“No, it’s not that.” Embarrassed to admit to them that I was with him, after my big denial about our relationship? Maybe.
“Are you embarrassed to introduce them to me?”
“No, it’s not that either.” Well...again, maybe. God knows how they’d react to him, and it could be mortifying. Still, they’re my parents.
“Then what is it, Rory?” He sounded annoyed, calling my bluff.
How could I explain this?
“Amir”—I placed a hand on his thigh—“my parents aren’t the most accepting people on the planet.”
I wondered what Amir was thinking. Could he picture my fantasy croquet parties too? If he only knew how far from reality that fantasy really was...
“Regular people like doctors don’t live in homes like this,” Amir reflected, apparently picturing Pakistani doctors.
“Amir. Perhaps you didn’t get the memo. American doctors are not regular people. Come on, you’ve seen it. Now let’s go.”
“Just one more second.” Then, “Okay,” he conceded. We drove off.
“You’re acting strange,” he remarked. “What’s wrong?”
The whole scene was making me uncomfortable, the merging of worlds that were somehow to be kept separate. How I would integrate the two, I had no idea.
“Amir, I’ve tried to be straight about my background, but spending time with you has opened me up to another world, one that I truly believed could merge with mine...”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“A—Amir...” I was shaky. “Well, how do you see this playing out? Do we get married? Does one of us convert? Our children—”
“Whoa, Rory. You’re getting ahead of yourself here.”
“Am I, Amir? I’m not saying I’m ready to walk down the aisle here, but in what direction should we be walking? The obstacles we would have to overcome...”
“I think we can talk about it, figure this out. Compromise.”
“Maybe we need some time, Amir. Some space to figure this out.”
“You want space?” I watched his brow furrow in anger. “Take all of the space you need.”
My stomach sank. Had I just ended the best relationship I’d ever had?
The next day, I rejoined my team with the same players—Shay, Melissa, and two junior med students—but now I was following a new script, one potentially without Amir. The formerly magical hallways down which rounds were conducted were now cast in their actual light, dusty and drab. The shoddy team room with its charming irregularities now looked like the beat-up dump it actually was. I shot Amir an awkward glance on rounds, the drama between us recharging our initial electricity. But there had been a change. He walked by me several times, looking down at his pager each time, stoic, aloof, a surgical soldier. That god-awful shift of lovers now reading different passages from the same book or from different books, no longer in-sync, each partner incapable of completing the other’s sentences.
“Rory. What’s going on?” a nosy Melissa asked, picking up on the tension.
“Um...” I felt shaky, but it felt good to have another woman to confide in. “I think Amir and I just broke up?”
“Really? I’m sorry to hear that.” She seemed to exhibit compassion.
“Melissa, I must admit, I’m a little confused. Didn’t you and he used to date? Why would my breakup with him bother you?”
“We were never that serious,” she responded. “And it was years ago. Can I ask what split you two up, Rory?”
“I mean, we were different—from different backgrounds, cultures. I don’t know how to reconcile that.”
“I can relate to that. He told me he couldn’t date an American.”
At that moment, I felt for Melissa. He wanted to fight for us, but with her, he hid behind his religion. Maybe he just didn’t love her enough to put everything on the line.
