Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  “He hit your cousin—”

  “Zarif hit Asher first, and was about to do it again,” Laila said, irritation rising in her voice even though she’d said the same thing dozens of times last night. She’d never seen Zarif behave that way. She hadn’t even known he had it in him to be such an aggressive caveman.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, coming here.”

  “It was your idea. The only thing I’m doing now is finalizing it. You told me a thousand times last night how dishonest I was being by sneaking around.” She met her dad’s gaze squarely. “All I’m trying to do now is be honest.”

  “We’re doing this for your sake, Laila.”

  “No. I’m doing this for you,” she corrected coldly. “I love him, Baba. I’d never do this for myself.”

  Her father closed his eyes briefly, and she felt his pain. She felt everyone’s pain on that gray morning. She wished like hell she could make it stop.

  “You’re nineteen, Laila. You’re young. This will pass,” he said quietly. “You have to believe me when I say that I’m thinking only of you in this. Of your happiness. I’m going to allow you to speak to him this one time. But understand this. Never again.”

  Laila said nothing. She’d heard it so many times last night, the words felt like hollowed-out missiles. They still hurt, but they weren’t penetrating as far. Something had hardened inside her.

  She peered out the window at Asher’s face and saw the discoloration on his jaw where Zarif had hit him. She saw the worry in his eyes. A numbness settled on her. She turned to her father. He looked different to her. Older. Had last night aged him? Or maybe it was just that he was looking at her—Laila—differently?

  “I’ll only be a few minutes. Stay here.”

  She opened the door and stepped out onto the driveway. She slammed the car door. For several seconds, she stood there, her gaze locked with Asher’s.

  The she started to walk toward him. That was when she first felt it: the icy hand of fate gripping her heart.

  • • •

  “. . . and so that’s how it all happened,” Laila was saying in a flat tone. They sat in his mother’s sitting room, Asher at the corner of a couch. Laila perched on the edge of a chair. As she talked, she rubbed her hands together in a nervous gesture. Asher was growing more and more concerned by the pallor of her face, the dark circles under her eyes and the frozen quality of her usually animated expression. When they’d entered the sitting room earlier and shut the door, he’d tried to take her into his arms. But she’d just walked around him and sat down on the chair, where he couldn’t sit next to her.

  “My cousin Zarif is really smart, and he’s close enough to our age to know when something’s up,” she continued, still refusing to make eye contact with him. “He noticed Zara sneaking out last night to meet Eric and followed them to Chauncy’s. From what I gather, he didn’t find them in the most beneficial of circumstances. They were in an empty back room alone at Chauncy’s, fooling around. Anyway, accusations were flying between them, and suddenly Eric blurted out all this stuff about you and me. I don’t know why he did it then—”

  “To deflect your cousin’s attention off kicking his ass onto kicking mine,” Asher said, his mouth curling in disgusted fury. Laila gave him a startled glance at his concise, bitter evaluation of things. “I know how Eric works,” he stated simply. “Then what happened?”

  “Zarif hauled Zara back to the cottages and woke up her parents. My mom and dad, and Tahi’s too, got up because of all the shouting at Zara’s parents’ place. In the midst of all the chaos, Zarif told my dad about what Eric had said about you and me. They stormed into my and Mamma Sophia’s room and saw that I was missing.” She paused, her face tightening briefly in pain.

  “Laila?”

  “My grandmother got confused and scared by all the shouting and confusion,” she continued in a muffled voice. “She tried to get out of bed by herself, and she fell—”

  “Jesus,” Asher said, sitting forward and taking her hand. “Is she okay?”

  Laila’s chin fell down to her chest. Wild concern swamped him when he realized she was shaking, her entire body quaking in a fine tremor. She wasn’t actually cold and distant in those moments, he realized. She was in misery, and barely holding it together. He went down on his knees and moved before her in the chair. He cradled her head and lifted her face gently.

  “She’s okay,” Laila said. “We took her to the ER, just to be sure. There’s some bruising, but she’s okay.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Laila,” he said, knowing her well enough by now to know precisely what was going through her head.

  She clamped her eyelids closed, shaking her head in his hands. “I have to go. I can’t keep putting this off by talking about last night,” she said, her voice so thick with emotion he could barely understand her. “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?”

  She opened her eyelids. He glimpsed through a crack that deep inside, she blazed like she was burning . . . like she was in the pain of a person at the center of a fire.

  “We’re over.”

  “We’re not over,” he said, laughing slightly after a stunned pause, sure he’d misheard her. She just stared at him, the blaze of pain slowly leaving her eyes, the window to her soul shutting tight. His thumbs feathered her cheekbones. Despite the tension of the moment—despite the impossibility of it—he wondered again at how beautiful she was. How rare. “Laila, you can’t let them get to you. We’ll find a way to keep talking. To see each other. You can’t let them turn you away from what you want.”

  “What I want,” she stated, “is to not hurt my family anymore. The only way I can do that is to try to respect the rules they’ve laid out for me while I live under their roof. I hate it. I should do it, though.”

  He shook his head. “That’s your parents talking. Not you. They’re forcing you to say that.”

