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I lie down on top of her, feeling her heart beating out of her chest as we lay together in silence. She lifts her head up for a kiss, and I kiss her as deeply and passionately as I fucked her. The taste of her tongue lingers in my mouth for a moment, and I wish it would stay forever.
“You know you’re beautiful, right?” I ask, swiping her hair out of her eyes.
She blushes, kissing me back without another word.
22
RIVER
Being in Mexico has done my head in so far, even though I’ve been able to spend so much time with Adas.
He’s constantly got men keeping watch of me, and today, he’s ordered them to take me into the town to get essentials that he likely doesn’t keep in his glovebox. “Pads, tampons, whatever the fuck you ladies like” is what he said, so I’m just going to assume he meantfeminine items.
In the still moments at night when I lie with Adas in the van, I find time to consider certain aspects of my life that have been challenging to me. The first one, of course, being my injury. Even if I make a full recovery, I’ll always feel like I was granted everything in life by a committee of people who exist just to patronize the disabled.
As I listen to the creatures in the distance, I start to remember that I’ve been waiting to start my period for over seven days now.
With walking being my number-one priority, I’ve been having trouble remembering the less urgent needs of the day. The very concept of periods was absent from my head until I started one a few weeks after the accident. It was shocking and horrifying, and I felt extremely cheated by their existence until Adas reminded me that I had been enduring them for at least eleven years already.
He’s chosen to stay behind in order to watch Marat’s house, much to my chagrin. Instead of accompanying me into town, he’s sending Erik and Gregory with me. Since I’ve woken up, I’ve had a casual relationship with the two of them, at best. The idea of going through a store with them for tampons feels ridiculous.
I’m an adult. I can accompany myself to the store.
We’re escorted from Marat’s property in a black SUV, customary for Adas and his men. The interior is beautiful, clearly installed by design. The sunroof lets in the glaring desert rays as the driver blasts the AC.
“So, River, how have you been liking Mexico?” Erik asks, scanning me up and down as if he’s never really looked at me before. He was the one reporting to Adas the entire time I was bedridden back at the estate. Why is he acting so strange?
“Oh, you know how it is. It’s really hot here, and there aren’t a ton of plants around here. I’d love to just go lie on the beach for a little while if Marat wasn’t occupying that too,” I reply disappointedly.
Erik and Gregory glance at each other as if I’ve said something completely insane. I go over my statements, trying to find what I possibly could have said to elicit such a reaction from someone.
“How are you liking the estate?” Gregory asks, his question heavy with sarcasm and a quiet mockery.
“It’s... beautiful, but it’s my house. Why are you asking how I’m enjoying my house?” I ask them both, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of what’s so damn funny here suddenly.
“I think Adas wanted to renovate,” Gregory replies with a shrug. He’s still smirking at Erik.
I’m self-conscious the entire way there. I want to ask questions, to be told what it is about my very existence that they find so amusing.
Everything feels very weird with the two of them, like they don’t take me seriously as a person at all. They both enjoy trying to seethroughme, looking for the actual human underneath whatever humanoid mess Adas had forced upon them.
Looking at either of them is unbearable. At one point, they both begin to laugh together, and I feel my stomach curling up inside of me.
To make matters worse, I still haven’t gotten my period. I thought for sure that today would be the day. My ovaries have felt heavy and swollen lately, which I’ve been told is a sign of ovulation. If I’m ovulating, I can’t be pregnant... right?
Pregnant.
How did I never consider the risks when we were having sex? We never once used a condom, and as far as I know, I’m not on any sort of birth control.
I have to admit, being caught up in the passion of it all was very alluring as it happened. I was desperate to connect with my husband, and sex was the easiest, most pleasurable way to do that. It had never occurred to me that it could cause any problems, at least not something we had talked about or planned for like a baby.
Part of the never-ending fun that is a traumatic brain injury is the fact that much of what I knew before has gone out the fucking window. My speech and reasoning are intact, and so far, my personality has been spared as well.
But everything I ever learned about safe sex? All of the things that should have come as a very obvious consequence after unsafe sex? Completely gone.
My internal organs feel like they’re twisting and writhing themselves into knots as we pull into the small coastal town. There are little shops lining the streets, some modern looking and others seemingly ancient.
Being Adas’s wife, it shouldn’t be embarrassing for me to be purchasing a pregnancy test. In a perfect world, there would be nothing unusual about a woman in her mid-twenties buying something so commonplace.
