CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ARIELLE
My period came in the fitting room at work Sunday afternoon.
I had been helping a customer choose between two dresses when a cramp folded through my lower stomach. Five minutes later, I stood beneath fluorescent light staring at a red stain in my underwear and trying to understand why relief could hurt.
I wasn’t pregnant.
I was safe from a decision I wasn’t ready to make.
I should’ve smiled.
Instead, I sat on the closed toilet and cried so quietly, the customer outside asked if I had found her size.
“One second,” I called.
My voice sounded normal.
I cleaned myself up with paper towels, texted my coworker to bring a pad, and opened Cam’s messages.
ME: My period came.
He answered before I left the stall.
CAM: Told you. You stressed yourself for nothing.
A second message appeared.
CAM: You good now?
I typed yes.
Deleted it.
Typed, I guess.
Deleted that too.
ME: Yeah.
The customer bought the black dress. My manager asked if I could stay an extra hour because somebody called out. I said yes because going home meant sitting with too many things that had no clean place to go.
At five thirty, my mother came into the boutique carrying a heating pad, pads, pain medicine, and a ginger ale.
I stared at her. “Why are you here?”
“You texted me you started.”
“I didn’t ask you to bring a care package to my job.”
“You also didn’t ask me to push your big head into this world, but here we are.”
My coworker laughed from behind the register.
I took the bag. “Thank you.”
My mother looked at my face. “You thought you were pregnant?”
I glanced toward the customer near the jeans. “Can you lower your whole voice?”
“Come outside.”
“I’m working.”
“You got a break. I asked your manager.”
“Why would you—”
“Outside, Arielle.”
At twenty, my mother could still make my government name sound like a court order.
We sat in her car behind the shopping center. I held the heating pad against my stomach while she watched me avoid her eyes.
“You took a test?”
“Friday. Negative.”
“And, now, your period came.”
“Yes.”
“So, why you look like somebody died?”
I stared through the windshield. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not true. You know. You just don’t like the answer.”
I hated when mothers acted like they had known you longer than you had known yourself.
“Part of me pictured it,” I said. “Not being pregnant. Just... if I was.”
She waited.
“Cam and me being a family. Everybody being happy. Him having to be sure about me.”
My mother looked down at her hands.
“A baby don’t make a man sure,” she said. “It makes a baby. The man still gets to be whatever he already was.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I shifted the heating pad. “Nae said basically the same thing.”
“Because Nae got the receipt.”
Her name brought Saturday back into the car.
“She used the trip money.”
“For daycare and rent.”
I didn’t ask how she knew. She had probably gotten a call from Nae’s mother before I reached the end of the block.
“She lied to me for two days.”
“That part was wrong.”
“Everybody keeps saying that part like the reason erases the rest.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then, why do I feel mean for being mad?”
“Because you love her. Loving people makes simple feelings complicated.”
I looked at her. “You got a quote calendar in your purse?”
“No. I’m fifty-one. Life been beating sense into me longer than you been alive.”
I smiled despite myself.
She reached across the console and moved one curl from my cheek.
“You can understand why she did it and still not trust her the same today. Both can be true.”
Too many things were true at once.
Nae loved me and lied to me.
Cam knew me better than anybody and still made me feel alone.
Kye had been my safest friend since seventh grade and was asking me to wait until Monday to learn something that happened in senior year.
My phone vibrated in my lap.
A message request from Sade.
SADE: I tried to let your friend handle it. Monday at noon I’m sending you everything. I’m sorry you had to find out like this.
My mother saw the name before I locked the screen.
“Who is Sade?”
“Somebody who works with Cam.”
“Why she apologizing?”
I opened the message again.
There were no pictures attached.
No explanation.
Just a clock placed over my head by a woman I had met once.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Call Kye.”
“She said Monday.”
“Call your man.”
I did.
Cam answered from his car, “What’s up?”
“Why did you tell me to ask Kye about senior year?”
His eyes moved away from the screen. “She finally say something?”
“No. You did.”
“I said ask her why she so invested in my relationship.”
“You said senior year.”
“Ari, I’m not doing this shit over FaceTime while I’m driving.”
“Pull over.”
He laughed like I was being cute.
I didn’t smile.
His expression changed. “What did Sade send you?”
“How do you know she sent me anything?”
The car noise filled the silence.
Cam recovered. “Because she’s been threatening to blow up my phone all weekend.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her we’re not working together anymore. She took it personal.”
“She said she has something to show me.”
“Then, ask yourself why she’s waiting until Monday.”
“Kye is waiting until Monday too.”
His jaw shifted. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“Kye’s been jealous of us since the beginning.”
Kye doing my hair before my first date with him.
Kye helping me choose his Christmas gift.
Kye holding my shoulders in an elevator while I tried not to cry.
“Jealous how?”
“Ask her.”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m telling you this is some old teenage mess she should’ve dealt with years ago. Don’t let her use Sade to make herself feel better.”
My stomach cramped again. “Did you sleep with Kye?”
Cam’s face went still.
Not an answer.
An answer would’ve come faster.
“Ari—”
I ended the call.
He called back immediately.
I declined it.
Then again.
Declined.
The third call became a text.
CAM: Don’t let bitter people rewrite your life.
I stared at the sentence until my mother took the phone from my hand.
“Did he answer you?”
“No.”
“Then, he did.”
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
“I have to go back to work.”
“Baby—”
“I have to go.”
I took my phone, the heating pad, and the bag. Before I opened the car door, my mother caught my wrist.
“You don’t have to look pretty while this hurts.”
I laughed because the alternative was making a sound I couldn’t control. “I’m at work.”
“I’m not talking about your face.”
I pulled away gently.
Inside the boutique, my coworker asked if I was okay.
“Cramps,” I said.
That lie was true enough to survive the rest of my shift.
At eight twelve, I stood in the stockroom surrounded by boxes and opened a picture from senior year.
Kye, Jori, Nae, and me on somebody’s basement steps after homecoming. Cam stood behind us with one hand on my shoulder.
Kye stood on his other side.
I zoomed in until the picture broke into pixels.
Nothing looked wrong.
I typed to Kye.
ME: Did you sleep with him?
The message delivered.
She read it four minutes later.
No answer came.
I turned off comments on every birthday picture with Cam in it.
I didn’t delete them.
Deleting felt like admitting something before I knew exactly what had happened.
At nine, Kye finally responded.
KYE: Monday. In person. Please.
I read the message while blood cramped through my body and the life I had imagined kept changing shape without my permission.
Monday was less than thirteen hours away.
It felt like cruelty to make time move that slowly.