CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARIELLE
At twelve forty-seven on the first night of being twenty, I was in a drugstore wearing a black birthday dress and holding three pregnancy tests like one of them might tell me something nicer than the others.
Kye stood beside me in heels, reading boxes.
“This one says six days sooner,” she said.
“Sooner than what?”
“Your bad decisions catching up.”
“Can you be serious?”
“I am serious. This one got a digital screen. Words feel less disrespectful than lines.”
Nae reached around us and picked up a pink box. “Get two kinds.”
“You think one might lie?” I asked.
“I think you’re gonna take another one no matter what the first says.”
She knew me too well.
Jori had left the club before I told anybody. Nae had been getting ready to go because her mother kept Amir, and Kye was already watching me every time I turned down a drink.
I made it through the first hour at the club before the bass, heat, and sweet smell of hookah made my stomach roll.
Cam noticed me sitting.
“You good?” he asked.
“Shoes hurt.”
He offered to have somebody bring my flats from the van.
I told him no, then told him I was going home with the girls because I had a headache. His disappointment lasted exactly long enough for me to feel guilty.
“You sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
He kissed my forehead. “Text me when you get in.”
I didn’t tell him my period was late.
The cashier at the drugstore looked at the tests, then at my dress and birthday sash.
“Happy birthday,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Kye put gum, chips, and a bottle of wine on the counter.
Nae took the wine off. “Read the room.”
“It’s for me.”
“It’s one in the morning and you driving.”
Kye put it back without arguing.
That scared me more than the tests.
We went to her salon because it was closer than my house and empty. The hallway lights buzzed. Inside the suite, the ring light and mirrors made everything too bright.
I carried the bag into the small employee bathroom while Kye cleaned a piece of hair from the sink like the health department had chosen that moment to arrive.
Nae came in with me.
“You want me to stay?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That means yes.”
The directions shouldn’t have felt complicated.
Pee. Cap. Wait.
I read them four times.
My hands shook so badly, I dropped the wrapper.
Nae picked it up without comment.
“I took the pill,” I said.
“I know.”
“Like right away.”
“I know.”
“What if it didn’t work?”
“Then, we deal with what’s true. Not what if.”
I sat on the closed toilet after taking the test. Nae set a timer for three minutes and placed it face down on the counter.
“What did you do when you saw yours?” I asked.
“Cried.”
“Because you were scared?”
“Because I knew my life was about to belong to more than me.”
“That sounds scary.”
“It was.”
“Do you regret it?”
Her head lifted. “No.” Then, she added, “That don’t mean it was easy. Loving Amir and missing who I might’ve been can exist at the same time.”
I looked at my knees.
Nobody said things like that online. Mothers were either grateful or miserable. Strong or struggling. Good or selfish. The world liked one feeling at a time.
“What if I’m not ready?”
“You probably not.”
I looked up.
She shrugged. “Most people ain’t. Ready ain’t the only question.”
The timer went off.
I didn’t move.
Nae reached for the test, then stopped. “You want to?”
“No.”
“You want me to?”
“No.”
“So, we just gonna pay twenty-two dollars to let it decorate the counter?”
A laugh broke out of me and turned into a sob before it finished.
Nae pulled me against her.
“Come on,” she murmured. “You ain’t by yourself.”
I wiped my face and turned the test over.
One line.
Negative.
Air left my chest in a sound that wasn’t quite relief.
Nae watched me carefully. “How you feel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all you got?”
“What you want me to tell you to feel?”
I looked at the test again.
Negative.
The word should’ve settled everything. Instead, something inside me kept moving.
“I didn’t want to be pregnant,” I said.
Nae nodded.
“But when I thought I might be...” I couldn’t finish.
“You pictured it.”
I pressed my lips together.
A baby with Cam’s eyes. My mother screaming, then buying tiny clothes. Cam putting his hand on my stomach. Us becoming something too permanent to question.
The thought embarrassed me because it wasn’t really about a baby.
“I’m stupid,” I whispered.
“No, you twenty.”
“That’s not better.”
“It ain’t always.”
Kye knocked on the door. “Y’all alive?”
Nae opened it.
Kye looked at my face, then the test. Her shoulders lowered.
“Negative?”
I nodded.
She came in and crouched in front of me. “Okay.”
“What if it’s too early?”
“Take the other one in two days if your period don’t come.”
“You read the box?”
“I read all the boxes. I’m basically an obstetrician now.”
Nae leaned against the sink. “That is not how that works.”
“Let me have credentials.”
For a few minutes, we stayed crowded in the tiny bathroom. Nae on the counter. Kye on the floor. Me holding a negative test like it had personally confused me.
“I think part of me thought a baby would make everything solid,” I said.
Kye’s expression changed.
“A baby don’t make a man sit still,” Nae said. “It just gives you somebody else to carry while he moves.”
Kye looked at her. “Damn.”
“What? It’s true.”
“And if he already standing still,” Kye said quietly, “you shouldn’t need a baby to keep him there.”
I studied her face. “Why you keep looking at me like that tonight?”
“Like what?”
“Sad.”
“I’m tired.”
“No.”
Kye stood and straightened her dress. “You want me to cry happy tears because you not pregnant?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Ari, your hormones doing too much. Don’t interrogate me in my own bathroom.”
She tried to make it sound like a joke.
It didn’t land.
Nae stepped between the tension. “Everybody tired. Let’s get her home.”
I put the second test in my purse.
My phone rang as we walked back into the suite.
Cam.
I answered on FaceTime.
He stood somewhere near the club’s back hallway. Music shook through the phone.
“You left without saying bye,” he said.
“I said bye.”
“You kissed me and disappeared.”
“I didn’t feel good.”
His eyes moved over my face. “You been crying?”
Kye turned away.
“My head hurt.”
“You want me to come?”
The offer warmed me, even though I knew he was still working.
“No. I’m going home.”
“Text me.” He smiled. “Happy birthday again.”
“Thank you.”
When the call ended, I looked at Kye. “Can I ask you something?”
She froze with her back to me.
“If Cam ever did something and you knew, you’d tell me, right?”
Nae went still.
Kye turned slowly.
There are moments you didn’t understand until later. A pause too long. A face trying to become the right face. Somebody deciding who they’re willing to hurt now and who they’re willing to hurt later.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’d tell you.”
I held her eyes. “Promise?”
Her throat moved. “I promise.”
I believed her because she had been my friend longer than Cam had been my man.