Chapter 1 - A Résumé Instead of a Man
Growing up in my parents' house, love always seemed to come with conditions. My parents cared deeply about status. My dad, Gordon, had built his business from nothing and never let me forget it. My mom, Celeste, came from money and made sure nobody forgot that either.
Straight A's earned a nod. A scholarship earned dinner at a nice restaurant. A B+ earned a lecture about "wasted potential" that lasted longer than the drive home.
"You'll marry someone with an impressive career," Mom used to say while arranging tulips as if she were arranging my future. "A doctor. A lawyer. Someone with a name."
"Someone with a spine," Dad would add. "And a sizable portfolio."
For twenty-two years, I nodded along.
Then, during my final year at university, I met Julian. He was a student like me, except he worked evenings waiting tables at a little restaurant near campus to support himself. The place had sticky menus and the best tiramisu in the city. Julian had holes in one pair of shoes and the kindest eyes I'd ever seen. He didn't have much money, but I never cared.
Our first date was coffee because that was all he could comfortably afford. Our second was a long walk because walking was free. By our third date, the price of anything had stopped mattering, because Julian worked hard and treated me better than anyone I'd ever been with.
"You're staring," he told me once across a plate of shared fries.
"I'm evaluating."
"And?"
I pretended to consider him seriously. "You'll do."
He laughed like I'd just said the funniest thing in the world. Nobody had ever laughed at my jokes the way he did.
For three years, Julian treated me as if I were already enough. No report card. No résumé. No list of accomplishments. Just me.
On our first anniversary, he decided to cook dinner. I walked into a kitchen full of smoke and found a pot of pasta fused into one solid, tragic brick.
"I've made you a sculpture," he announced proudly, lifting the pan.
"That's carbon."
"That's art, Priscilla."
I couldn't stop laughing. Eventually we gave up and ate cereal sitting on the kitchen floor. I remember looking at him and thinking, so this is what people mean. This warm, ridiculous, easy thing. This was what nobody in my childhood had ever taught me love could be.
I didn't tell my parents much about Julian. I knew what Dad would say the moment he heard the word "waiter." I also knew Mom would go quiet, which somehow always hurt worse. So I kept him mostly to myself and told myself it was easier that way.
We were incredibly happy together. After three years, on a Thursday in October, Julian took me back to the bench outside the restaurant where we'd had our first terrible coffee. Then he suddenly dropped to one knee.
"I don't have much," he said. "I just have me. But will you marry me anyway?"
"Yes!" I answered before he'd even finished.
He laughed.
May you like
I knew exactly what my parents would do. I knew how cold that dinner conversation would become. I knew there was a real possibility their chairs would be empty at the wedding.
But for the first time in my life, I wasn't waiting for anyone else's approval.
