“And then that fair-weather fucker wouldn’t let you grieve, either,” she says, and it doesn’t take a leap to know who she’s referring to.
Nathan had never seen that side of me—a side I’d never let into the light of day, because some part of me knew it was unwelcome. I’d never needed to, until then. I’d always been able to be the bright, sparkling Ana everyone loved, because the Persian rug had never been yanked out from beneath her feet before. Because she had never lost everything before.
And he didn’t know what to do with it. Suddenly his girlfriend was a completely different person, one he didn’t recognize. One who didn’t provide a reliable escape. Who was once always smiling and energetic and ready for a good time, for a hot fuck, for a boostbefore a tough exam or entertaining small talk at parties. The girlfriend he signed up for was gone, and in her place was a hollow chasm with smoke billowing out of its center.
No wonder he didn’t want me anymore.
“I wish I’d been there more,” Maral says. “I should have been.”
I shake my head. “You were in the middle of a grueling master’s program. And anyway, I didn’t need someone there with me. I was fine.”
“Fine!” she cries, and it’s loud. Loud enough that I wonder if Henry will come up here and ask what’s going on. “You were notfine,Ana. You were playing a part for your mom and for Nathan, but that’s not the same as being fine. That’s toxic positivity talking.”
What the actual fuck? “What are you talking about?”
She huffs. “Do you ever think about how we were never, like,allowedto feel anything other than happiness? Gratitude? Subservience?”
My brows draw together. “Maral, if you’re mad at our parents over something—”
“I’m notmadat our parents. I’m just seeing things a lot more clearly than I have before. Their way of thinking. How it’s affected us, and not for the better.”
I’m trying to follow what she’s saying, but I’m not sure I’m ready for where it leads. Still, she presses on.
“They went through some tough shit, I’m not negating that,” she says. “Starting life all over again here, raising us, and trying to integrate into a foreign culture.” She watches me carefully, making sure I’m listening. “But they used that against us. Anytime we were upset about anything, from a scraped knee to a B on a report card to a mean kid at school, it was always ‘That’s nothing’ or ‘You should be so lucky’ or ‘Do you know what other people have to live through?’ ”
“That was just their way of helping us get over things.”
“Did it help you get over things?” she asks.
“I mean, I never got a B,” I say, buffing my nails on my T-shirt.
Her eyes narrow. “Did it help you feel less shitty when you were feeling shitty?”
I search our surroundings blindly. “There’s nothing anyone can do to help you stop feeling shitty.”
“Yes, there is,” she says. “There are a lot of things. Listening, for one. But they never did, and we stopped telling them. We stopped ever showing any negative emotions around them, because we were only ever berated for it. But we were rewarded for being good, grateful, deferential daughters, so we assumed those roles full-time.”
“Great! So they raised us to be good, grateful people. I’m not seeing the problem here.”
“The problem,” she says, “is that you bury any emotions that aren’t one-hundred-percent positive all the time. Not only with family, but witheveryone.”
“Did you ever consider that I’m just a positive person?” I paste on my winningest smile.
“You aren’t. You’re fucking miserable sometimes, and you think you’re hiding it but you’re not. And you shouldn’t.” Her eyes are glistening now.
Something viscous spreads in my throat. At her words, but also at her tears. “Hey,” I say, stepping toward her.
She swipes at a drop that escapes her long lashes. “You’ve always been the rock. For me, for your parents. We’ve relied on you so much. Too much. I’m guilty of it too. I let things go. Let you retreat. I enable it.”
I’m at a loss. She gives me what I need in those moments and thinks she’s doing something wrong? No, no, she has it all backward. “You’re not enabling anything. That’s what I need sometimes.”
Her eyes meet mine, the sadness in them so big that I wish I could spin her a cocoon and protect her against it forever.
“I don’t think that’s what you need,” she says. “I think you need someone to listen, to tell you it sucks, to validate you. To take the shame out of those feelings. Because there is no shame in those feelings, Ana.”
My breathing is funny, requiring too much concentration. I want to end this conversation. “Let’s just drop it.”
“No,” she says, her gaze steady, holding mine. “I’m not letting you steamroll me on this anymore. Not when there’s so much at stake.”
