Page 11 of Because of Me

“Hello,” Cassidy chimes before I can look up at our next customer. “Oh! Mr Solak, how are you?”

Half bent under the counter, I freeze. My father. Here.No.

My parents still don’t know about Cassidy’s brilliant idea to add a café component to her boutique. I still haven’t told them I went into business with her. I haven’t figured out how to tell them I spent my inheritance from my grandmother on the coffee cart I’m currently standing behind. Hiding behind.

But I’m about to have no choice.

I can’t hide down here forever, and the cart is too far away from the back room for me to be able to escape in there. Blood rushes to my ears as I try to think. What am I going to say? How will he react? I do my best to slow my racing heart but it’s like trying to use a holey bucket to save a boat from sinking.

“Cassidy, I had a meeting in the area, and I thought I would stop in to get Emel some flowers.” My father speaks with no charm, even as he talks about the apparent love of his life. He never has. Even when I was a child, he was overly direct and never friendly. Do this, go there, finish your homework. My parents’ relationship always seemed transactional and direct. They cared for each other, still do I suppose, but would go through the motions of a loving marriage like actors in a play. Their relationship had been planned from the moment my mother was born, and although they both claim it’s a real-life love story that they ended up together, I often wonder how much of what they share is true love and how much is forced by circumstance. Even so, it’s nice he thought to buy her flowers.

“Oh, um, lovely,” Cassidy stammers.

Now, or never, I suppose. I stand up, drink still in my hand, rolling my shoulders back and straightening my spine.

“Baba.”

He double takes before he turns to me. Visibly shaken by the fact I’m here.

“Amira? What is this?”

Pride swells in my chest. He’s never going to be impressed at all I’ve achieved with Cassidy, but I am. “This is my coffee cart. Cassidy and I are now business partners. She makes the flowers, I make the refreshments.”

“What happened to your … job?” He spits the word out, not hiding how much he hated my previous employment. I was head barista at a coffee shop closer to the city. And even though it had little career potential, I loved it. He thought it was despicable that his daughter worked in the hospitality industry.

“My favourite part was making coffee, baking treats, and interacting with customers. I get to do all that here and I’m working for myself.” I force a shield of nonchalance through my limbs and take a sip of my drink. The icy liquid cools me from the inside out, slowing my pulse and calming a little of the shaky nerves I’m trying so hard to hide. “Well, for myself and Cassidy, I guess.”

“You quit?”

My nod is meek, but I fight the urge to look away from him. “I wasn’t happy.”

Cassidy moves between tables, pulling a selection of purple flowers from their buckets. My mother and I both love purple, and Cassidy knows. She’s trying to go about her task without adding to the fiery rage consuming my father.

He might look calm on the surface, with his arms folded across his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart. But I know that stance. I can see the tension in the way he holds his neck higher than normal, the deep line between his brows and the way his beard moves as he scowls beneath it.

“A business is not what you need to be happy, Princess.”

The cutesy, immature nickname might as well be nails on a chalkboard, screeching in my ear. I want to scream that I hate it, that I’ve always hated it. But if there’s ever a good time to tell your father to stop calling you the name he has used since you were a child, now is not it.

“But I am.” I mimic his posture, hoping the power stance will rub a little courage into my bones. “I am happy.”

“No single woman is truly happy.”

Behind her counter, Cassidy snorts. Her hands clap over her mouth and she looks at me with wide eyes. Just this once, I wish she’d speak up against my father. It was years ago when I first asked her not to fight my battles for me, and she’s been respectful of that ever since. But right now? Right now, it would be nice. I give a gentle nod in her direction, hoping she picks up on the subtle signal.

Her hands drop from her mouth, but she waits for me to speak first.

I turn to my father. The scowl has shifted into something that feels a little too much like a smirk. He thinks he’s getting under my skin. And he is, but not for the reason he thinks.

We’ve been down this road. He wants me to crumble and admit I’m terribly lonely without a husband. He wants me to beg him to find me a man. He wants me to say I’m ready to settle down and serve my husband and pop out babies. But I’m not. I don’t want any of those things.

He hasn’t made me sad or reminded me I’m all alone in the world. He’s made me angrier. Angrier than before. Because it used to be just about me and how his 1950s views on women have tried to demoralise me. It used to cause endless frustration at how he’s so stuck on tradition that should have faded away years ago. But it’s about more than that now.

Noah.

As far as my father knows, I’m not single. I’m dating Noah. But even that isn’t good enough. Because he didn’t hand pick Noah from a lineup of suitors presented to him by the horrid old men he spends his days with. This has nothing to do with him just wanting me happy—even if his view on what that means is archaic—and everything to do with him wanting full control over my life.

And I’m not here for it.

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