at the victim.” Asha stood up and went to the board where we kept all of Natalie Rawlin’s information.
The first thing she did was point to the photo of the victim.
“She’s young and blonde with blue eyes. The type of girl that women are told to be.
The foundation of what white society needs to survive.
The very thing they would sacrifice to ensure it survived. ”
“Like a ritual.”