Once we were alone again, I spoke. “I know you mentioned you don’t speak to your parents anymore, is them ignoring you why?”
She drank her margarita and seemed to be lost in deep thought for a second. “That plays a part in it. I’ve always been good in school. I was able to get emancipated at sixteen and graduated high school that same year. The last time I spoke to my parents was when I called to invite them to my college graduation and they declined to come.”
My eyes widened. “Damn. I wasn’t expecting that.” My head tilted. Hearing that had me looking at Nakyra in a new light.
“It was a process, but truthfully I had been raising myself for the majority of my life. Once I lost my hearing, my parents didn’t want the burden of raising a kid with a disability. They never bothered to learn ASL; they forced me to always wear my hearing aids so I could communicate with them. They refused to make any accommodations for me. Basically they felt like I shouldn’t have ‘special treatment’ just because I was now deaf, as if it was my fault.” Her voice came out sarcastically, but I couldn’t miss the hurt within her words. Her eyes zoned out again as she continued.
“Anyway, they never came to my tennis matches, never really bothered with anything I had going on. As long as I had the essentials, that was it. Most of the time at home I was in my room with my aids off embracing the silence. I had grown to enjoy it. When I learned I could graduate early, I knew college would be a fresh start for me, so I did what I needed to prove to the courts I could support myself. My parents didn’t put up a fight, so the process wasn’t too hard.”
I thought about it for a second. “You and my brother met in college, right? How old were you?”
Rome was four years older than me and Nakyra was a year younger than me if I remembered correctly.
“I was seventeen. I met him during the middle of my freshman year.” I did the math. That would have made my brother twenty-two at the time. Once I turned eighteen, I distanced myself from my family and the boss I inherited Steel Freight from helped me get my own place so I wasn’t around when the two started dating. I stayed locally for college while my brother went away.
“Here you are.” The server was back this time with the waters and crab cakes.
“Thank you,” we both said.
We quickly blessed the food then each grabbed one.
“I honestly was shocked when your brother showed interest in me. I had dated some in high school, but it was never anything serious. Most guys treated me like a fetish they were satisfying so it never worked out. Your brother was the first one to show actual interest, but the two of us were from different worlds. So when he approached me I thought it was a joke, but here we are, months away from getting married.”
“So you don’t think the accident will affect the wedding.”
She scraped her bottom lip with her teeth and looked off to the side. “I’m trying to stay hopeful. Honestly Rome has been super busy with preparing to take over for your dad so we haven’t spent a lot of time together. I was looking forward to getting married and our honeymoon, but now.” She sighed and downed more of her drink before coughing.
“Don’t die on me now.” I chuckled.
She attempted to talk while tapping on her chest. My eyes dropped to where her hand was. The sweater she had on was v cut, showing the top of her cleavage. While her breasts weren’t big, they fit her frame and sat up nicely behind the shirt. For a second I became curious if her nipples matched the color of herskin. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip and snatched my eyes back to her face. I shouldn’t be looking at my future sister-in-law in that way.
I grabbed my glass and finished my drink.
“So I got a question for you.” I lifted my hand when I saw our server, to get his attention for another drink. “You’ve mentioned only Summer knows sign language, but what about Rome? He never learned it?”
Nakyra shifted in her seat and her hand lifted as she touched her right ear, slightly flinching. My brows furrowed.
“No. I mean, he learned some things when we first started dating, but he’s not fluent in it. He prefers to speak over signing.”
I squinted. “And you’re okay with that?”
She shrugged. “I can’t expect everyone around me to accommodate me. My parents taught me that early. They made sure I got my aids so I could hear and still communicate like everyone else.”
“But you prefer ASL, right?”
Her tongue swiped over her lips. “Sometimes. Being lost in the silence sometimes is comforting. Maybe it’s because I grew up spending a lot of time surrounded by nothing but my sketchbooks. Summer was my outlet honestly. Besides her, it was always just me and my thoughts.”
Her explanation didn’t sit right with me. She shouldn’t feel like her loss of hearing was a burden or that she shouldn’t be adapted to.
“If I was marrying someone and knew they were hard of hearing, blind, whatever, I would make sure to do whatever I could to make them comfortable if we’re gonna spend our lives together. I don’t know a lot about how it works, but what if you ever lost your hearing to the point your aids didn’t work, then how would that work for you two? He should be willingto learn how to communicate with you through his hands too. But Rome’s always been selfish in that way, so it doesn’t shock me that he’s not willing to compromise and learn your second language.”
She went to speak but snapped her mouth closed when the server came back with my drink and our food on the tray.
The conversation halted while we ate. I hoped I didn’t offend Nakyra, but I was never one to bite my tongue. The more I learned about her and my brother’s relationship, the more it made me wonder how the two had lasted as long as they did. It wasn’t any of my business and I would be headed back home soon, but still, even being here for the short amount of time I had been I could tell Nakyra deserved more than what Rome was clearly giving her.
Chapter 12
Nakyra
