Aria tried to slam the door behind her, but Dave stuck his foot in its path and followed her into the room.
“Dave, please leave me alone,” she told him, leaving the living room to her bedroom.
“Please, Aria. We need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore.”
He stopped mid-speech to give her a shocked and hurt look that tugged at her heartstrings.
“Aria. Please, don’t say that.”
His voice was soft and so full of fear that she had to turn around so that she didn’t feel bad enough to give in.
When she felt him behind her, she shivered involuntarily. Even when she was this upset and her heart was breaking with the decision she had to make, she was still affected by his closeness. Was she ever going to find this kind of love again?
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he whispered, and she had to sigh.
“You should have told me.”
“I know, but I was just… Why does it matter so much? Why is this causing a fight?”
She whirled around. “Why does it matter? Why the hell do you think it matters? Dave, we’re worlds apart. You come from one of the most powerful old-money families in this country, and before we met, I was a woman who was still trying to figure out her life, with barely any extra cash in her purse every month. My mom sells kenkey at the market, and my Dad hasn’t held down a job for more than three months since I was ten. Your mom’s family owns a pharmaceutical empire and your dad owns businesses in every industry all over the country and overseas. How do you see this working out between us?”
Dave shook his head. “None of that matters, Aria. You know that. I knew all this about you and your background before I asked you out that first time.”
“Exactly! I told you everything about myself and my family, and I was so excited that for the first time, I had met a guy who was more interested in listening to me than talking about himself and all that time you were keeping me talking so that you could hide important details about yourself! You told me that your family was “comfortable”. Comfortable! That is the worst understatement I’ve ever come across.”
“Come on, Aria. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. Besides, it felt great to finally meet someone who didn’t know about my family and treated me like everyone else.”
Aria began to pace.
“There’s a reason I didn’t know you by face, Dave. I do not have any business with the rich and famous. I don’t give a fuck about their lives, what they’re doing, or who they’re doing. I can’t help but hear some names, but putting faces to names is a whole new ballgame, one I have never been interested in playing. I can’t date a wealthy guy, Dave. I may have considered rich, which is what I thought you were, but wealthy? Ha. What are you even doing with me? Last I heard y’all upper echelons don’t mingle with us on the lower side because you only date each other.”
She paused to watch him with narrowed eyes. “Or was it a thing of experiencing the trenches for a while before going back to your elites?”
“Aria, please, don’t be like that. You know that I’m with you because I want to be with you. After all, I love you!”
The impassioned last statement stopped her retort, and she took a few breaths to calm herself.
“People from where you come from and where I come from cannot be in love, Dave,” she told him in a broken voice.
“Can’t you see that I don’t care? I don’t give a damn about where you come from, what jobs your parents do or how much you have in your wallet — beyond wanting to fill it up, that is. I don’t care, Aria. I never did, and I never will.”
“You may not care, but your family definitely will. Tell me, have you even told any of them about me?”
The guilty look on his face was her answer. “Exactly. You haven’t told them because you know they won’t approve of you dating a loud woman from the trenches who wouldn’t know designer wear if it hit her in the face.”
“Would you please stop talking about yourself in that manner?”
“Would you please stop talking about yourself in that manner?” Aria mimicked. “You know, if you had started with this snotty upper-class English and tone, I might have caught on earlier.”
He rubbed his face in frustration. “Aria, please.”
She caught herself pouting and smoothened her expression. Suddenly exhausted, she sat on the bed. She saw his flinch when she moved away when he joined her, but she steeled herself against it. It already hurt that she was going to break up with him after just three months of bliss. Prolonging the inevitable end of their relationship was just going to make it harder for both of them when the time came.
“Aria, I love you, and I want to be with you. Yes, I haven’t given my family the details yet, but they know that I’m seeing someone I’m serious about.”
“You haven’t given them the details because you know that they won’t approve,” Aria repeated.
“They might have some misgivings at first,” he admitted, “but they’ll come to love you just as I do.”
Aria huffed. “Dave, you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“They will love you, I promise,” he insisted.
“No, Dave. I’m sorry, but I’m not doing this. I can’t do the whole ‘trying to get your family to accept me thing’.”
“Why do you care so much about what other people think, Aria?”
“They’re not just other people, Dave. They’re your family!”
“And so? The only person whose opinion about you should matter is me! I’m the one you’re in the relationship with.”
Aria snorted, getting annoyed. “Very easy for you to say. Do you think this is a Nollywood romance movie or a Telemundo soap opera? In the real world, it’s a fucking pain if your partner’s family doesn’t like you. It can make your life miserable as hell, and I don’t want to sacrifice my peace of mind for love or create tension between you and your family.”
His eyes widened. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating? Aria, we only need each other. I want to be with you, and I will do anything to make you happy. Why can’t you see that? Isn’t our love enough to conquer all obstacles?”
