Page 32 of Isn't She Lucky
“Fajitas. I’ve been craving them. I’ll make enough for you.”
I stand back and watch her work – watch how effortlessly she moves around in the kitchen like she belongs here. Shedoesbelong here. I’ve always known that. The problem I’m having is, she doesn’t know it – at least not yet.
After the foodis cooked and she’s stirred and seasoned bell peppers, onions, strips of steak, chicken, and jumbo shrimp, we sit and eat.
I say, “This is delicious.”
“I’m glad you like it.” She takes a sip of water and says, “Last weekend, you brought up some things and I didn’t want to talk about them because I felt like it would lead to an argument.”
“Why would you feel that way?”
“Because I can look at you and see what you’re feeling, Kasim. I’ve always been able to do that.”
Then you should know that I’m in love with you. That I need you. That I’m over here in this big, lonely house dying without you by my side.
I say, “I didn’t mean to get in my feelings about it, and I normally don’t. With you, though, it’s different.”
She shakes her head.
“What?” I ask. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“Because you’re talking to me as if the separation we’ve had for the last fourteen years never happened.”
“Oh, I know it happened. My heart will never let me forget it. It still hurts.”
I thought I was saying those words in my mind. It’s not until I see her face that I realize I said them aloud.
She clears her throat, lowers the meat-filled tortilla to her plate, and asks, “Why do you blame me for that?”
“Who else is there to blame? I didn’t do anything—”
She frowns. “Yeah. Sure.”
“What did I do to you, Giada?”
She sips water and says, “You know what you did—what yousaid, and now you want to sit here and play the victim. Is that the kind of man you are, Kasim? The kind who can’t take responsibility for his actions and blame everybody else for everything that went wrong?”
She gets up.
I get up, step in front of her, and say, “How will we ever have this conversation if you keep running away from it?”
“Keep?”
“You did it fourteen years ago, you did it again last weekend. You’re not doing it today.”
She looks up at me with those big, beautiful eyes I remember staring into that day she left me. I say, “You were my world, G. Did you know that? You were my happiness. You’re the reason I’m still here. My lifeline. You were the reason I wasn’t lonely and crying myself to sleep at eight years old because I didn’t have anyone to love me.”
I see tears come to her eyes. Her voice cracks when she says, “You had your parents.”
“No. I didn’t have anyone until you. When your mother first brought you here, I felt like I came alive. I finally had a purpose. I had someone. I had you. For years, we were everything to each other, were we not?”
“We were,” she says, and a tear escapes.
“All I want to know from you is what happened to ruin that.”
“Why does it matter now, Kasim?”
“Stop calling me that,” I say, wiping tears from her face with my thumbs. “My name is Kase. That’s the name you gave me.Kase. And it matters because it hurts, even still, and it obviously hurts you, too.”
