“What about contraception? You had concerns . . .”
“No, it’s fine. It’ll be fine.” His brain thundered at him like cannon fire at his blatant disregard for the facts. 91 percent effective. Nine in a hundred couples will become parents. Aiden was a surprise. He wanted to cover his ears against the thoughts, but he tugged at her shirt instead, losing patience. “Take this off. Come on.”
“Okay,” she said gently, putting her hand over his. “Okay, I will take it off. But first, I want to hear that you’re ready to be a parent.”
He tried. He tried to force out the words that he knew were a lie, but his lips just twitched and twisted, remaining firmly shut. Ainsley smiled at him, the blush on her cheeks still high.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, pulling him down to rest his head on her chest. He lay on top of her lush body, and she held him against her. The tension he’d felt began to retreat; their hearts and their breaths synchronized, both slowing.
“You need this. You need me,” he mumbled into her shirt. “And I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” she said, stroking his hair. “I’m so very happy with you, sweetheart. I’ve never laughed so much or been fussed over with such care. Your grumpy butt is my favorite.”
“But sex . . .”
“‘But sex’ nothing, babe.” Her voice was quiet, but firm. “You’re not doing this just because I want it. That’s manipulative and cold. I don’t want that, okay? I don’t want it. Don’t want you walking around worrying that we’ve made a person too soon, stressing out over it.”
“Not just that,” he muttered. “It’s out of order.”
She was silent for a moment, and he heard the uncertainty in her voice. “Because we should get married first?”
“Yes.” He sat up, propped up on one elbow. “I’m sorry. Once I establish an order in my mind, it’s very hard to erase it.”
“I understand,” she said, bringing his palm to her lips for a soft kiss. “It’s fine. Really.”
He collapsed onto her again, burying his face into her neck. How had he lucked out, getting a partner like her? Tears stung his eyes, and he sniffled.
“Kyle, honey?”
“Our evening is ruined,” he announced, his voice thick with emotion, and he tried to clear his throat. “I’ll just go home.” He felt her cheek curve as she broke into a grin.
“Oh, don’t worry. I know how to salvage it.” That teasing lilt in her voice . . . what was she thinking? What could she possibly—oh. Wait.
“No,” he said, sitting up, looking around for his shirt.
“Oh, come on. Please?” She put her hand on his arm, fluttering her eyelashes.
“No.”
“Not all three. Just one, just the first one. You said you wanted me to be happy. This would make me very, very happy . . .”
“Why? Watching tiny, hairy men carry a dumb ring through mortal peril? How is that entertaining in the least?”
“Not all of them are tiny. Some of them are human-sized.” Ainsley sat up, her hands together in a prayer pose. “Please? Please? Please?” She modulated each repetition to a different pitch, as if trying to find a frequency he could hear. “You kind of owe me.”
Kyle pulled on his shirt and ran a hand through his hair to straighten it again. “Fine. One movie.” Ainsley tackled him back to the bed, squealing her happiness, and even though his heart warmed to see her joy, the squealing seemed excessive.
She took his face in her hands and gave him a loud smack on the cheek. “Kyle, you are going to lose your virginity tonight. Your Lord of the Rings cherry is about to be popped.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ON WEDNESDAY, AFTER school, Ainsley dropped by Bilqiis’s apartment to hang out. She hadn’t seen her much since the grocery store incident, and she wanted to find out if anything like that had happened again. She had connections in the community; she could do something about it. She set her bag on Bilqiis’s couch, then dropped herself into a chair at the kitchen table. It was quiet. Too quiet.
“Where’s Fawzia?”
“Oh.” Bilqiis carried a ceramic pot of tea to the table and set it on a folded towel. “Today, she learned some sad news. She wanted to be alone.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“One of the children in her class will have a birthday party this weekend. She invited all the class except Fawzia.”
Anger sparked hot in Ainsley’s chest. “Do the parents know? Surely they don’t condone that kind of . . .”
Bilqiis looked at her sadly, still smiling. “It is the hardest thing for me,” she said softly. “Mr. Zane is difficult, too, but this kind of hurt, exclusion . . . people she thought were her friends proving otherwise. It is harder. Hard to see her suffer. I know how she feels.”
Ainsley did a little bit, too. Not to the same extreme; her own exclusion was due to her own social stupidity . . . but Fawzia? What had she done? This sweet, energetic girl who loved to just run? What could she possibly have done to deserve being the only one not invited? She wanted to invent excuses for these parents . . . perhaps they thought their food wouldn’t be something Fawzia would like or be allowed to eat, knowing that Islam had certain dietary conventions. But really, if they’d just asked, they’d have learned that nothing they planned to serve would likely cause a problem. They just didn’t want her there. And they didn’t care if she found out that she wasn’t invited.
“May I talk to her?”
Bilqiis nodded, sipping her tea, gesturing with her head toward the hallway with the bedrooms. “Please, go ahead.”
Ainsley quietly crept down the hall and knocked on the young girl’s door.
“What, Hooyo?”
“It’s Ainsley,” she said, then remembered Bilqiis’s rules about addressing adults. “It’s Miss Buchanan.”
“Come in.”
Light from the hall flooded the floor of the dark room as she opened the door. A poster of a young Black woman wrapped in an American flag and holding an Olympic medal featured prominently above her bed. The rest of the furnishings and the plain brown sheets didn’t seem to fit Fawzia’s rainbow sense of style whatsoever, and the country-style log cabin quilt felt more appropriate for an eighty-year-old than an eight-year-old. Fawzia sat tucked in the corner of the room, clutching a unicorn pillow, her eyes puffy and red.
Ainsley sat on the edge of the bed. “Who’s that on your poster?”
Fawzia’s mouth dropped open. “Allyson Felix. You don’t know Allyson Felix, Miss Buchanan?”
“I guess not. Can you tell me about her?” Ainsley surveyed the wall; there were other pictures—some in hijab, some not, all black, all women, all athletes.
The girl hopped up, the pillow forgotten. “She went to the Olympics at eighteen and won second in the 200 meters. That’s what I want to do.”
“You want to take second?” Ainsley teased gently, and Fawzia shook her head, holding back a smile.
“I want to represent Somalia in the Olympics, even if I do it as an American. I want to be like Samia Yusuf Omar. She was sixteen.”