Page 4 of Love is So Mean
It will cheapen my proposal.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, immediately annoying me since no one but one person would be texting me right now.
Yasmeena: Did you look over the proposal for the relaunch?
Me: What proposal?
Me: When did you send it?
Yasmeena: About an hour ago.
I consider myself somewhat of a workaholic but she takes it to a completely different level.
Me: Then you already know the answer to that question.
Yasmeena: If I knew the answer I wouldn’t have texted. We’ll discuss Monday.
I don’t respond because I’m feeling my blood pressure spike when it shouldn’t. I’m on the way to dinner to propose to my girlfriend, my boss is the last person I need in my head.
“Everything okay?” Emily asks, pulling my attention back to her.
“Yes,” I respond as I turn off my phone and place it in my pocket. “It’s work stuff. It can wait until Monday,” I admit before closing the space between us to steal a kiss.
Emily pulls back before we get carried away. “I don’t want to mess up my makeup,” she tells me with a giggle.
After another peck I let her go. “Later,” I promise with a hint of seduction in my voice.
Chapter 3
Yasmeena
The silence that drives me home is something I’m used to. Something I prefer instead of so many things going around. I have enough of that in my brain.
Most people would think that I would use a driver but having one means I don’t get to do what I want and I’d have someone watching my every move to somehow report back to my father.
These drives help me to think, what Katherine, my OBGYN said to me isn’t anything new that I should be shocked at. I’ve known about my Ovarian cancer diagnosis for two weeks now and Katherine wanted me to come back in for another check up. She thinks I need to see a specialist about the way that I reacted to the news. She didn’t like that I laughed off the news. Well, not off but hey, I’m not shocked that I have it. It’s probably from the fact that I was diagnosed with Reactive attachment disorder a couple years ago. My psychiatrist says that if it was something that would’ve been caught earlier on in my life things would've been different but honestly, it doesn’t matter anymore.
It wouldn't have changed anything. I am my Baba’s daughter. My native Egyptian mother and my Saudi Arabian father who was born and raised in Egypt. They raised us with an iron fist like most immigrants with money raise their children andthere’s nothing that can change now.That’s why I won’t be telling my family about the cancer or else, they’ll consider me weak for not being able to get married and have a child without some sort of issues.
My big brother has a family and two kids but it doesn’t mean that he’s not busy having children elsewhere. While he is a responsible man, and good enough to take care of whatever child he has, it isn’t always about that, is it?
A call comes through and without having to even double check, I know it’s my mother, she wouldn’t be calling for anything else but guilt tripping me but we both know it won’t work at all.
“Hello, mother.”
“Don’t hello mother me, you heard the news about your Baba but I don’t see you at the hospital at all?”
“Do you need me there?”
“You know what they’ll say in the press about you if you don’t show up?”
“Nothing I haven't heard before.”
“So, you’re fine with them calling you Ice Queen and all those other frigid names?”
My chuckle is filled with mirth. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard around everyone. Words whispered against the walls that people think don’t whisper back to me, mother.”
“Then your employees also call you that and you do nothing to reprimand them for it.”