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“I’m on the pill.”
“Okay.”
“What if I wasn’t?”
I paused and looked at her. “I would ask if you want kids or you wanna get a plan B.”
“Just like that?” She looked at me skeptically.
“We’re damn near forty, Belle. I’m not oblivious to the risks and I’m not some piece of shit nigga.”
She went quiet, studying me for a second. “You’d be okay with me being your baby’s mother?”
“Our kid would be set for life.”
She scoffed and headed to the bathroom to get cleaned up.
I almost went after, but I let her have it and went to use the outdoor shower.
We had breakfast at the resort’s restaurant since we’d eaten all our meals in the room since we’d been here. Belle quieter than usual, and I couldn’t tell if she was in her feelings about our exchange earlier, or something else. I didn’t think what I asked was that deep. We were grown, doing grown people things, and it was a reasonable thing to question.
“What you feel like doing today?” I asked in an effort to break the tension.
“I’m good laying by the pool,” she said, pushing around a piece of fruit on her plate with her fork.
“You’ve been cooped up in the villa all weekend,” I said, crossing my arms. “What? You still in your feelings about earlier?”
She just pouted.
“La’Belle.”
“What?” she snapped.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You ready to talk shit any other time, but now when something’s actually wrong you ain’t got nothing to say?”
She picked her fork back up and stabbed a piece of cantaloupe. “I just want to relax by the pool for our last day. Is that a crime?”
“This about the birth control thing?”
She exhaled hard through her nose. “It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it?” I asked. “You might as well tell me because I’m not trying to go back to New York with you all pissy and using it as an excuse to ghost my ass again.”
“Leave it alone, Dez.”
“No.” I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the table. “Talk to me.”
She glared at me for a long moment. “You just sometimes talk at me and not to me. Asking me if I’m on birth control when you’re leaking out of me and saying shit like ‘our kid would be set for life’—then shrug it off and move on.” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No, finish what you were about to say.”
“It’s just a lot.”
“You don’t do the same thing?” I put a hand up to stop her before she could object. “It’s cool for you to say however you feel, whenever you feel like saying it, long as you’re the one in control, but you don’t like how it feels when you’ve met a nigga who can actually match your energy.” I held her gaze. “That’s what this is.”
