Page 148 of Buy Back My Love

Mama took one look at me and smiled. “See? My grandbaby a girl.”

Wren snorted. “You don’t know that.”

“I know my child.”

“That ain’t how gender work, Ms. Maisie.”

Mama turned and looked at her. “Didn’t ask you.”

I laughed and left them to argue. Everybody had been told to wear pink or blue depending on what they thought I was having, and I wasn’t playing about my vote. I had on a fitted pink-and-white polo, a matching pink pleated skirt, white socks, pink-and-white sneakers, and a white visor trimmed in pink. Team Girl from head to toe.

Anika caught back up with me and looked me over. “You doing too much.”

I looked her up and down. “Says the woman dressed like a damn highlighter.”

“I’m the gender keeper. Yellow is neutral.”

“You could’ve wore white.”

“And have somebody spill something on me? No.”

Fair.

Across the room, JB was talking to some of his boys in a blue shirt, of course. The second he caught me looking, he pointed at his chest and then at my stomach like he already knew something I didn’t. I pointed down at all my pink, and he just shook his head.

I wanted a girl so bad. In my head, I could already picture a little girl stuck up under me all the time. I could do her hair, teach her things, take her to the shop when she got old enough. Maybe she’d want to learn nails one day, maybe she wouldn’t. Either way, when I thought about having a daughter, I could see it.

A boy scared me for a completely different reason. Not because I didn’t want one, because I did. But eventually boys looked to their fathers for things their mamas couldn’t teach them. How to move as a man. How to treat women. What kind of man they were supposed to become.

And out of every man in Mobile, I had somehow picked JB to be the example. That part sat heavy with me.

Wren must’ve caught me staring off because she bumped my arm with hers. “Stop frowning.”

“I’m not frowning.”

“You are.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s usually when you frown.”

Mama laughed from behind us. “She been doing that since she was little.”

I rolled my eyes. “Both of y’all get on my nerves.”

I left them and went looking for something to drink.

Even with most of the crowd belonging to JB, enough of my people were there that I didn’t feel completely swallowed up by it. Nina was running late, but she had already texted me three times asking when we were cutting the cake. Wren stayed close, and Mama had apparently decided she was a professional golfer after hitting one decent ball. She had spent the last ten minutes telling anybody who would listen about it.

Even JB’s mama came, which surprised me. I had barely finished speaking to one of his cousins when she walked over and wrapped her arms around me.

“I missed you at my annual New Year’s ball,” she said. “I thought with you being out now, you’d make your debut.”

I smiled a little. “I wasn’t ready for all that.”

She held onto me a little longer than I expected before stepping back. Her eyes dropped toward my stomach, then came back to my face.

“You look good.”