Aria let out a little scream of frustration. “The problem with being born into privilege is that it’s easy for you to brush potential problems under the carpet and only see the rosy aspects. I have struggled enough in this life to know that things aren’t that simple and that love is not enough to make people happy. Love was not enough to prevent me from going to bed hungry on days when there was no money at home, and it sure as hell wasn’t enough to prevent my little sister from dying because we couldn’t afford medical bills. We all loved her like mad, but that didn’t save her li — “
She broke off as memories filled her eyes with tears. Seeing her pain caused tears to prick Dave’s eyes too. “Aria, baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
Sniffing, she brushed at the tears with the back of her hand. “It’s fine, I just got emotional.”
“Can I hug you? Please?” he added when she looked like she was going to refuse.
Nodding, she allowed him to get closer and pull her into his arms, comforting her.
“I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to remind you of painful experiences.”
“It’s okay,” Aria sniffed, pulling back. “I know you didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
He left to get tissues to wipe her face and gave her some time to calm down and pull herself together. All that time, his mind was reeling. He couldn’t believe that this was happening. It felt as if his whole world had been tilted on its axis. Never in his life had he expected his wealth to be a standing block to his happiness.
Ever since Dave had met Aria three months ago while researching her neighborhood’s potential for a new business venture, he had known that this was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Her authenticity, openness, bubbly energy, and the confident way she carried herself captivated him, and the fact that she was also so pretty tied everything together in a beautiful bow. She was like a bright rainbow in his otherwise gray world; everything he needed and hadn’t even realized he was looking for. He honestly didn’t know how he would cope if she really broke up with him.
He had suspected that she may not be comfortable with his wealth, but it had never occurred to him that she would break up with him over it.
He had made the stupid mistake of taking her to one of the restaurants his family owned tonight, and the staff’s behavior had connected the dots for her. She had done a quick Google search while they were eating and calmly asked him to take her home. The drive back to the apartment he had rented for her to give them privacy away from her small family home had been full of tension and shocked remarks as she kept finding out more about him and his family online. And now here they were, talking about breaking up.
He was trying not to panic, but it was hard. It was ironic that the wealth that had given him everything he wanted in life was taking away the one thing he wanted the most.
“Can we discuss this? Please? You sound like you’ve made up your mind and it’s wrecking me.” he pleaded.
Aria shut her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, they were full of gut-wrenching emotions. “Dave, I love you. I love you more than I ever believed I could love someone. So this isn’t an easy decision for me to make either. It really hurts, but I can’t lose myself to love.”
“You won’t lose yourself, Aria. I —”
“Dave, you don’t understand! I love myself. I am comfortable with the way I am, and I don’t want to become anyone else. But if I venture into your world, I’m going to have to change to fit in. There are going to be irrelevant strangers online and offline judging my life and everything I do. I am not refined enough for the upper class, Dave, and frankly, I don’t want to be. I am loud, over-enthusiastic over the simplest things, dress for comfort and not for fashion, cuss a lot, and prefer neighborhood bars to classy restaurants. But that is me, and I love myself just the way I am. I don’t have any wish to become a “lady”. But if I stay with you, that’s exactly what I will be forced to be. You may not care, but it would make you a source of gossip and ridicule, and I would hate to do that to you.”
He leaned forward to wipe her tears, not noticing that his eyes had also begun to leak. With each word she spoke, he felt as if his world was tearing apart.
“Aria, we can make it work. We can find a way to make it work. Maybe leave the country together and start a new life by ourselves.”
More tears rushed out at his impassioned statement, and she wiped impatiently at them. “Oh, Dave. I know you really mean that and it sounds like a beautiful dream, but we can’t. I can’t leave my parents here by themselves, and I can’t do that to your family either. It may all seem romantic now, but it is going to be fucking hard on both of us. I don’t have the energy to be a Megan Markle. “Us against the world” is not as romantic in reality as it seems on TV or in romance books. You have family responsibilities and a legacy to uphold and continue, and I have my dignity and self identity to protect. I love you, Dave. So much. But in this case, love is not going to be enough to keep us together. There would be a price to pay for our happiness, and I would be the one to pay most of that price.”
Completely undone but unable to argue her points at that moment, he pulled her into his arms, crying into her neck as she did him. Her heart was breaking too, and it was even worse for her because she had to be the one to make the decision to break up.
As they wept in each other’s arms, they wondered why fate would give them this kind of love and keep them worlds apart.
They had both believed that they would be in each other’s lives forever, but now they had to think about a world where they both lived but didn’t have each other.
His mind was reeling with thoughts on how to make this work without sacrificing her peace of mind, and she was filled with anguish, wishing that things were different.
