CHAPTER EIGHT
ARIELLE
By four eighteen, my birthday had been beautiful in every place a camera could reach.
The brunch pictures were already on my story. The flowers Cam brought sat in a vase on my dresser. The bracelet on my wrist caught the light every time I moved my hand. Under the picture of him kissing my cheek, somebody from high school had commented: Y’all really made it.
I had stared at that sentence longer than I stared at the picture.
Made it where, exactly?
I was sitting in Kye’s styling chair while she pressed a curl back into the left side of my hair.
Nae stood near the window arguing quietly with somebody from her bank.
Jori sat on the other chair in a black dress, one heel dangling from her toes and her phone held so tightly, I could see the outline of her case in her palm.
Nobody looked relaxed.
“Did the payment go through?” I asked Nae when she ended the call.
She turned around too fast. “They’re processing it manually.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the bank flagged it, I called and, now, somebody has to push it through.”
Kye’s eyes met Nae’s in the mirror.
Jori looked down at her phone.
I watched all three of them. “Why does everybody keep making faces?”
“I’m making the face God gave me,” Kye said.
“That one need a refund.”
“There she go. Twenty years old and disrespectful.”
The joke did what it was supposed to do. Nae laughed. I smiled. Jori’s mouth moved a little.
The feeling underneath it stayed.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
CAM: Car will be there at 7:15. Don’t ask where we going.
ME: What should I wear?
CAM: Clothes.
ME: I hate you.
CAM: Wear the black dress.
Kye looked over my shoulder. “He knew better than to keep playing.”
The black dress was hanging from the back of the suite door. Long sleeves, open back, fitted all the way down. I had ordered it for a different event, returned it in my mind twice, then kept it because I liked how my waist looked in pictures.
“I thought we were all riding together,” Nae said.
“We are. He sent something big enough for everybody.”
“See?” Kye held the curling iron like a microphone. “That’s what I need. A man who books transportation. Trell would send a text saying, ‘follow me’, then run three yellow lights.”
Jori’s foot stopped swinging.
A thin yellow shadow showed beneath Kye’s makeup near her wrist when she lifted her arm. I couldn’t tell whether it was the same mark from the hot-comb story or a new one.
“Kye,” I said.
She knew what I was looking at. Her sleeve came down.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Her smile held for half a second before she turned back to my hair.
That word was moving through us like something contagious.
Nothing.
Nobody.
Handled.
I reached for my phone when another notification flashed.
PERIOD EXPECTED: 3 DAYS AGO.
I cleared it before the screen fully lit.
Nae saw anyway. Her eyes moved to mine, then away.
My chest tightened. I had spent all afternoon telling myself the same things. Three days wasn’t a pregnancy. Plan B could throw off a cycle. Stress could. Travel plans, bad sleep, a change in eating, all the things women blamed before they let themselves think the worst.
Three weeks earlier, the condom had torn.
It happened at Cam’s apartment after one of his Thursday events, on a night when we were both too awake to go to sleep and too tired to pretend we wanted to do anything responsible.
I had been standing in his kitchen eating cold wings from the container when he came behind me and put both hands on my waist.
“You got hot sauce on my shirt,” he said.
I looked down at the oversized white T-shirt I had stolen from his drawer. “Then, stop buying white shirts.”
“That is mine.”
“It lives with me emotionally.”
Cam turned me around and kissed the sauce from the corner of my mouth. I laughed into the kiss until he lifted me onto the counter.
“You laughing now,” he said.
“Because you’re dramatic.”
“And you’re in my kitchen with no panties on.”
“That was private information.”
“Not from me.”
His hand slid beneath the hem of the shirt.
The joking left my mouth first. Cam knew my body in ways that made four years feel less like time and more like practice.
He touched me slowly, watching every change in my face, making me grip the edge of the counter before he had even taken his clothes off.
“Bedroom,” I whispered.
“You walked in here bothering me.”
“Cameron.”
He smiled. “Now, you using government names.”
He carried me anyway.
In the bedroom, the city lights came through the blinds in thin silver lines. Cam laid me across his bed and pushed the shirt above my waist. His mouth followed the path his hands had started in the kitchen, and I stopped caring that my hair was wrapped or that my stomach folded when I sat up.
He made me feel wanted without asking me to pose for it.
When I pulled him back over me, he reached into the nightstand for a condom.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He rolled it on and entered me slowly, one hand braced beside my head. The first few strokes were almost lazy. Familiar. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer.
“You trying to rush me?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Birthday coming got you bossy.”
“I been bossy.”
He laughed, then changed the angle and took the joke out of me.
The headboard tapped the wall. I pressed my face into his shoulder to keep from getting us a noise complaint. Cam’s hand moved between us, and the pressure built until my whole body tightened beneath him.
I came with his name caught in my throat.
He moved faster after that, breathing hard against my ear.
Then, he stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
His body went rigid above mine.
“What?” I asked.
Cam pulled back carefully and looked down.
The condom had split along the side.
Everything warm between us turned cold.
“Did you—”
“No.” He got off the bed immediately. “I felt it.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure I didn’t finish.”
I sat up and dragged the shirt over my thighs. “Oh, my God.”
Cam knelt in front of me. “Ari, breathe.”
