“Kelechi! What is this nonsense I’m hearing? Chukwuemeka’s father just called me, saying you embarrassed his son in public and called off the wedding. Do you know the shame you’ve brought on this family?”
He appeared in my doorway still in his work clothes, his handsome face flushed with fury. My mother stood behind him, wringing her hands nervously.
“We are deeply disappointed in you,” he continued, his voice rising with each word. “How could you throw away such a good match? Chukwuemeka is everything we could have hoped for. He is educated, wealthy, and from a respectable family. And you just walked away from all of that?”
Something inside me snapped.
Years of swallowing my truth.
Years of bending myself into shapes that pleased everyone else. I stood up abruptly and faced them both with a fire I didn’t know I possessed.
“I’m in love with someone else!”
The words exploded out of me, and I watched as they both stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
“I’m in love with… with…with a woman.”
My voice cracked, but I pressed on.
“A white woman named Marley. And the reason I can’t marry Chukwuemeka is because I’m in love with her.”
I fumbled for my phone with shaky hands, scrolling frantically through photos until I found the one that made my chest ache.
It was a picture of Marley and me at the Christmas market in MapleRidge, her lips pressed against mine, both of us laughing as though we held the whole world between us.
I thrust the phone toward them, tears streaming down my face.
“This is who I am!” I screamed, my voice breaking completely. “This is what love feels like and I can’t keep pretending anymore that I’m someone I’m not just to make you happy!”
The silence that followed was deafening.
I watched as my father’s face drained of colour, his mouth working soundlessly. My mother covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide with horror.
“I love her,” I continued. “I love her so much, and I can’t live without her. I won’t?—”
The slap came so hard it sent me stumbling backwards, my ears ringing.
The phone flew from my hands, skittering across the floor with a sharp crack.
For a moment, the world tilted sideways.
I pressed my palm to my burning cheek, tasting blood where my teeth had cut my inner lip.
The silence curdled between us, thickening into a wall of pressure that made it hard to swallow.
My father stayed pinned to the spot, hand still mid-air, his chest heaving with raw rage.
When I finally met his gaze, I realised the fire was gone.
In its place was something worse.
Disgust.
“You…” His voice came out strangled. “You are no daughter of mine.”
The words hurt more than the slap.
I turned to look at my mother, but she had gone completely still, her face like stone.
