Chapter Twenty-Two: The Polite Proposal
The summer air, thick and syrupy with the scent of honeysuckle, curdled in Amaya's lungs. Psychology textbooks sat unopened on her desk, their spines a mockery of the future she'd lost. The house felt like a gilded cage, every room a reminder of a path not taken. Her parents' pride in her "excellent" science marks was a well-intentioned blanket that smothered, failing to cover the chill of her disappointment.
It was over dinner—a silent, strained affair—that the cage door clicked shut with finality.
"We've had some wonderful news," her mother began, her voice overly bright, a clear sign of nerves. She exchanged a glance with Amaya's father.
Amaya pushed her peas around her plate, bracing for another round of "look on the bright side" platitudes.
"Your cousin Richard," her father said, his tone measured, the one he used for delivering boardroom decisions. "He's finishing his MBA at Wharton next spring. He's a sharp young man, with a brilliant future ahead at the firm."
A cold trickle of dread started down Amaya's spine. Richard. Her older cousin. Handsome in a polished, corporate way. The one who used to pull her braids at family reunions and who, in recent years, had started looking at her with an appraising glint that made her skin prickle.
"He's always been so fond of you, Amaya," her mother continued, reaching across the table to pat her hand. "And his parents have spoken with us. They see a great… alignment."
"Alignment," Amaya echoed, the word tasting like ash.
"An engagement," her father clarified, mistaking her numbness for confusion. "A union between our families would be… strategically beneficial. For the businesses, for our legacy."
The world narrowed to the grain of the wooden table. The future she'd mourned—the psychiatry program, the independence, the fragile hope of a life built on her own terms—wasn't just gone. It was being paved over, brick by polite brick.
"But… my studies," Amaya whispered, her voice barely audible. "Psychology… I start in the fall."
"And you'll continue!" her mother said, her cheer brittle. "Of course you will, darling. Richard's family is very progressive. They fully support you completing your degree. You can attend the university here, live comfortably. It's a perfect arrangement."
An arrangement. Not a choice. A merger. A consolidation of assets. She was being offered the continuation of her studies as a concession, a sweetener to make the pill of a pre-packaged life easier to swallow.
"Richard is a good man from a good family," her father said, his gaze steady, implacable. "He will provide stability, respectability. This is a secure future, Amaya. One many girls would dream of."
But I dream of faeries and brooding medical students and a mind of my own, she thought wildly. The arguments rose and died in her throat. They would sound childish. Delusional. The fantasies of a girl who read too many books. The same girl who had just proven she couldn't handle the pressure of her own ambitions.
The memory of the coffee shop, of Aris's easy smile for someone else, slammed into her. What had she been holding onto? A handful of polite gestures and her own elaborate daydreams. Compared to the solid, real-world proposal on the table, it was nothing. Dust.
She felt herself shrinking, folding inward. The part of her that had run across lawns with declarations of love seemed like a ghost from another lifetime.
"He likes you very much, you know," her mother added softly. "Since you were children."
He likes the idea of me, Amaya corrected silently. The pretty, obedient cousin who completes the picture.
She said nothing. Her silence was interpreted as acquiescence. Relief washed over her parents' faces. Plans began to flow—a casual dinner to "reconnect" with Richard and his parents, a summer announcement, a long engagement to allow for her studies.
The walls of the house pressed in. She needed air. She needed to scream. Instead, she murmured an excuse and fled to the backyard, the only sanctuary left.
The twilight was bleeding from purple to deep blue when the gate hinge creaked. She knew his footfall, the precise weight of it on the grass, even before she turned.
Aris stood there, back from the hospital, the fading light etching the tired lines of his face. He looked at her, and for a moment, the professional mask was gone. He looked… concerned.
"Amaya," he said. Her name in his mouth wasn't a statement. It was a question.
It was the opening. The crack through which every desperate, tangled feeling tried to pour. The engagement, the trapped feeling, the loss of her future, the coffee shop, the hollow victory of her science marks—it was a tsunami behind her ribs.
"Aris, I…" she began, her voice trembling, taking a step towards him. "I need to tell you something. Everything is… it's all gone wrong, and I…"
Her words tumbled over each other, a chaotic, breathless preamble to the confession she hadn't even fully formed. They're arranging my marriage. I'm being sold for business connections. And the only thing that ever made me want to fight it was the stupid, hopeless idea of you.
But before the crucial words could break free, a sharp, melodic ringtone sliced through the twilight. His phone, buzzing in his scrubs pocket.
He held up a finger—wait—and glanced at the screen. His expression changed. The fleeting openness vanished, replaced by a focused intensity. The kind he reserved for important things.
"I have to take this," he said, his voice clipped, already turning away from her, putting physical and emotional distance between them with a single pivot. "It's Lily. It's about the research fellowship."
Lily. The name was a dagger. The woman from the coffee shop. Her call was more important than Amaya's crumbling world.
He put the phone to his ear, already walking towards his house. "Lily? Yes, I got the data. The anomaly on page seventeen, are you seeing it too?" His voice faded as he moved away, engrossed in a world of medical anomalies and shared ambitions—a world where Amaya Snow, the neighbor girl with a messy heart and a derailed future, had no place.
He didn't look back. He didn't say "hold on" or "I'll be right back." He simply walked away, leaving her confession to die in the gathering dark.
She stood alone in the middle of the lawn, the weight of the unspoken words crushing her. The polite proposal from her cousin was a gilded cage. The man she thought might be her escape had just shown her, with perfect, brutal clarity, the exact order of his priorities.
And she was nowhere near the top.