Into His Love

Twenty-two

"What?" She half laughs.

"Marry him," I repeat.

"Sweetie, you don't have to decide after just one night. I want-"

"No." I know that the longer I have to think about this the longer I'll brood over it. "Look, Ken seems like a really nice guy and you love him. You glow when you're around him and you never stop smiling. You're happy, which makes me happy. So do it." She takes my hands in hers as tears appear in her eyes.

"Thank you, Kimberly. You don't understand how much his acceptance by you meant to me." She pulls me into a hug and I lay my head on her shoulder. "I love you."

"I love you."

Isaiah |Thursday

    "I'm proud of you," I tell Kimberly after she explains everything that's going on with her family at the moment.

   "What do you mean?" She smiles.

   "I mean you've came a long way from crying outside of this same library," I tease.

   "Oh, whatever." She rolls her eyes.

   "For real though. You basically just gave your mom a second chance at love. That's gotta mean the world to her."

   "Yeah." She smiles before exhaling loudly. "Alright, enough messing around. We have to finish this reading." She continues to read but I continue to watch her. Her forehead is creased with lines as her eyes scan the page. She looks way to stressed. I tear a small piece of my notebook paper, ball it up, and throw it at her. It hits her nose and lands on her textbook.

   "Really." She tries to keep a straight face but fails miserably. "Come on. Get serious."

   "Okay. You really need to lighten up." I lean back in my seat.

    "You need to study." She flicks the tiny paper-ball at me. "Test next week."

"Did you hear what you said? Next week." I laugh. She doesn't look up from her textbook, instead she flips to the next page. "I'll make you a deal," I say, digging into my pocket and pulling out a quarter. She looks at me with interested eyes. "If this lands on heads, we stop studying and I take you to this arcade that opened. But if it lands on tails, we can study. No distractions."

   I can see the contemplation in her eyes until she finally says, "Fine." She sighs and places a bookmark in the textbook before closing it. I mean seriously, who uses a bookmark for their textbook. She definitely needs to kickback a little. I flip the coin in the air and land it on my hand. I remove my hand and Kimberly leans over to see. Heads.

   "Try it again." She crosses her arms.

   "Alright." I laugh and do it again. Heads. "It's fate. Let's go"

"Damn. Everybody and they momma here," I say when we arrive at the arcade. The parking lot is packed and it took us driving around a couple of times before we actually found a parking spot.

"Yeah, it is a lot of people here. When did it open?" Kimberly asks as we step out of the car.

"Saturday. I thought it would've calmed down by now but uhh..."