He shook his head. “That’s your parents talking. Not you. They’re forcing you to say that.”
“Please. Try to understand, Asher. I love my family. I’m nineteen years old. I depend on them, and not just in some existential way either. I can’t afford to live on my own. I live under their roof. I eat their food. They expect certain things of me—”
“I have money. Plenty of it. I’ve never told you before, but my grandfather left me a trust. I’ve had control of it since he passed when I was twenty. I try not use it, because . . .”
“You’ve wanted to stand on your own two feet. Don’t you think I know that about you?”
He blinked at her concise interruption. Apparently, she’d come to know him as well as he knew her. “The point is, I have plenty to support us. Come with me to Los Angeles.”
“What am I going to do there? I don’t have a college degree yet. Do you want me to waitress my whole life? Or maybe you’re going to pay my way for everything, make me into a kept woman or something? You’d come to resent me.”
“I wouldn’t. Because that’s not what would happen—”
“You’re starting out your life, Asher. The last thing you need is me hanging around your neck. Standing on your own is important to you. You want to know you can make it on your own, without resorting to inheritances and trust funds. You deserve to know you can do that. If I were there, you couldn’t really know that. If you had to sacrifice a personal standard like that for me, you would resent it. You’d resent me. No. I know you think my parents are forcing me to say this—”
“I don’t think they’re threatening you with force. I think they’re intimidating you in a way that feels even worse to you. They’re threatening to take away their approval. Their love. Their acceptance. Do you think I don’t know what that’s like, Laila?”
“I think you believe you do. But I’m different than you, Asher. My family is different. That’s something you’ve never gotten about me. We come from two different worlds. Your ways of dealing with things just won’t work for me. Maybe Baba isn’t a hundred perce
nt right in saying interracial stuff never works. Maybe it can work sometimes, for some people. But right now, at this point in my life, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how, Asher. And neither do you. It’s just that you’re too stubborn, and too determined, and too strong, and too . . . wonderful”—she choked softly—“to admit it.”
His caressing fingers paused. She met his stare. Despite the misery he sensed flowing off her like a freezing fog, she remained unflinching. Asher started to feel that frigid cold penetrate him. But he fought it like crazy.
“What about what we talked about? About fighting through? About not giving up?” he asked.
Her lower lip trembled.
“Laila,” he whispered, caressing her again, willing her to bend. To unfreeze. To come to him in the way only she could . . . so sweetly. So completely.
Instead, he saw her delicate jaw clench hard. She wrapped her hands around his wrists and pulled. Tears swelled in her eyes when his fingertips slid off her face.
“I love you, Asher. So much. It’s been like a dream, being with you these past couple weeks. I will always love you.” A spasm went through her beautiful face. Dread swooped through him, making everything seem to go dim for a moment. “But this hurts too much,” she said in a strangled voice. “You suggested last night I needed to decide. To choose—”
“No,” he said rapidly, wild to make her stop talking. To make this moment halt. To undo itself. “I told you I was wrong about saying that, about trying to make it black and white—”
“I choose for us not to see each other anymore.”
“No,” he roared, making her start. He stood in front of her, feeling off balance.
“It’s not just because of my family, Asher. It’s for you too—”
Anger pierced his helplessness. He pointed at her.
“Don’t. Don’t try to spin it that way.”
“It’s true,” she said, leaping up from her chair. “I can’t be with you in the way you want. The way you deserve. And what about your parents? Things are rough enough between you three as it is without you having to worry about dating a woman they’d disapprove of.”
He turned away from her. “You know my parents don’t even factor in to any of this.”
“Well, maybe they should,” she exclaimed.
He spun around.
“So this is it?” he asked, his voice ringing in rising anger and disbelief. “You’re choosing your family over me.”
Her spine straightened. He didn’t know what he hated more, the blaze of pain he’d witnessed in her expression earlier or the lifelessness in her eyes as she looked at him now.
“If that’s the way you want to frame it all. It’s not how I see it. But we both already know that we look at this situation differently. There’s no point in arguing about it more.” She lowered her head. “I have to go,” she said thickly. “My father is waiting for me.”