He holds up his hands. “I was only saying.”
I calm myself down, not wanting to ruin the night. “Fine.”
He glances over, but instead of getting on my case and asking if it’s really fine, and what do I mean byfine, and all the other stuff I don’t want to hear when it’s fine enough to not fight about it, he does me the credit of taking it at face value and saying, “Okay.”
“We brainstormed a couple of perfumes together,” I say. “It was fun.”
“That’s good.” He hesitates and lowers his voice. “One of your moli perfumes? Are you closer?”
“We stopped working on what happened with me.” There’s a couple to the left, so I’m deliberately vague. If I can hear their conversation about the best angle to take photos of their drinks, they’ll be able to hear me talk about my secret ancestral magical ability.
He waits, but that’s all I give him. “Okay…?” he finally says, as if to invite me to elaborate.
“That’s it.” I swirl the glass in my hand like a Mob boss about to make an offer to a potentially corruptible official.
“If you want it so badly, you can’t give up.”
I give him a look, and he lifts his hands. “Sorry, I know. It’s just thisclearly makes you unhappy, and from my perspective, you’ve given up without trying every avenue.”
This is unbelievable. My hands shake around my glass. “Why are you so invested? It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Because this is a gift, Lucy, and you’re tossing it away.”
“It’s not a gift,” I say, feeling the familiar stirring of guilt that’s so easy to transform into anger. What does he know? It’s like he’s erring on the side of overly supportive, but I can’t complain that he’s trying too hard to be understanding. “Even if it was, it’s up to me how to use it and whether I want to. I don’t owe my family anything.”
“Do you think that, for real?” he asks. “We don’t owe our families anything?”
“What, you disagree?”
“I want to know your explanation first.”
I struggle to articulate it. “It’s not that. Using the moli would help my family, and it’s expected of me, but it doesn’t mean I have to spend my life making my mother happy.”
“Did she ask you to?”
“She didn’t need to! It’s what all the Huas do. They’ve always lived together. She doesn’t have the right to expect my life to revolve around her.”
He leans forward. “These are two different things. If you love someone, you do things you don’t want to because it makes them happy or their life easier.”
“Like a doormat.”
“No,” he says steadily. “Like someone who’s not selfish. Like a person who wants to benefit the people they love. That’s what love is. It’s acting in a way that doesn’t only center ourselves. Honestly, sometimes being a good person is more important than being happy.”
“Let me get this straight. Are you saying I should abandon Ana and my store to go home with my mother to make her happy? To fulfill her dreams?”
“No, I’m saying you might want to keep an open mind. You were so devastated to not have the same ability as the other women in your family that you left because you couldn’t handle it. That doesn’t sound like a person who’s happy, even if they insist they’re being true to themselves.”
I keep my temper. “Thank you for your concern,” I say as blandly as possible.
“Don’t be like that, Lucy. If you’re upset, tell me.”
Eavesdropping couples be damned. “All right. I’m upset because you’re poking your nose in my business and calling me selfish. You don’t know anything, and you think you have the right to come along and tell me how to live my life because you’ve transformed into this new person. I’m allowed to give up, Rafe, and to do it without guilt. I’m allowed to live without this pressure!”
He backs off instantly, although he doesn’t break eye contact. “I was out of line.”
I blow out a breath, wanting to fight, but it’s displaced disgust at myself. He’s right. Mom was right. I gave up too quickly.
I was scared.
