grade when they had been paired together for a science fair project. Kyle had been surprised that she chose dinky Rogers College over all the ivy league schools she could have attended.
“You are late,” she declared as she slammed the passenger door. “We are going to be late! I cannot be late, Kyle!”
Kyle shrugged. “It won't wreck your chance to be valedictorian, Britney.”
She adjusted the thick rims of her glasses that seemed to cover most of her freckled face. She was dressed in her usual, frumpy clothes—baggy sweatshirt, loose pants, and a heavy, blue jacket—her thick, brown hair barely combed, making her head resemble a bird's nest. “If we are late, I will not help you with your Math homework.”
“You wouldn't!” Kyle gasped with mock outrage.
Her gaze was level. “You will never graduate if you do not keep your grade point average up.”
“My grades are fine, Britney.”
“And does not the military demand that you keep satisfactory grades?”
Kyle was a member of the reserved officers training core for the US Army and they paid for his college so long as he agreed to join the Army afterward. “The military doesn't have a problem with my grades,” he dismissed.
She peered at him and he shifted nervously. She had a direct, piercing gaze, very clinical. He felt like a bug being examined beneath a microscope—a paramecium. “There is something different about you.”
“Why would you say that?” he tried to sound causal. He failed.
“Did your date with Christy go bad?” She cocked her head.
“Yeah, her sorority called and—”
“What is that scent about you?” She inhaled. “Jasmine and...sandalwood?”
“Well...”
Then she punched his arm, catching him by surprise. He winced.
“Who is she?”
“Um...”
“You have had coitus recently, and not with Christy.”
“I...”
“Men are such pigs! I thought you loved her. She will be crushed!”
Kyle was surprised by Britney's vehemence. She never had been happy that he was dating Christy, though he never pried the why out of his friend. This reaction caught him completely off guard. “It's not like that. She's...” My wife, he wanted to say. A thousand-year-old Genie whom I inadvertently married when I used her lamp to burn incense and freed her from her sleep. Dammit, if I can't tell my best friend, then whom do I talk to about it? “She's my wife.”
Her hand froze; her big eyes blinked behind her thick glasses. “What?”
“You know my mom was Kurdish. It's one of those, uh, arranged marriages.”
“So you engaged in coitus with her?”
“Do you have to call it that?” he asked. It made him feel so dirty when she used that word.
“Coitus? It is the proper term.”
“Fine, I had coitus with her. A few times. She's...” Hot, beautiful, gorgeous, sexy, irresistible. “She's hard to resist.”
“Pig,” she sighed.
“I don't know what to do,” he whined. “I love Christy and...” And what, do I love Aaliyah? He found a strange longing in his heart, and he wished both Aaliyah and Christy were here. A picture of the three of them together in bed flashed through his mind, Aaliyah's dusky hand and Christy's pale hand stroking his cock as they leaned into—he stopped imagining that, his cock growing uncomfortably large in his jeans. “I don't know what to think. It was all sprung on me last night. Faiza's cool with it. She's Kurdish, too, so it's not weird or anything.”
“Break up with Christy then. She deserves that. Do not string her along, Kyle.”
Kyle frowned, making the turn into Rogers College's parking lot. He parked his car, and saw Christy leaning against the school's brick wall, waving at him. She's probably been texting me the entire time we were driving. She's so pretty. His heart sped up, and he couldn't help smiling and waving back. “I can't. I love her.”
“Then annul your marriage with this other woman.”
The thought brought a momentary spike of fear. Did that sexy