She didn’t beg often, but when she did, it hit different.
I pushed back in and started riding into her again, the sounds of us filling the kitchen. I reached around and found her clit and started rubbing it.
Her whole body shuddered. “I love you,” she choked out, the words seemingly slipping out past her guard.
“Shit,” I growled, burying myself deep as I came inside her.
I kissed her shoulder as I pulled out slowly. Nairobi turned to face me, tears shimmering in her eyes. Immediately my stomach dropped thinking I’d hurt her in some way.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head, sniffling. “I just feel so stupid that I ran from this. From you.”
I pulled her into me. “You’re not stupid,” I murmured, kissing the top of her head. “How could you accept love when all your parents gave you were scraps?”
She pulled back from me and wiped her face. “We look crazy,” she laughed between sniffles. “Your dick’s out, I’m a mess, and we’re having this tender heart to heart.”
I rolled my eyes at her attempt to change the conversation because it was getting a little too deep. “You ever think about going to therapy?” I asked as I pulled up my pants.
She scoffed. “Not you too.”
“What?”
She sighed and gathered her bottoms. I followed her as she made her way toward the bathroom. “Kenya asked me about going to family therapy with her the other day. It’s starting to feel like a conspiracy.”
“That’s good, right? A Black parent wanting to do therapy with their grown child is like a unicorn. She really trying to get back in your good graces.”
Nairobi paused in the doorway. “I’m realizing everything is more layered than I wanted to admit,” she said quietly. “It was easier to hate them, but my fuck ass father did a number on both of us—well, all of us if you include Hana. And I guess this is my mother’s way of trying to fix what he broke.”
“As she should,” I said. “You’re grown, but she’s your mother and if anyone should take the first step it’s her. But you don’t have to wake up tomorrow and be healed and ready to have the perfect relationship.”
She swallowed, throat bobbing. “If I start trying… then I can’t pretend that I don’t want it. And if it doesn’t work?—”
I held my hand out to her. “Listen to me,” I said. “You’renot signing your life away. You’re just giving yourself a chance to have something different.”
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Stay,” she said simply. “Even when I’m such a mess.”
I didn’t answer right away.
“Because I love you,” I said finally. “And because you’re not the only one who’s been shaped by horrible people.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded, like she was filing that away for later—something to revisit when we weren’t sticky with sex.
“Let’s clean up,” I said, brushing my knuckles down her cheek.
We showered together, something we’d done plenty of times, but this felt a little different. Like she was finally accepting the fact that I was hers and she was mine.
Afterward, she lay across my lap, my arm around her waist while she watchedThe Fifth Elementfor the millionth time. The question of her meeting my mother on the tip of my tongue when her phone vibrated.
Nairobi sat up and read the message that came through.
“Hana says Slim’s papers are ready. He has forty-eight hours to get his shit together,” she said.
“We need to tell Cash and Jelani.”
