Page 122 of Indescribable
“It’s not so much the city that’s suffocating. It’s everything else. My family. My friends. Even my job.”
“How so?”
How do I explain this without sounding like a snob? I look down at the table and sip through the straw of my water without lifting it to my lips. Something else my mother would disapprove of. As would sitting here having a meal with a perfect stranger.
“I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never made a decision for myself.”
He leans back. “Ahh. Family shit, then?”
I giggle. “Definitely family shit.” I tip my head back and take another drink. “They… love me. They do. But there are expectations that feel impossible for me to meet. It’s exhausting, you know?”
He shakes his head. “Luckily, I don’t. Though, not havinganyexpectations of you is hard, too.”
I don’t understand what he means. “Huh?”
“Mine have none of me. They mean well, but it doesn’t matter what I do, they love me anyway.”
“That doesn’t seem so bad.”
“It isn’t. But they’re so accepting that I can’t impress them, either.”
Ahh. That I understand. He wants to have a reason for his family to be proud of him. I pull the wrapper from my straw and drop the straw into my water. “So they don’t have goals in mind for you?”
“Not one. I could end up in prison after going on a murder spree and they’d be like ‘oh, son, as long as you’re happy!’”
I giggle and throw my straw wrapper at him. “They would not.”
“Okay maybe that’s a little extreme but you get the picture.”
“I do. I wish my family would just want me to be happy, though. I shouldn’t complain because they want what’s best for me. It’s just that they have very specific ideas as to what’s best for me.”
“In every facet, right?”
“Right.”
Our eyes stay glued to each other as he nods, knowingly. Without me telling him, I can tell he knows that every facet includes my romantic life as well.
I’m in New York for a reason. To give myself a break before walking down the aisle to a man I didn’t choose for myself. A modern day arranged marriage all to keep up with appearances. To my family, they only think that I’m shopping for the honeymoon. Something I somehow convinced them I was capable of doing alone. I did some shopping. I also ate whatever I wanted and slept in, went to the movies, caught a show on Broadway and read a book that wasn’t a bestseller, but somethingIwanted to read. And the key there was, I did it all alone. By myself. It was the best four days of my life. Four days in which I have left my engagement ring — that Trotter’s mother most likely purchased for him — in a little velvet pouch in an inside zipper pocket of my purse.
“I imagine that would be difficult.”
“Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” he challenges.
I chuckle. “Maybe a little more than sometimes,” I admit. “I sound like a brat, I’m sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Most people would be grateful to, I don’t know, have what I have.”
“And what is it you have?” he asks.
My response is delayed by our waitress bringing our meals. After she leaves, and I’ve taken my first bite because it smells far too good to wait, I explain, albeit a bit embarrassed. “I don’t want for anything.”
He dips a fry in ranch and pops it in his mouth. After he swallows, he adds, “Materially, you mean.”
I pause, the triangle of quesadilla suspended in the air. I set it back down and blink. “Pardon?”