Ari’s mother was on the defensive now. “If this is about that young man you brought by—”
“His name is Jax, Maman.”
“He was hardly suitable.”
Ari gaped at her. “I love him, and he makes me happy. How much more suitable does he need to be?”
“Just because he’s pretty—”
“So what if he is? He’s more than a pretty face. And not because he’s probably a genius, but because he makes me laugh and he understands me.” Ari stared at his water glass and bit out, “He thinks my music is beautiful and understands what it means. Even when it’s ‘overly cerebral’ and ‘technically stunning.’”
“Ari, your musicisbeautiful,” his father said softly.
“What does it matter if he thinks your music is beautiful—it is!—when he’s clearly an irresponsible man-child, living with a roommate at his age.”
Ari pushed away from the table to avoid hurting something or himself. Opposite him, his mother stood too. “Why are you like this? Always so judgmental! If you’d bothered to ask instead of just judging all the time, then you would know that he met his doctor roommate during the pandemic and moved in because his friend got sick, first to take care of his cat and then to take care of him. And if you’d bothered to ask, you might have learned that they met when Jax was doing work creating statistical models to predict rates of infection.”
His parents stared at him.
“But you know what? None of that matters. Because so what if he has a roommate? Lots of people hate living alone or can’t afford it. It doesn’t make them failures. But even if he were the biggest failure ever, an idiot, and just a pretty face, what does it matter so long as he makes me happy?” He pressed a hand to his face. “Jax was right.”
“Oh? And what’s Jax’s opinion on the matter?” his mother asked icily.
“That you’re snobs who were rude to him because of his job.” His mother huffed and stood straighter. Ari saw red. “You deliberately tried to—succeeded in—ruining the best thing that ever happened to me, and you can’t even—you’re not even sorry!”
“Well, if he’s going to be chased away by one little dinner…,” she blustered, though her shoulders looked less firm.
“You basically called him a whore,” Ari snapped. His shoulders slumped. “And I’m the idiot who just let you.”
“Ari,” Afra said softly.
He turned to her and gave her a watery smile. “I’m not doing it again. I’m not sure I’ll ever—” His voice broke. “—meet anyone… but I sure as hell won’t be bringing him around here to meet you. I am done letting you chase them away. Because I have been letting you. But I’m not doing it again.”
“So you will just keep your partner a secret from us?” His father looked distressed.
“Better that than to have you judge and pick until they leave.” He was so fucking tired.
“So your plan is to find some unsuitable boy and marry him without us there just to spite us? You are so dramatic. We never had these problems with your sister.”
Afra stiffened, her fingers clenched on her fork. If she were a cartoon, steam would have shot from her ears. She glanced his way, and Ari stepped back and ceded the floor. Their mother wasn’t listening to him, but maybe she would listen to her perfect daughter.
“And how would you know?” Afra started softly, dangerously. “If I were keeping things secret, how would you ever know?”
“Parents know—”
“I had nothing but secrets as a teenager. A secret boyfriend who dumped me because he didn’t want to be a secret, a secret heartbreak I couldn’t tell anyone about, a secret one-night stand because of the heartbreak”—their parents went white—“and then a secret baby.”
A still, shattering silence descended, broken a split second later by Ari’s parents inhaling sharply.
“What?” their father asked, as their mother slumped back into her seat.
“My first year of university, I got pregnant. The baby was born healthy and perfect that May, and I never even saw it because I was too goddamned afraid I would want to keep it. I wanted to keep it so badly, but I knew you’d never let me out of the house again if I did. So I made the best decision for me and for the baby.” Her fists trembled on the tabletop, but she stared their parents down like a righteous avenging angel. “Ben and I have been trying to have a child for years. I did two rounds of IVF, but it didn’t work. We are going to adopt a baby, and we will be fantastic parents. But not being able to have kids took us totally by surprise. It never occurred to us that we might not be able to, because I had been there, done that. But we can’t, and now I will never see the only natural child I will ever have.”
Their parents sat stiff and pale in utter shock. They didn’t try to speak.
“So congratulations. Your limited ideas about acceptable life choices have lost you a frankly fantastic potential son-in-law and perhaps the only natural grandchild you’ll ever have.” She stood up and looked at Ari. “I think we’re done here.”
Ari couldn’t disagree.