Fixing Noah / Finding Noah - #ForNoah | +18 | BWWM

14 | Part 2 - Space Cadet

Ade snores in the bed. There's a secret way to zonk Little Man out for the night without question as fast as possible. He's the type of kid who loves his belly rubbed. Start to tell him a story and rub his belly at the same time and he's gone. Sim reads her way to the story and I stop her. Then I put the shh finger to my lips. Space Girl looks at me puzzled, but I pick her up smoothly from the bed and carry her to the kitchen. Then My hand quickly pulls the curtain on the bed, muffling the sound. The apartment is tiny. Our neighbors aren't always quiet and the curtain over their bed helps on those nights. It makes things a little too dark if Ade is still awake, but if he's already asleep, it doesn't matter.

Sim is at the kitchen table and I squat down in front of her chair. Time to take a big breath and dive into this.

"Sim, baby, did you forget to give me a paper from school?" I asked her.

"No," her brown eyes are steady and they don't leave me.

"Am I missing paperwork you should have given me?" The question I knew the answer to.

"Yes." Her gaze doesn't shift, but the puzzlement that was on her face from the start of the conversation is gone.

"What is the paperwork?" She shifts her eyes away from mine. Then gives me that steady brown gaze and settles in. Her head never dips down once. She's not mad, she's not sad, and I went through different emotions trying to place her expression.

"I wrote a paper for NASA Jr. then mine got picked. When I got the paper to give to you about Space Camp, I didn't give it to you." A sharp, honest answer.

"Why not, baby?" I whisper to her. A part of me was so afraid of her answer. Maybe it leaked into my voice.

She shrugs instead of answering me.

"Did you want to go?" I asked.

She nodes her head.

"Then why didn't you give it to me so you could go?" I really wanted more than no-word answers. Every one she gave me she felt smaller than her normal mini queen self. She was shrinking into herself and the smaller she got, the bigger I realized it was in her mind. How much she thought it out and maybe how much I was failing her.

She shrugs again.

"Did you think I was going to be mad? Is that why you didn't give me the first paper?" I question her.

She shakes her head no.

"Ok, then why, baby?" I asked her.

"We can't afford it." She said the words with that missing tooth. The word was hard for her to pronounce missing that big front tooth. It hurt to have someone that young understand something like that. Finally, her little mouth wavers until finally, it falls down, and she cries. She wraps her arms around herself and somehow looks ten times smaller in the chair. It breaks my heart. I slide her off the chair into my lap and sit back. My kid knew, and I wasn't shocked. She never got that telescope she wanted last year, and she understood why. A lot hasn't changed that much. The house she's living in is even smaller than one of the rooms in the place we used to live in. And she knows that we were staying at Zoey's house because I worked there and she had to be extra special careful. Yeah, the concept she gets. I rock her in my lap, letting her cry herself out without interruption. Sometimes you just need a cry. She was so little in my lap. The part that broke my heart the most was the tears were silent. Space Girl has a little too grown-up for her own good. My eyes heated up, but I didn't cry with her. When she sat quietly in my lap, not moving at all, just holding on. I kept going with our talk.

"So, baby, you know I'm the grown-up, right?" She nods into my shoulder.

"That means that these types of choices are mine to make, ok? She nods. "You're not grown, but from now on, you let me make those decisions. So, tomorrow show me the thing you sent to NASA." She nodded again, not moving an inch. "I'm really proud of you for getting into Space Camp." She didn't respond, and that made me sad. "Did you want to go to bed?" She shook her head no. "Ok, you can stay here with me." I held her until she fell asleep and after she fell asleep. The three of us were in bed again just like the first night we stayed at Zoey and Noah's house. It was the feeling that no matter how hard I tried I still hadn't really moved forward. Two steps forward five steps back. It didn't matter somehow some way, no matter what I was going to make this work out for her.

As I watched the night stretch on with my babies in my arms, I looked up above the bed. The painting of space Noah made hinted at whole new unexplored worlds. Each world is filled with unlimited possibilities, and with that, I hoped for better days.

I kiss the top of Space Girl's head and slipped into sleep with them.

A/n: Due to the sex scene glut that's in Finding Noah and Fixing Noah lol. Cos sometimes I'm just like I enjoy them banging and writing it. lol, I hope my mother never reads this book. At the same time a shoutout to my single mother. Who made the impossible possible for me at every turn. 

A/n: Edit update - After feedback. I wrote this book as a woman fic erotica as well as that sounds. It has a lot of class, disability, and black perspective.  It's a weird book for chick-lit/women fic, erotica. It's a lot of things all at once which means sometimes it lacks a lane. But we don't run away from the moment. The realness of what life means sometimes to be a child, to be a mother, to be a father, and to be family. I put a lot of time into trying to build that.  So, ya there's a lot of family drama but hopefully again yall kick it with me and we go on this journey together. :)