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"A baby?"
Lena merely blinks as she sips from her flute of orange juice. She gets her dramatics from her mother, she's convinced. Treating her to a self-care day was the least the CEO could do the day before New Year's Eve. For one, it's her mother's birthday and she also felt the obligation to tell her what the plan was.
"With a man you're not even married to?"
Jelani Washington is a judgmental woman. What does one expect? She's Caribbean, headstrong, and more stubborn than her daughter. Though Adalena looks up to her, she also finds herself in and over her head with hate when her mother brings up any bad decision she's made in her life. She thought her previous relationship was a mistake. She thought Adalena leaving home at nineteen was a mistake. She thought Adalena falling to her knees for a white man was the biggest mistake she'd made.
Expect that's not the way Lena sees it. And the CEO is right — Adalena has more pride than to allow a man to dominate her in any way that isn't the bedroom.
But this ... this is enough to send Jelani into a passionate fury that has Adalena rolling her eyes until they're close to falling out.
"You weren't married when you had me." Adalena attempts to keep her blood pressure down.
Jelani scoffs, "At least I had a ring on my finger." Yes, the repetitive story of how Jelani and Kevin were engaged and loved each other too much to wait for the wedding. "You barely know this man past what's in his pants."
"I know him, mother." The CEO sighs as she wipes a drop of chocolate from the valley between her plump breasts and dips it back into her mouth. She adjusts the white robe around her body and leans back, closing her eyes as she bathed in the sun.
"What's his favorite color?"
"He doesn't have one." He does, Adalena just doesn't think her mother actually cares.
"That's what someone who doesn't know her prospective baby daddy would say." Jelani retorts.
Right. Barring the fact that the two hadn't really been in contact with each other for a couple of weeks, Adalena doesn't trust anyone else with helping give up her body to new life.
"Do you even really want a baby?" Jelani questions as she sighs. She supports her daughter (mostly when it benefitted her) but this was a bit far fetched for her.
Lena purses her lips, "Yes. I'm not getting any younger. I have the money, the time —"
"You don't have the time."
She was getting tired of people saying that. "I'm making the time. I elected new positions — a COO. Plus what kind of boss would I be if I couldn't balance work and life? I'm not putting my life on hold just for another dollar in my pocket." She'd be getting the dollar regardless.
"But where did this even come from?" Jelani questions her daughter, biting down on a fresh cucumber. "You're twenty-five. You should be living life, maximizing your freedom."
"Like you at nineteen?" Adalena arches a brow in her mother's direction. Jelani closes her mouth, "Did you regret having me so young?"
"No. I was mature enough to know what I wanted — a baby to care for and spoil and love."
Lena opens her eyes, met with a grave look on her mother's face. "Okay then. I'm mature enough to know what I want."
"But with him, my love?"
"I trust him."
"Okay, and what? You'll switch off responsibility every other week? You'll have full custody? Child support? Single motherhood? And when he ultimately decides to abandon you and all responsibilities, what then?"
There was no surprise that Jelani had no faith in her daughter's plan. She'll just be setting herself up for failure and heart break and everything Adalena's already felt before.
"I'll figure something out."
"It's not like you to be unprepared." Jelani smirks after a second, "He's always been throwing you off balance ever since college."
Adalena resists the urge to roll her eyes at her mother's words. If anything, Adriano is partially the reason she's as successful as she is today.
Without another negative thought, Adalena finishes the remaining strawberry and sits up, "I'll figure it out, mother. I always do."
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i was gonna publish this earlier but keep getting distracted
