I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think.
“But I am sorry. I’m so sorry. Because I can’t be what you want or what you need.”
I just stared at him.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I know—I should have told you I was still with her. I should have explained it to you.”
“Why?” It was the only word that filled my head, the only word that escaped from my lips. But there were other words there, too, stuck in between my head and my heart. Words I could never say.
Why her and not me?
Story of my life.
Samir
I TENSED. “I don’t want to talk about Layla.” I hated even saying her name in Maggie’s presence.
“Why?” Maggie repeated.
Why? Because I felt like a pussy admitting my parents had picked her out for me. Because I didn’t know how to make her understand what it was like.
The American kids didn’t get it. They thought arranged relationships and family pressure were things from another century. They lived their lives like the world was theirs for the taking, like they could do anything, be anything. Sure, most of them didn’t live like we lived—they didn’t drop thousands of dollars in a nightclub or drive a Range Rover. But they chose their own majors, and they dated who they wanted to date. Their lives were their own; their futures weren’t built on a legacy that threatened to drag them down.
I was a Khouri. In Lebanon and the Middle East, that meant something. Centuries of history. I was the only child—a son. My father’s legacy would pass down to me one day, just like mine would pass down to my son. Our family’s honor rested in my hands. To have the political career they expected me to have, I had to have a political wife.
Layla was perfect. Maggie was not.
Maggie was the kind of girl my parents would grudgingly accept me screwing around with, but would never accept as my girlfriend. Maggie deserved more, and I was running out of time.
“I have responsibilities. To my family. To my country. Layla’s father and mine have been political allies for a long time. It’s a good match.”
Maggie was silent for a moment. I desperately wished I could read the emotions brewing in her beautiful brown eyes. She looked down at the floor, and I couldn’t see anything anymore.
“Do you love her?” she finally asked.
A pounding noise sounded on the other end of the door.
“Just a minute,” we shouted in unison.
Maggie looked up at me. “Well. Do you love her?” Her voice cracked a bit. “Are you happy with her?”
She asked the question like my answer mattered. But I didn’t know how to answer that one.
“No. I don’t love her.” I hesitated, torn between needing to be open with her and not wanting to be so honest that she thought I was completely irredeemable.
“I like you, Maggie.” She flushed. “But you need to know, what you see with me is pretty much what you get. I can’t walk away from my life. I can’t promise anything other than a good time. I don’t have anything else; everything else isn’t mine to give.”
Maggie
HE WAS WARNING me off. I got it.
I didn’t know what to say anymore, didn’t know what to make of him. I couldn’t spend the whole year like this. We had the same group of friends, the same major. We went to a really small school. Even London felt small when you considered that we frequented the same places, liked the same restaurants. I couldn’t avoid him even if I wanted to.
“Okay. Let’s just forget this all happened. No one knows about it. It was a one-time thing. We feel awkward now, but I’m sure if we just give each other space, that feeling will eventually go away.”
Samir was silent for a moment. “That’s what you want?”
No. “Yeah. That’s what I want.”
“Okay.” He hesitated for a moment. “Friends?”
I wasn’t sure. Friends seemed a bit optimistic. Right now I just didn’t want to feel like I was dying inside every time I saw him.
“Something like that.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Samir
I LEANED BACK in my chair while the professor droned on. I hated the first day of school. In theory, I didn’t hate the material. I actually didn’t mind my major. I just hated the inevitability of it all.
This—me being here—was all a big joke. My grades didn’t matter. The material didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I was here for one reason—so my parents would have something to brag about to their friends. I was here because Khouris went to university. It didn’t matter how we did there, because we all joined one of the family businesses eventually. In my case, politics.
When I was a kid in Beirut, I’d told my mother I wanted to be a policeman. It wasn’t a well-thought-out career plan, but I was six and there was a TV show I really liked with a cool cop. She’d laughed and looked vaguely horrified.
That was when I’d learned I was meant to be a clone of my father.
Today, the first day of classes, felt like the start of a ticking time bomb.
“Enjoy your last summer of freedom,” my father had announced when I’d come home in May. “After graduation next summer, you’ll be married.”
I’d just turned twenty-three. I wasn’t ready to be much of a boyfriend to anyone, let alone a husband. But with Layla it wouldn’t matter. We both knew what we were getting into, understood the rules. We’d have a marriage just like our parents had—cold, indifferent, all flash and no substance.
It wasn’t Layla’s fault. She was pretty enough, nice enough. She was elegant and lovely, really. But I couldn’t talk to her like I talked to Maggie. She didn’t challenge me, didn’t fight with me. She didn’t make me laugh. She didn’t drive me crazy. She didn’t haunt my dreams or my every waking thought.
It wasn’t Layla’s fault; it was mine. I didn’t have the balls to stop this, even though I knew how wrong it was. Layla didn’t deserve to be saddled with someone like me; she just didn’t know to expect any better. She’d been raised the same way I had—we were both fulfilling the roles we’d been given despite the small, temporary reprieve.
It was a tradition of sorts. They gave you a limited amount of time. Time to go to some fancy Western university to get a piece of paper that was basically worthless for all we needed it. In my case, I got a little extra time—time to make sure my English was where my father wanted it to be. A year of studying in Boston before I went to the International School.
Every guy I knew from my world had a job waiting for him when he got back home. We had a few years to blow off steam, to party, to see the world, but when time was up, we were expected to go back to being the person they wanted us to be, to thinking the way they wanted us to think, to playing by their rules. On graduation day, we were supposed to flip a switch and forget everything, leaving the lives we’d built behind us like they were nothing.
Maybe I should have been grateful for the time I’d had. Maybe I was lucky I’d gotten that at all. But now, selfishly, impossibly, I wanted more. I had nine months of freedom left, and there was only one person I wanted to spend them with.
Maggie