  “Please. Try to understand, Asher. I love my family. I’m nineteen years old. I depend on them, and not just in some existential way either. I can’t afford to live on my own. I live under their roof. I eat their food. They expect certain things of me—”

  “I have money. Plenty of it. I’ve never told you before, but my grandfather left me a trust. I’ve had control of it since he passed when I was twenty. I try not use it, because . . .”

  “You’ve wanted to stand on your own two feet. Don’t you think I know that about you?”

  He blinked at her concise interruption. Apparently, she’d come to know him as well as he knew her. “The point is, I have plenty to support us. Come with me to Los Angeles.”

  “What am I going to do there? I don’t have a college degree yet. Do you want me to waitress my whole life? Or maybe you’re going to pay my way for everything, make me into a kept woman or something? You’d come to resent me.”

  “I wouldn’t. Because that’s not what would happen—”

  “You’re starting out your life, Asher. The last thing you need is me hanging around your neck. Standing on your own is important to you. You want to know you can make it on your own, without resorting to inheritances and trust funds. You deserve to know you can do that. If I were there, you couldn’t really know that. If you had to sacrifice a personal standard like that for me, you would resent it. You’d resent me. No. I know you think my parents are forcing me to say this—”

  “I don’t think they’re threatening you with force. I think they’re intimidating you in a way that feels even worse to you. They’re threatening to take away their approval. Their love. Their acceptance. Do you think I don’t know what that’s like, Laila?”

  “I think you believe you do. But I’m different than you, Asher. My family is different. That’s something you’ve never gotten about me. We come from two different worlds. Your ways of dealing with things just won’t work for me. Maybe Baba isn’t a hundred perce
nt right in saying interracial stuff never works. Maybe it can work sometimes, for some people. But right now, at this point in my life, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how, Asher. And neither do you. It’s just that you’re too stubborn, and too determined, and too strong, and too . . . wonderful”—she choked softly—“to admit it.”

  His caressing fingers paused. She met his stare. Despite the misery he sensed flowing off her like a freezing fog, she remained unflinching. Asher started to feel that frigid cold penetrate him. But he fought it like crazy.

  “What about what we talked about? About fighting through? About not giving up?” he asked.

  Her lower lip trembled.

  “Laila,” he whispered, caressing her again, willing her to bend. To unfreeze. To come to him in the way only she could . . . so sweetly. So completely.

  Instead, he saw her delicate jaw clench hard. She wrapped her hands around his wrists and pulled. Tears swelled in her eyes when his fingertips slid off her face.

  “I love you, Asher. So much. It’s been like a dream, being with you these past couple weeks. I will always love you.” A spasm went through her beautiful face. Dread swooped through him, making everything seem to go dim for a moment. “But this hurts too much,” she said in a strangled voice. “You suggested last night I needed to decide. To choose—”

  “No,” he said rapidly, wild to make her stop talking. To make this moment halt. To undo itself. “I told you I was wrong about saying that, about trying to make it black and white—”

  “I choose for us not to see each other anymore.”

  “No,” he roared, making her start. He stood in front of her, feeling off balance.

  “It’s not just because of my family, Asher. It’s for you too—”

  Anger pierced his helplessness. He pointed at her.

  “Don’t. Don’t try to spin it that way.”

  “It’s true,” she said, leaping up from her chair. “I can’t be with you in the way you want. The way you deserve. And what about your parents? Things are rough enough between you three as it is without you having to worry about dating a woman they’d disapprove of.”

  He turned away from her. “You know my parents don’t even factor in to any of this.”

  “Well, maybe they should,” she exclaimed.

  He spun around.

  “So this is it?” he asked, his voice ringing in rising anger and disbelief. “You’re choosing your family over me.”

  Her spine straightened. He didn’t know what he hated more, the blaze of pain he’d witnessed in her expression earlier or the lifelessness in her eyes as she looked at him now.

  “If that’s the way you want to frame it all. It’s not how I see it. But we both already know that we look at this situation differently. There’s no point in arguing about it more.” She lowered her head. “I have to go,” she said thickly. “My father is waiting for me.”

  “God forbid we should keep him waiting,” he stated bitterly. He couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “Good-bye, then,” she said softly.

  He clamped his mouth shut tight. He refused to say it, denying her the clean breakup that she so clearly craved.

  “What about the possibility that you’re pregnant?” he demanded harshly when she reached the door. “What are you going to do if you are?”

  She turned to him slowly, her hand on the doorknob. The sadness on her face made him want to roar at the unfairness of life, to beat his fists until he’d pounded the world raw.

  “I’m not pregnant. I started my period last night, after we took Mamma Sophia to the emergency room.”

  He stood there, the soft click of the door shutting behind her resounding like an explosion in his head. He wasn’t sure how long he remained there, numb with disbelief.

  Suddenly, anger sluiced through him. It galvanized him. He lunged toward the door, one clear target in mind. Crescent Bay wasn’t a big town. There were only three hotels in it. He’d find Eric. What better outlet for his fury? He’d beat that bastard to a pulp for betraying him . . . for putting the wheels in motion that led to the pain he was feeling right now.

