My Seoul Man

Chapter 43

Okay, Yoli was partly right.

Cause...

Well, let me put it this way.

My aunts used to tell me they knew exactly when they "got" each of their babies. And I would smirk and shake my head.

I didn't "get" one that night after the big brawl—don't start clucking your tongue and rolling your eyes and stuff.

But if I hadn't been as careful as I said I was when everybody was teasing me about that dream I had, I'm pretty sure there would've been a little "Eb-J" baby on the way.

Cause that man hit it like he meant it that night. Totally different vibe, like...

Well, I don't know if it was the alcohol or what, but we locked eyes and he slow stroked me into shivering fits. Like he was determined to break through the wall of doubt and fear I'd built to protect my soul from every other man I'd been with once and for all.

I even teased him that I expected to wake up with feathers all over the room and the bed all destroyed like in that Twilight wedding night scene after he'd gone all Edward Cullen on me."

But I also made sure, right quick, that the comparison ended there. Cause I slipped into the bathroom with the "morning after" pill pack I'd finally found in this dingy little drug store in one of the little towns we'd stopped in.

I was taking no chances. Whatever happened with us was going to happen the right way. Even if we didn't make it to the promised land, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life rehashing a long list of "maybe if I hadn't/had" regrets.

Didn't want to wind up like a lot of the elder women back home whose front porch conversations inevitably circle back to that one that got away no matter what topic you initially started talking about.

As they sift through all the "whys" and "what ifs" wistfully, you can feel the pain they're hanging onto as if it were that man they lost. It's their only connection to those days at this point, so even the pain is precious.

And now that I found "that man," I tried to make sure I didn't ruin us on some weird "technicality."

Which turned out to be harder than I thought, by the way.

At this time in America, pharmacies could refuse to stock contraceptives on religious grounds. I'd forgotten about that until we were out in the country where the people who'd prayed for that actually lived.

So, I kept using the excuse of hoping to find an "ethnic hair care" aisle to slip into drug stores in those scary little towns until one smirking clerk snatched the pill pack out of a locked case behind the counter and bagged it up right quick like she was more embarrassed than she thought I should've been.

I smiled right into those disapproving eyes and said, "Thank you, ma'am," feeling absolutely no shame.

Because after AJ going at it like a human pile driver for hours that night, I honestly wasn't sure there was anything left of the little gizmo my gyno had shoved up there a few months before we met.

He knew nothing about all this, bless him. I slipped into the bathroom while he was still sleeping, downed the poison pill and snuck the empty package under a plate on the rolling tray we'd set outside the door earlier that night.

And then I handled a little hygiene business and snuck back into bed. Where I just sat there staring at that magnificent creature laying there sort of swaddled in sheets. Low key wishing we were far enough along to maybe be talking about babies and things.