Page 55 of Beauty and the Billionaire

He loved him.

“Someday.” It was a clipped whisper. “Maybe.” The pain in Julian’s eyes reflected that of my own, but we didn’t seek a sense of camaraderie between us. Julian pinched his mouth before he turned away from me and walked out.

I sank into my chair and exhaled a long breath of air, releasing the anxiety that had held me trapped with it. And when I could breathe slightly more freely, I got up, dug out the folder, and tossed it into the fire.

My own words returned to me, and I knew just how true they were.

It was a lesson for sure, but I learned it much too late.

CHAPTER 14

Coming Out

Zain

It wasthe first day I worked in the shop since the fateful day my impulsive curiosity had whisked me away into a life I couldn’t fully return from. The day had begun with the usual deliveries, bringing me to Neon Nights and a moment of soul-searching. The rest of it passed as usual, although my parents tiptoed around me as if I were made of glass and any sound would shatter me.

There was little to be done in the shop after the standard orders had been fulfilled, so I tried to read. After all, that was how I had always spent my days behind the cash register. Today, my gaze went over the lines, but words made no sense to me. The words bounced off my mind like water off a duck.

By the time I swept the floors, I felt like I was burning out. I wondered how much longer I could live like this.

Mama Viv’s words this morning had been short, but they had struck me to the core. I had told her that I was home again, but she gave me a quizzical look. “Are you, darling?”

“Of course I am,” I insisted.

Mama Viv replied with a slow, compassionate nod. “Home is something we make for ourselves. I’m happy for you if you are.”

Hearing this mattered more than I was aware. It was only when I reminded myself that Mama Viv was the person who had guided so many people like me to make their own homes that I understood the complete weight of her meaning.

My mother took Rami to soccer practice while Yara and Karim went out to play in the snow in the park. Yara often took the big sister role seriously around Karim, and I was thankful for that this evening. Only my father and I remained home, and when we locked up the store, we circled one another in the dining room upstairs in our apartment.

Tonight marked a week since my return. It was a week of bewildered gazes directed at me, hidden at the same instant I caught them. It was a week of pitiful silence. It was a week of awkwardness that knew no end.

Was I even home? These people knew nothing about me. They didn’t even know why I had returned, let alone why I had stayed away for so long. And it was entirely my fault that I was a stranger in their home.

I dipped a teabag in my mug a few times after it had steeped for five minutes. Father had brewed himself a strong coffee that was bound to keep him up long into the night if he meant to have it all this late.

“Father, can I talk to you?” I heard myself ask. I wished I could turn back time. Not hours or days or years, but only the last three seconds. My heart was a frightened rabbit in my chest.

“Of course, Zain,” Father replied, pouring himself the tiny cup of coffee with thick, light brown foam plopping into it first. The aroma rose deliciously and almost fooled me into giving it another taste. “You can always speak to me. You know that.”

There was only a hint of a question in his words. “It’s just…” And my words dried up.

My father sat to my immediate left, his hands resting on the table with artificial stillness while my fingers trembled around my mug. I forced them to calm down a bit, but it wasn’t much.

“Zain,” Father said quietly and urgently. My name always sounded different coming from his lips than anyone else’s. I wasZaneto everyone else, but Father called me how I was meant to be called in Lebanon. Despite his clear accent in conversations, he never changed the way he called me.

As a boy, I had been infuriated by that. Could he not let me be an American boy like all the other boys? He would embarrass me in front of my classmates.

But as years went by, I learned that it was not his way of reminding me that I was different. It was an intimate bond between us. I was part of him, and he was part of me. His home, his ancestors, and their language were in me as much as my mother’s were. And as much as I was my own person in New York, in Hudson Burrow, I was also an accidental product of vastly different cultures that had overcome their oppositions and prejudices.

“Zain, what is the matter?” Father asked hurriedly.

I realized that tears brimmed in my eyes on the verge of spilling. I realized I had stopped breathing in a desperate attempt to stifle a sob. And when I inhaled, my lungs stung with gratitude. “Father,” I whispered over a thick knot in my throat. “I’m…I’m not who you think I am.”

“Come, now,” Father said helplessly. I could see him glancing at the door as if he hoped my mother would enter any moment and handle this surprising situation. “Come, now,” he repeated a little more softly.

“No, I lied,” I blurted before I could lose my voice again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been lying for so long.”

---