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He waved his hand like my feelings on the matter were a minor inconvenience. “The Al-Rashids have a daughter, Fatima. She runs a tech company, and they’ve been looking to expand their reach up here.”
“No, Pops.”
“You haven’t even—”
“I said no.”
The look he gave me would’ve made me straighten up when I was fifteen. At thirty-nine, it just made me tired.
He set his glass down. “You think I married your mother because I was in love?”
That caught me off guard.
“You didn’t love her?”
“I loved your mother. Don’t ever question that,” he said firmly. “But that’s something that came over time, and even then…it doesn’t mean you know everything about a person. Damn sure doesn’t make shit easy.”
“You and Ma had an arranged marriage?” I asked, shocked.
My mother’s father, Felix Perkins, was a powerful drug lord from Harlem. I’d assumed my parents found each other through the life and marriage was just good business for both families. I never thought to question it beyond that.
“Yes.” He folded his hands. “And luckily for us, we grew to love each other. I’d like to think we really did fall in love. We had our issues though. Things I decided to live with because the alternative was losing everything—the family, you. I chose to stay and work through it. That’s what marriage is, son. Nobody’s perfect. You find somebody you’re willing to choose over and over when shit gets complicated.”
“Ma was a good woman,” I said, feeling my throat tighten. He’d never talked about her like this before.
“She was a good wife and mother, but we didn’t live a fairy tale.”
There was something in his eyes that I’d never seen before or never been paying close enough attention to notice. It wasn’t sadness exactly. More like a man who’d stopped expecting the grief to leave.
“The love part was real,” he said, quieter. “But our foundation is what kept us together. Especially when—” He cleared his throat. “That’s what kept us together. Period.”
“I hear you, Pop.”
“You sure? Because you've been hearing but not listening to me a whole lot lately.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m not saying never. Just not like this—not like I’m shopping for a bride.”
“Marriage is a business partnership. Everything else can be figured out along the way.”
He rapped his knuckles on the table and stood, squeezing my shoulder as he walked out.
I sat there for a while after he was gone, listening to the front of the restaurant come alive as the buzz of the lunch crowd started to filter in.
The only thing standing in between me fully taking the reins was a woman willing to sign on to what came with it. He made it sound so simple. And maybe it was. I just wasn’t willing to do it the way he wanted or figure it out with everything else sitting on my plate.
I pulled my phone out.
You eat yet?
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
La’Belle
This a not so slick way of trying to see me again so soon?
I’m asking if you ate.
La’Belle
