And when she didn’t respond to that either, Ibrahim shook his head and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Sorry. You’re right. That’s depressing.”
“No,” Jada said. “It’s fine.”
“It made me think, ‘why wait?’ I mean, we probably both got a list a mile long—I know I do—of things I want to do and have before I feel like I can go to your father and say, ‘now I’m ready, Mr. Green. I’m ready to marry your daughter. I have a plan in place.’ But sometimes …”
His voice trailed off and Jada felt her stomach flutter.
“But sometimes …?” she prompted.
“Sometimes, I wonder whether we should just go ahead and do it.”
“Do … what?”
“Get married.” He looked directly into her eyes, searching and studying and reading them.
“Okay,” she said.
Ibrahim gave a startled laugh. “What?”
“I said, ‘okay’.” Her voice shook a little, but not from uncertainty.
Before, what he offered was that they to plan make a later plan to get married. Now he was saying they should just plan it.
“You would say ‘yes’.”
It was a question without being a question.
“I am saying ‘yes’. Why? Are you trying to take it back?” she demanded.
This time his laughter was more relaxed. Happier.
“No, but …”
“But what, Ibrahim? Do you want to marry me or not?”
“Yeah! But …”
Jada took a step back and folded her arms. “But, what?”
“I can’t even legally drink yet. We don’t have a place to live …” All the objections seemed to be occurring to him as he spoke.
“Okay, then we’ll get married when those things are no longer true,” she said. “And what else?”
“What else?” He looked confused.
“What are some other reasons we can’t do it right now?”
“You have school. Nursing school.”
Jada had just gotten into the nursing program she had been waiting to hear from. She could get an associate’s in two years, a bachelor’s with direct entry in three, or stay for four.
“But we could still do it. Even before I finish school.”
“And you’d want to do that?”
Why did he still sound so surprised?
“Yes,” she said for the third time. “Because I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
Jada smiled.
Ibrahim was not impulsive in his thoughts or deeds and Jada had never believed he would be so with his emotions either. She may have fallen in love with him, but he had grown in love with her.
“Took you long enough.”
“What?”
“To say it. I don’t know. And maybe to … feel it.”
“Nah, baby.” He pulled her closer. “It didn’t take long for me to feel it. It just took me a minute to recognize it.”
42
Then
“They can’t believe it. When I told them, they thought I was messing around.”
Jada was lying on her back, head in his lap and legs draped over the arms of her parents’ sofa. They were alone in the house, something her parents had only recently begun permitting now that a wedding was in the offing, but still never for very long.
It was Sunday, and they had a church meeting to attend for about an hour and were due back soon. From the moment he walked in, Jada had been all over him and Ibrahim had been the one to slow it down, pulling her back out into the living room to watch television since kissing and grinding on her bed was probably not the road to continued abstinence.
Jada was telling him about breaking the news to Lisa and Chloe that she was engaged, and their shocked reactions.
“How ‘bout Kyle? How’d he react?” he asked.
“Didn’t tell him directly, but I’m sure the news will make it to him soon enough. I’m sure he won’t care. He’s getting ready to leave for college.”
“Did you like it? With him, when y’all had sex?”
“I didn’t say I had sex with Kyle.”
“So, who was it?”
“Ibrahim.”
“Anyone I would’ve met?”
Jada exhaled. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“So, yeah. Kyle. Right?”
She said nothing.
“Okay, so just tell me this. Did you like it?”
For a moment it looked like she might break, then she just exhaled once again.
“I mean … he was the only one, right?” he confirmed. “This mystery dude?”
“Yes, he was the only one, and yes I liked it,” she said, speaking quickly. She sat up and turned to face him.
Ibrahim looked at her. He bit his lower lip and nodded.
“Are you trying to start a fight with me?” Jada asked. “Because this is what you sound like when you’re trying to start fights.”
“I don’t try to start fights.”
“Rarely, but yes, sometimes you do. And when you do, this is exactly what it sounds like.” She stared at him with her chin lifted.
And this was what it looked like when she saw him coming and was preparing to take him on.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said, then thought for a moment. “That’s not true.” He shook his head. “What I mean is … I don’t want to fight with you. But I definitely want to fight the dude who’s been with you in a way I haven’t been with you yet.”
That made her smile.
“Well, you know whenever you want to …”
“I want to now,” Ibrahim said, kissing the side of her neck and hearing her breath catch in her throat. “I want to so bad you don’t even know … But nah, not till I can take care of you, in all the ways a man needs to take care of his woman. Not just physically. But spiritually, materially … emotionally.”
“So then … we’re more than halfway there,” Jada said, leaning her forehead against his.
Ibrahim’s heart wrenched in his chest when he looked at her sometimes. He would have to take care of her. Once they were married, it would be all him. No more sending her home to Mommy and Daddy to keep her safe. Where he went, she would go. Where and how he lived, she would live. She would trust him with her very life. And he would have to step up.
“I know, baby. But more than halfway’s not good enough. Not for us.”
