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I shoot him a glare, and he looks away, uninterested. But Saint points a finger at Ghost. “Exactly. That,” he emphasizes with another forceful stab of his finger in Ghost’s direction. “I know damn well if this was one of the women and she’d fucked a male student, that shit would be all over campus by lunchtime. But what exactly do you know about this girl? Can she keep a secret or what?”
It’s been forty-eight hours, and no one has shown up at my door to arrest me. Danielle’s father hasn’t come to my classroom to beat the shit out of me. The context clues tell me that this remains a secret, or at the very least, that Danielle has chosen some quiet people to share our news with. “I think so, yeah,” I shrug. “It’s not like anyone knows.”
Saint keeps pacing. “Do you wanna knock this girl up, Holy? Or was this a one-time thing? A mistake,” he adds.
I want to tell him that it was an accident. I didn’t bring any protection because I didn’t expect to have sex. I didn’t ask whether Danielle was on birth control because, in the heat of the moment, the only thing that mattered was that the two of us were together. I want to tell him, yes, it was a one-time thing, and it’ll never happen again.
But I’m forty years old. Every day I get a little older, and every day I watch my buddies find women they want to spend the rest of their lives with. Even Saint has started talking to some woman online that he swears is his soulmate. Razor’s girl is pregnant. Everybody is living their happy little lives, and I’m just going to school every day, feeling as left out as I did when I walked the halls of this place.
“I want kids,” I admit shamelessly. “I know you don’t think I should have them with her or whatever, but I want them, Saint. I want my happily ever after.”
“Fuck you.” Saint stops mid-pace and crosses his arms over his chest.
I get to my feet and square up with my best friend. “Fuckme?” I ask with a glare. “For admitting that this beautiful, sexy, smart woman I’ve met wants the same damn things as me?”
He snorts. “Oh, she wants to have your babies?”
“I know damn well that she wouldn’t mind if I put a baby in her belly. Can you say that about your little online girlfriend?”
Saint shoves his finger in my chest, and it feels like a bullet piercing my chest bone. “I know more about Meredith than you do about your preteen girlfriend.”
It becomes an all-out brawl, and I don’t remember exactly how it happens. Saint’s finger is in my chest one minute, then the next, I’m on top of him throwing punches. The room is in an uproar as everyone is on their feet, trying to haul me off of him. People are screaming at us to knock this shit off. No one holds Saint back, and that ends with him launching himself at me. It’s a mess.
We must look like a bunch of hooligans. Five of us roll around the floor, yelling and kicking one another. Blood stains the pristine cream carpets in Razor’s living room, and he swears he’ll kill the man that did it. The fight goes out of us when the front door opens, and the twins stand in the frame.
“Jesus Christ,” Beast roars over all of us. “What the fuck is going on here?”
Bullet raises an eyebrow in mock boredom. “Y’all want me to get you some guns?” He asks with a yawn. “That’ll clear this shit up faster.”
The minutes that follow are tense and long. The skin above my eyebrow is busted open along with Saint’s knuckles. Razor has a black eye from catching an elbow in the face. Ghost and Jackal have a few tender spots but are no worse for the wear than when this fight started. However, both of them are reasonably upset with Saint and me.
“I love you,” Saint says after a few minutes, “and I can’t stop you from making dumb ass decisions, but I want you to know that I don’t approve of this.”
“You told me to fuck her and get it out of my system,” I remind him.
Saint is holding his shirt to his bleeding knuckles like a bandage. “Is she out of your system?”
Never. If anything, having sex with Danielle tattooed her existence on my soul in indelible ink. “No,” I admit.
He gives me the finger. “Exactly. You fucked up by fucking her, Holy.”
“I love her, though.”
Saint is torn. I can tell by the look on his face that he isn’t sure if he should support me as my best friend or chastise me as a brother of the MC. He settles for silent condemnation. “This is a bad idea.”
Razor puts butterfly bandages on the cut above my eyebrow. “Someone owes me a new carpet.”
It’s just what we need to break the tension. Everyone laughs, and the air feels lighter all of a sudden. I know I’m not making the smartest decision, but when has intelligence ever factored into love?
18
DANIELLE
Istare at myself in the mirror as if my reflection has changed since last night. I am still svelte, despite wishing that my stomach would start expanding. My face is still made up with products. My hair is freshly washed. I look the same as I did a week ago before I lost my virginity.
Cameron swore that she looked different after she had sex for the first time last summer. She said she lit up any room that she walked in. She was sexually awakened, and everyone could tell.
Esther didn’t feel like shelookeddifferent, but she said shefeltdifferent. She felt like a woman.
