AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He barks out a laugh and I stare at his strong neck when he tips his head back. “Suffocating?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Explain how the third largest city in America can feel suffocating.”
With a twist of my lips, I contemplate how much I want to tell him. He’s a perfect stranger and it’s not like I’ll ever see him again. I lean forward on my elbows on the table — something my mother would not approve of — crossing my arms. He mimics my position, putting our faces closer as if I’m about to share a deep dark secret. What he probably doesn’t realize is that I am. Not so much dark, but it’s my secret that no one in my family knows. Or cares to know, anyway.
“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. Especially a male stranger. One I’m attracted to, no less. She’d probably have a stroke.
“Short version? I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never made a decision for myself.”
He leans back with a knowing glint in his eyes. “Ahh. Family shit, then?”
I giggle. “Definitely family shit.” I lift my wine to my lips and take a healthy sip. “They… love me. They do. In their way, I guess. It’s not that I’m mistreated or anything of the sort. The decisions that are made for me… they’re the life changing ones. I don’t get a say in the major parts of my life. 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. Sometimes I just wish they’d yell at me for screwing up. Instead they cheer me on.”
“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 take another drink of wine, the crisp cool liquid going smoothly down my throat. “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.”
He dodges the wrapper. “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. And my ideas are different from theirs.”
“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 like I said, but not for my honeymoon. 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.”
