Dried and Dying Roses (BWWM)

Fifty One: Dad?

He didn't get an answer, still hadn't gotten an answer and that was five days ago.

"What do you want for lunch?"

Isa let out an irritated sigh as she transferred her cell from her hand to the crook in her shoulder, grabbing a book that Katie had cataloged off the shelf for the third time that day, "I'm not hungry, Adrian."

His annoyed answer came before the statement was all the way out her mouth, "No. I didn't ask you if you were hungry or not. I asked you what you wanted to eat. A reuben? Jamaican? Pizza?"

There was a beat of silence as Isa shoved the book in its rightful spot before giving Adrian her full and undivided attention as she sat down in a reading chair by the window, "Jamaican. Brown stewed fish with-"

"Extra plantains. I'll be there in forty five." He hung up with a click, and Isa groaned, burying her phone in the pocket of the maternity khakis she was wearing that day before going back to her task of replacing the books Katie had been putting in the wrong spots. She just wanted to shake the girl, it wasn't so hard to just put books in the right place!

"Isa, I-"

"Just go man the register, Katie. I've got this," Isa told her, trying to keep the bite out of her voice.

Yes, she wasn't paying enough attention to do her simple job right, but she didn't deserve to be snapped at by a moody pregnant woman.

Was it strange that even with how upset with him she was, Isa couldn't wait for Adrian to arrive? She missed him the second she pulled out of their garage, for fuck's sake, and even with the anger, the lust was just as powerful, if not more so than it was before.

That was the hardest thing to deal with for Isa, besides her emotions constantly running rampant. She loved him so much, and wanted him so desperately, but at the same time, he just made her so, so angry that she wanted to just knock his lights out at the same time. She could only hold out on the sex for so long, and the same with blurting her suspicions about mates. She didn't want this to be a remake of when she found out that Adrian loved her, and confronted him about it.

Isa was in the back restroom, emptying the contents of her stomach when Adrian arrived. He immediately burst into the employee unisex facility easily as the door was unlocked and half cracked in Isaline's haste to get to the porcelain throne she found herself worshipping more often than not. Within seconds he was on his knees behind her, wiping the sweat that was starting to form on her face and the back of her neck, and rubbing her back sweetly, cooing to her that everything was going to be okay.

When she was finally finished, and a loud sigh left her as she rested her head against the wall, the silence dragged on for minutes as Isa caught her breath, and Adrian flushed the toilet, then wet a few paper towels and pressed the coolness to her heated face and neck, "What happened?"

"This...This woman came in and she smelled just like-"

The mere thought of the woman had her stomach lurching again, and within seconds she was praying to the bowl once more, but even so, both she and Adrian knew how the sentence was going to end.

Pork.

The woman smelled like pork-sweet pork at that. Ever since that first time on Thanksgiving when she got sick from the scent, Isa couldn't help the reaction, and it progressed over time. First it was just honey glazed pork, but that turned into bacon, then regular ham, then rinds and sausage , before finally it was just anything that had pork in it. It was out of hand, and Isa hated it, because she couldn't push that nausea away no matter how hard she tried.