  Yeah, he’d promised Laila he’d leave Eric alone, Asher acknowledged bitterly as he sped out of the driveway a moment later. But Laila had turned and walked away, hadn’t she?

  As far as Asher was concerned, all promises were null and void.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eighteen

  Present Day

  As she unlocked the front door to their condo, the brief, graphic image of his face through the train doors flashed into Laila’s mind’s eye. The vivid blue eyes. The unmistakable determination.

  Asher.

  Here. In Chicago. It was too incredible to believe.

  Once again, an electric charge passed through her at the memory. She shivered. The door swung open and she stepped into the foyer. She saw the flicker of the television in the distant, darkened living room. Her heart sank. Her roommate was awake.

  “Laila?” Tahi yelled.

  “What are you still doing up?” Laila called, straining to keep her voice even. She wished her cousin were in bed, like she usually was when Laila came home late from performing at the State Room. Once in a while, Tahi would attend her performance with a date. But she and Tahi had lived together in Chicago for the past five years now, ever since they’d both graduated from Wayne State. Laila had started singing publicly six months after their move, so the novelty of watching her cousin perform five nights a week had undoubtedly worn thin for Tahi.

  “Michael got a new espresso machine, and he kept experimenting on me,” Tahi called from the living room. Laila knew Michael was the guy Tahi had been seeing for the past few weeks. He was a lawyer who had relocated to Chicago from San Francisco. Or was it Seattle? Tahi had left their first jobs out of college at Microsoft soon after Laila had, wooed away by a young, hip, skyrocketing tech firm. As the manager of that company, Tahi met a boatload of eligible guys. Laila got Tahi’s men mixed up as a matter of course.

  “I have enough caffeine in me to keep me awake for a week.” Laila could tell by the sound of Tahi’s that voice she was walking toward her. She barely had enough time to try to wipe the anxiety off her face and appear nonchalant before the foyer light switched on.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tahi wondered with her usual sharp observance and blunt manner of speaking. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  Laila refrained from rolling her eyes. So much for appearing calm and nonchalant. She pushed the hood off her head and unzipped her jacket.

  “Nothing’s wrong. It was a busy night at the club.”

  “It’s always busy. You’re a smash hit,” Tahi said frankly, her gaze narrowing on Laila’s appearance. “Did you take the train again?”

  Laila laughed and hung up her hoodie. “You can tell by my clothes?”

  “That, plus Rafe called earlier and wondered if you were home yet.”

  Laila grimaced and walked past her cousin toward the kitchen. Rafe was Rafael Durand, the owner of the State Room and several other hot music venues on the East Coast and in the Midwest. He also had managed and promoted Laila exclusively for the past year. He was extremely good at what he did. Despite Laila’s firm resolve not to expose her face to her audience, Rafe had managed not only to make her live performances a hot ticket but to get her a valuable indie recording contract. He still regularly tried to talk her into moving out from behind the veil and reminded her he could do much, much more for her if she didn’t insist on anonymity. But he also respected and protected her choice for privacy.

  Rafe had also pursued her romantically since the moment they’d been introduced by a mutual friend. It had been after one of her performances at a Gold Coast club fourteen months ago. But Laila had only made the decision to date him last month. Even before they’d started dating, Rafe hated
when she took the L home. He insisted it was dangerous at the time of night her performances ended. He hired a driver for her. But Laila always took a perverse pleasure in slipping through the dark tunnels at night and blending into the shadows.

  “Didn’t feel like hanging out with Rafe tonight, huh?” Tahi asked wisely, following her. Laila flipped on a light, illuminating the kitchen. It was one of her favorite rooms in the Near North Side condominium Tahi and she had bought last year. Laila had started to do well with her singing, and Tahi had landed a really good job two years ago. They could afford the condo, and then some. The rest of the apartment was sophisticated urban chic, but the kitchen was cozy and warm. It had been the room Tahi and she had fallen in love with immediately.

  “Rafe can be a little . . . intense,” Laila said, opening up a cupboard.

  “Intense? That can be so sexy in the right guy, and a total turnoff in the wrong one.”

  “He means well. Do you want some atay?” Laila asked, referring to the staple Moroccan tea they’d drunk since they were kids and had never outgrown.

  “I better stick to some chamomile. I’m wired enough.”

  Laila nodded, distracted by the persistent image of the man on the other side of the train doors. He’d looked so fierce. Almost savage. It was as if the young man she knew so many years ago—all of his focus, his determination . . . his sex appeal—had become distilled.

  “Hey. Hello. Laila?”

  Laila blinked and looked over at Tahi.

  “You just gave me a bag of atay, but I want chamomile,” Tahi said, nodding at their tea glasses.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Laila mumbled.

  “Never mind. I’ll get mine,” Tahi said, laughing. “Why are you so out of it? Is it something to do with Rafe? Is he crowding you?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Laila turned on the gas burner, searching for words. The language for talking about Asher Gaites-Granville had slowly left her in all the years of forbidding herself to speak of him.