~~~
They were married on a rainy Thursday in City Hall.
Jada wore a thirty-dollar white dress she found on sale in the mall, and the white pumps from her high school graduation. Ibrahim wore a rented morning suit and new brown shoes. He kept clearing his throat nervously while he said his vows.
Her father cried noiselessly through the ceremony and her mother smiled because she was just the kind of woman who loved weddings. Dee was her maid-of-honor and Ibrahim’s brother, Manny stood up for him. Afterwards, they went to brunch, just the two families. Her parents, and Ibrahim’s brothers and father, eating waffles and pancakes in a chain restaurant where the coffee was tepid and the eggs rubbery.
It was awkward because hardly anyone knew each other, and Ibrahim’s father, Levi, was less than friendly. Only Dee and Manny seemed to know how to start and keep a conversation going, and even theirs was tense because they were fighting again. Ibrahim’s eldest brother, Isaac, was a practical stranger to her and it was only when she met his eyes across the table—so much like and yet so different from her new husband’s—that Jada hadn’t realized how much Ibrahim had kept his family away from hers.
If they had been in town, Jada would have had them there, but Lisa and Chloe had by then gone back for their second year of college out of state, as had Kyle and almost everyone in her friend group. Jada knew her father was disappointed she hadn’t made the same kinds of choices. He was still ambivalent about the marriage, even though she had completed the first year of her nursing program. It didn’t dim her happiness, though. Ibrahim was her future, and
she was sure she made the right decision.
After brunch, they were alone, and Ibrahim drove her to their new apartment. It was in a complex they had chosen together and was a tiny one-bedroom but in a quiet, safe neighborhood, one that people said was “up and coming.” There were trees visible from their large living room window, and one could almost believe that they were in the country.
“We’re home,” Ibrahim said when he unlocked the front door.
There was very little furniture, all of it secondhand, and the entire place smelled like paint. And they didn’t know it then, but they would later have a few frustrating moments when they realized that they lacked basic household items, like a can opener and an iron. Neither of them had lived alone before, nor had to set up a home, so there had been plenty of omissions.
But right then, everything felt perfect to Jada.
When the door was shut behind them, she stood in the living room. Her mother had helped her decorate it, and it had come out nicely, considering how little they had to work with. She wasn’t interested in the living room though. Not now.
Turning, she tossed her small clutch and modest bouquet onto the sofa. From the moment they crossed the threshold, her entire body felt like it was vibrating with the need to be touched.
Ibrahim’s fingers at the nape of her neck made her jump and then Jada found that she couldn’t move as he pulled the zipper down and slid her dress off her shoulders. By the time it puddled at her feet she was trembling, visibly, obviously trembling.
“Baby,” Ibrahim said. “Look at me.”
She turned to face him so she could do as he asked and saw the question in his eyes, and the concern.
“You okay?”
Jada nodded, three quick nods in succession.
Ibrahim put his hands on her forearms, as if to steady her.
“Then why …?”
“I just … I want you, that’s all.”
His face relaxed. And he smiled.
~~~
When he led Jada to the bedroom, Ibrahim’s heart was beating hard in his chest. Like this was something he had never done before. That’s what it felt like. Maybe he had Bree to thank for that. For getting him to think about what it meant, what it really meant when a woman gave her body to a man, and what it might cost her every time she did.
Or maybe he should have thanked Raj and all his talk about spiritual connections and the sacredness of the sex act between a husband and wife. Probably, he should thank them both.
Now, Jada was standing in front of him, wearing her wedding undergarments. She watched as he undressed, walking backward and sitting on the edge of the bed. When he was only in his boxers, the corners of her lips turned slightly upward, and he could see in her eyes that what she said in the living room was true. She wanted him.
“I can’t believe you’re my husband,” she said quietly.
It sounded like she was half talking to herself, so Ibrahim laughed, which relieved some of the heaviness in the room.
“You’re cute,” he said, advancing toward her.
Sliding his fingers beneath the straps of her bra, he slid them down her shoulders and reached behind her to unfasten the clasp and when it fell to her lap, tossed the bra aside. He looked at her for a moment, for the first time ever seeing her breasts fully bared.
Hands on her shoulders, he exerted gentle pressure, so she lay on her back.
“Can you believe I’m your wife?” Jada asked lifting her head briefly to look at him. “That you have a wife?”
“Yes,” he said, reaching for the waistband of her panties, and pulling them off.
Ibrahim heard the soft but sharp intake of breath when she realized she was fully naked. And suddenly, there was no more talking.
Raising herself onto her elbows, Jada watched him as he took her in, his hands on her ankles, spreading her legs. She swallowed, and he heard the rhythm of her breaths, shallower and faster just from him looking at her. He took everything in—the length and shape of her legs, the arches of her feet, the smoothness of her skin and flat concavity of her stomach. The way her nipples turned to small brown pearls and her breasts heaved.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, pressing his lips to her inner thigh.
