“You should expect people to celebrate you on your birthday, Gina. I’m just doing my duty to make sure you know how important you are to me.”
“Ramel, I don’t want to ruin this moment, because I appreciate the effort you have gone through to do all of this for me, but you’re kind of sending mixed signals right now.”
“And how is that?”
I could tell he wasn’t trying to bullshit me with this question. He was genuinely confused.
“I mean, every time I try to get to know something about you, you shoot me down. That tells me you either don’t trust me with details about your life, or you don’t want me trying to get too close to you. Either way, I am fine with it. I understand you are just being nice and helping me out right now, but if that’s the case, why go through all of this?”
“Gina, baby, I can promise you I ain’t that fucking nice. Anybody who knows me can tell you that.”
“And that’s exactly my point. I don’t know anything about you, and you are going to great lengths to make sure it stays that way. If you want me, Ramel, you have to spell it out for me because I don’t want to confuse what we are doing here.”
“I can respect that. And I apologize for making you feel anything less than important as fuck in my life. I have a lot of shit going on, but that’s not an excuse. I’ll fix the issues I have and come correct. I can promise you that.”
The seriousness in his eyes let me know that he was telling the truth. I surprised myself by actually speaking up for myself because the people pleaser in me wanted to let whatever was going on between us just play itself out. But I had been rejected enough for a lifetime, and if Ramel had plans of leaving, I would rather him do it now.
“That’s all I ask.”
“Say less.”
Chapter
Ten
Method
I didn’t realize how much not opening up was affecting things between Gina and me. I was used to people accepting that I didn’t want to talk about certain things and leaving it at that. Gina wasn’t having that secretive shit, though, and I couldn’t say I didn’t understand.
Sitting across from her at the dinner table, I was able to admire every beautiful feature of hers, features that had not only consumed my every waking thought but also invaded my dreams. I couldn’t expect to know everything about her and be unwilling to share myself the same way.
Keeping Gina all the way in the dark was making her question my intentions, and that was the last thing I wanted. If she wasn’t sure about anything else, I wanted her to know that I was into her one hundred percent, so if telling her about my family was the first step, then so be it.
“I’m a first-generation, American-born Somalian. My parents are both doctors. They came to the States as young college students with the dream of going back home and providing free health care to our people. I guess, as time passed, that dream changed.”
“Dreams change sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I appreciated her saying something nice about my parents. I sometimes thought telling that story made my parents sound like sellouts. Maybe because that was the way I saw it mostly. But hearing how simply Gina put it made me understand that dreams did change over time. Just like we did as people, and that was okay.
“Yeah, once they had me, they decided to stay here and open their own hospital. They would still be able to provide healthcare to people who look like us, but not at the cost of their own family’s comfort, if that makes sense.”
“That makes perfect sense. Are you an only child?”
“I am. I guess that’s another thing we got in common.”
“Let me find out you want to be just like me when you grow up.”
“Nah, I don’t want to be just like you. I want to marry you.”
“And how do you know I want to marry you back? I don’t even know anything about you.”
“Trust me, You will. Besides, I’m already working on that.”
“And what exactly are you working on?”
“I’m working on making sure marrying me is the first thing on your mind when you wake up in the morning and your last thought before falling asleep at night.”
“That’s a pretty ambitious thought.”