“Do not tell me to breathe. Go get the box.”
He checked the wrapper, the expiration date, everything that could not undo what happened.
“I’m going to the pharmacy,” he said.
“I can come.”
“No. Put some clothes on and drink water. I’ll be back.”
He returned twenty-six minutes later with Plan B, orange juice, chips, and a second pharmacy bag because he had bought another brand after reading reviews in the aisle.
“You bought two?” I asked.
“I didn’t know which one you wanted.”
Despite the fear, I laughed.
I took the pill within two hours of the condom breaking. Cam sat beside me until I finished the juice, one hand resting on my knee.
We had done what we were supposed to do after something we were not supposed to let happen.
Still, my period was late.
*****
“You good?” Nae asked.
“Fine.”
Kye clicked the curling iron off. “Look at us. A room full of liars with good hair.”
Jori’s head snapped up.
Kye looked at her through the mirror. “What? That wasn’t about you.”
“You say things just to see who reacts.”
“And you reacted.”
“Can y’all not?” I asked. “I don’t want weird energy tonight.”
“Then, stop collecting weird friends,” Nae said.
I looked at her.
She blinked, then laughed. “That was a joke. Damn. Tough room.”
Kye finished my hair, then stood back. “There. You look like heartbreak with a deposit.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It will when you post.”
I turned toward the mirror.
The woman looking back at me was exactly who I had planned to be tonight. Hair falling past my chest in soft layers. Skin warm and smooth. Lashes full without looking heavy. Gold at my ears and wrist. No sign that I had cried in an elevator less than twenty-four hours ago.
No sign that I might be pregnant.
No sign that my boyfriend’s name was sitting beside a woman’s in questions nobody wanted to answer.
I looked good enough to believe for a second.
At seven twelve, a black Sprinter van pulled in front of the suite. The inside had cream leather seats, purple lights, and a small bottle of champagne waiting in ice.
Kye climbed in first. “Oh, Cam trying not to die.”
“He planned this before last night,” I said.
“That don’t mean fear ain’t helping.”
Nae sat beside me. Jori took the seat across from us and put her phone face down on her thigh.
The driver already knew where we were going.
When we crossed into Philly, Kye poured champagne. I took one sip and passed my glass to Nae.
“You don’t like it?” she asked.
“Too sweet.”
She watched me over the rim. “You love sweet.”
“Not tonight.”
Her knee pressed against mine, a quiet question.
I shook my head once.
Not here.
Cam had reserved the upstairs room at Vela, a restaurant with low amber lights, velvet booths, and menus that didn’t list prices. My mother, aunt, two cousins, and six people from Cam’s circle were already there. A wall of pink flowers stood behind my chair with a gold TWENTY in the middle.
Everybody shouted when I walked in.
For a moment, the happiness was real enough to drown everything else.
My mother cried before I did. My aunt said I looked grown, then ruined it by wiping lipstick off my tooth with her thumb. Domo hugged me and promised he had been trying to keep Cam from posting the setup all day.
Cam came around the table last.
Black slacks. Cream sweater. Fresh cut. The same silver watch from Sade’s picture.
He looked at me like the room had emptied.
“You like it?” he asked.
I did. “I love it.”
He kissed me, slow enough for everybody to clap, and I let myself lean into him.
Dinner moved in waves of laughter, pictures, and people telling stories about me that should’ve stayed buried.
Kye told the room I once cried because a braid was thicker than the others.
My mother told them I used to change clothes three times before preschool.
Jori reminded everybody that I fought in seventh grade while screaming for somebody to get a teacher.
“I still won,” I said.
“You were crying before the first punch,” Kye said.
“And?”
“And nothing. I’m just saying, fear don’t stop you from being violent.”
Everybody laughed.
I looked around the table at the people who had known me before I learned how to pose. Kye’s head tipped back when she laughed. Nae cut her steak into pieces small enough for Amir before remembering he wasn’t there. Jori checked her phone beneath the table, then shoved it into her purse.
They were mine.
Whatever was wrong, we would fix it.
When the plates were cleared, Cam stood with his glass.
“I’m not giving a long speech,” he said.
“Thank God,” Domo muttered.
Cam ignored him. “Ari’s been acting grown since she was fifteen, so twenty probably don’t mean much to her.”
“It means I can stop hearing that joke,” I said.
“It means I’ve had almost four years to watch her become exactly who she said she was gonna be.” His eyes found mine. “She works. She goes to school. She shows up for everybody, even when she complains the whole time. She makes every room prettier, louder, and more complicated.”
My eyes burned.
Cam lifted his glass. “To my girl. I hope twenty gives you everything you keep pretending you don’t want.”
People toasted.
I smiled because he knew me.
Across the table, Kye looked down.
Jori looked at her.
The glance lasted less than a second.
It was enough.
I waited until the cake came out, the candles were blown, and everybody had their phones up.
Then, I made a wish I didn’t say out loud.
Please don’t let me be the last person to know my own life.
When I opened my eyes, Kye was watching me with tears sitting in hers.
Not birthday tears.
Guilty ones.
And, suddenly, surrounded by flowers, gold numbers, and people singing my name, I felt something inside my perfect night lean toward the edge.