Jada jerked at the contact, and fell back fully, allowing her elbows to collapse as though she could no longer bear to look. The trembling was back as he kissed one thigh and then the other, moving closer to her core. When he got there, he paused, and studied that part of her as well.
“So beautiful.”
At the first touch, she arched off the bed, so he had to hold her in place, his forearms keeping thighs immobile. She was like silk against his tongue and tasted sweet. Pressing closer, he went deeper, and Jada began a moaning repetition of his name.
He felt when she was about to orgasm, and slowed a little, wanting nothing to obscure the sensation. When she came, she stopped thrashing, but jerked a few times, went very still, and finally, issued a soft, long, aahhh.
“Ibrahim …”
She said his name with a note of wondrousness, like he had unhung the stars placed one directly in her hand.
~~~
It had only just gotten dark when Ibrahim finally fell asleep. Jada got up from bed naked and sprinted across the hall to the bathroom to pee before remembering that she didn’t have to sprint. She could walk the entire apartment in the buff. Because it was her apartment. Hers, and Ibrahim’s. They were married and this was their home.
Smiling through her pee though it stung a little, Jada chewed on the corner of her pinkie finger. She was too excited to sleep. Just from the novelty of being in bed with Ibrahim, nothing at all between them, just skin to skin. When he first drifted off, she had watched him for a while, then leaned over and pressed her face into his chest, inhaling him.
She peeled the sheets back and studied every inch of his body, unable to stop herself from occasionally touching. His chest, his abs, his thighs, even his feet. Ibrahim had really gnarly feet. She almost laughed at the discovery of this imperfection, and wondered why she hadn’t noticed them before, like when they went to the beach.
Probably because she had spent most of that afternoon staring into his eyes like a besotted fool. But what she felt then, in comparison to what she felt now was child’s play.
Getting up from the toilet, she wiped, gingerly and then washed her hands, staring into the bathroom mirror. Her wedding makeup was smudged, her hair a godawful mess and her lips slightly swollen. But she looked the same.
How, she had no idea, because everything had changed.
She wasn’t Jada Green anymore. She was Jada Carter, Ibrahim’s wife. And she wasn’t the girl he met just over two years ago, she was a woman.
Going back into the bedroom, at first she tried to be quiet so she wouldn’t wake him. But seeing him like that, lying naked among the sheets, sprawled like a starfish, still only accustomed to sleeping alone, it struck Jada that she didn’t need to defer or respect his space, or even his need for sleep.
She would do those things of course, later. Because it was considerate to do that for one’s spouse. But she didn’t need to, because now he was hers. To have, and hold.
Shoving aside the sheets, she looked at his sleeping penis, flaccid against his thigh. Without stopping to think, she crawled closer, took it in her hand, lowered her head and closed her lips around it. Unlike Lisa, she had never done this for a boyfriend. It felt strange.
Ibrahim moaned softly so she tested the taste with her tongue, moving it around the head and then the shaft. Ibrahim moaned a little louder, and she took him in deeper.
The sounds he made were gratifying and made her feel powerful, like for the first time, she owned him just as it seemed he had always owned her.
“Jada …”
The sound of him gasping her name spurred her forward. Improvising and testing his responses, she sucked, licked, lightly scored him with her teeth and lowered herself as far as her gag reflex would allow. She noti
ced how much harder he got, and the slightly salty, slick taste that coated her tongue. She was so engrossed in this novel, erotic activity, it startled her when Ibrahim pulled back and abruptly out of her mouth.
“Baby,” he said, still gasping. “Nah. Not … not … yet.”
Seeing the look on his face, the dazed desperation in his eyes, Jada felt ridiculously proud of herself.
Ibrahim hooked his arms under hers and pulled her atop him, holding her waist and positioning himself between her legs. He was sleepy-eyed and tired, but he was powerless too, and could not resist doing what he did next.
Jada looked down, craning her neck to watch as he slowly entered her, mouth open in wonder. There was the same tingling pleasure, but this time was different from when he first entered her hours ago. This time Jada felt the moment of their joining not only as something physical, but as something spiritual, the closest she had ever come to the Divine.
43
Now
“Jada.”
He sounds surprised to find her still up.
The jingle of Ibrahim’s keys in the door was just as much of a surprise to her, since she wasn’t expecting him home until Monday evening.
It is well after midnight and as he comes into view, Jada studies his face, his posture, his attire. He is wearing the same jeans he left in, but a different shirt, maybe borrowed from Kaleem. She hasn’t seen him in more than twenty-four hours, and though that isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, it feels much longer.
Sitting on the sofa, legs curled beneath her, and hands clasped around a mug of tea, Jada had long accepted that tonight, sleep would arrive only after a hard-fought battle. She has been sitting here since nine-thirty, just … thinking.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” Ibrahim takes a seat in the armchair opposite her.
“How are you?” she asks.
Her husband looks momentarily taken aback by the question. Maybe he expected a fight.
“I’m good,” he says. “Better.”
Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel Page 32