Chapter 27 #2
“It’s my mother.”
Kai followed my gaze and looked at the happy family inside the restaurant.
“My mother’s here,” I repeated. I had heard from a distant relative that she’d moved to this neighborhood. Running into each other didn’t cross my mind, but I should have known. It was bound to happen.
“Are you sure it’s her?”
It was a fair question. I hadn’t seen her in years, but I’d recognize that laugh anywhere. She looked older than I remembered, or maybe I had just stopped picturing her as she was and started carrying a fixed image instead, the way you did with the dead.
“It’s her,” I whispered, my heart stilling.
My mother had spent the best years of her marriage to my father waiting for him to see her.
He hadn’t. He was the kind of man who was always in the room and never quite present, whose attention landed everywhere but where you needed it.
The divorce didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, well, except for me, and it wasn’t long before she had gone looking for someone who would actually show up for her.
It hurt that she didn’t take me with her.
But it would’ve been difficult to remarry with a child tying her down.
She wanted the freedom to start anew without baggage.
The table through the glass looked happy.
A loving family. A real meal with a man who passed the bread without being asked.
Children who stole each other’s food. A woman who laughed with her whole body.
It looked like what I had been building with Stefan since I was sixteen years old, and what had been disassembled piece by piece the moment a better life materialized for him.
“Do you want to talk to her?” Kai asked. Quiet. Even.
I didn’t see the point. My mother didn’t want me in her life.
Even if I wanted to get to know my half-brother and sister, I had no interest in messing up their perfect family by forcing my way in.
In any case, the idea of her lived in my head; it had never been my reality.
It was like how I had imagined seeing Beirut with Stefan, never realizing that version now existed only as a figment of my imagination.
Just like my mother, Stefan had moved on.
Kai was my reality, offering me everything my heart desired.
I wanted to pour myself into people who reciprocated, not beg unwilling people to love me back.
Kai waited.
“No,” I told him. “I don’t want to talk to her.” Not because I was angry. I was just done chasing ghosts.
Kai looked at me for a long moment. Something moved across his face that he didn’t bother to hide, which was unusual for him. It wasn’t pity or empathy. It was understanding. “Then let’s go.” He stood, dropping some cash on the table.
My chest did a tight-and-release thing. I was still watching my mother when she suddenly looked up.
Our gazes clashed through the glass.
There was a beat of recognition as she stared at me, wide-eyed.
She didn’t call out for me. She didn’t stand.
All kinds of questions were probably running through her mind.
She had no idea why I was in Beirut, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t chase me down to ask.
Slowly, she smiled. Small. Careful. Almost apologetic.
She lifted her hand in a little wave, the kind you gave someone you weren’t sure had the right to expect more.
I didn’t wave back. It wasn’t cruelty. It was acceptance.
Instead, I found myself reaching for Kai’s hand. He looked down at our joined hands and said nothing.
I stood, and then I stepped closer to him, and he absorbed it without words. I let him guide me toward the exit.
Just at that moment, my phone buzzed. I glanced at the phone in my free hand. Stefan. I had left his messages on read since our big fight.
Stefan: I understand if you need space from me. I’ll leave you alone for now if that’s what you want. But please, Am, can we talk this out after I return? Don’t shut me out. I love you.
I stared at the message. After I return.
Kai wouldn’t have waited until he returned from a business trip to ‘talk this out.’ He would’ve dropped everything to fix things between us.
I hated comparing, but it was impossible not to in our situation.
Kai, with more money than anyone I knew, with multiple companies that relied on him, would have dropped everything for me.
He had. We were in Beirut on a weekday. A man who was busier than God himself had chosen me with a focus that was almost incomprehensible.
I’d cataloged his possessiveness as a character flaw. The surveillance. The way he’d rearranged my workday to take me to lunch. The fact that he’d paid my coworkers to spend time with me. I had filed all of it under too much.
But now, I was reclassifying.
Stefan had given me space. Kai didn’t believe in it. The distinction showed. Because Kai wouldn’t have been deterred by a few unanswered messages. If I were angry with him, he would have moved mountains to change my mind.
Kai would have fought for me.
Kai left no room for doubt, and I always knew where I stood with him.
There was something terrifying and clarifying about someone who wanted you without embarrassment, without apology, without the creeping suspicion that he was scanning the room for something better to come along.
I had spent too long with people who made me feel like a placeholder.
“Let’s go,” I told him.
I glanced back at the window one last time.
My mother had already returned to the conversation with her new family.
It didn’t bother me. I cried my eyes out when she decided not to fight for custody.
Then I spent my childhood fighting for my father’s attention.
After I found Stefan, who’d loved me completely, I thought, finally, I’d chosen someone who would always pick me in return.
He didn’t, and I was done with that version of myself.
For once, I wanted to be the object of someone’s desire, their deepest wish. I wanted someone to fight for me as if their survival depended on it. Scraps of love were no longer enough for me. Because there was one man willing to give me everything.
Kai was willing to give me ‘a totally ordinary life.’