It Wasn't Because Of That
He didn’t fall in love with her to spite his parents.
She didn’t love him back to spite hers.
It wasn’t because of that, even if everyone thought that was the only possible reason the two of them could be dating. The truth was that they hadn’t seen the wave of hatred that was coming. They had been so blind with love for each other that their inner idealists took the wheel, and were genuinely surprised anyone had a problem with it. But oh, they did, and it snowballed, waterfalled, into an amazing storm that left them both quiet. It was one thing to have someone let you down; another thing entirely to have everyone do it again and again.
They lived in a small town with an even smaller campus, and the dorms proved themselves to be no escape from other people. Online there was the Facebook storm of messages, his cellphone was off most of the time so he didn’t have to discuss this with his ‘friends’, who were growing more distant with every day. Her mother, who lived close enough to drive to the campus, kept showing up and trying to convince her to come home for the weekends despite what that would cost in gas. Her father’s phonecalls left her teary eyed and unwilling to talk about it.
Eventually, when campus became a coffin and their classes gauntlets they had to endure, the talk turned to when they’d get over this. It was surely a phase. One day this was going to end, and soon. They got to-go boxes from the cafeteria and ate in her room, talking until they had to part to go to bed, and as their classmates and families hoped it was coming to an end, the real beginning was being planned, an escape from this prison where even walking to one another’s room drew ire.
Their apartment was small, one wall a kitchen with a washing machine, the opposite wall a sofa bed with two side tables they turned into desks. Their clothes they folded and put in baskets, carefully organized. It was crowded, the walls weren’t all the same shade of grey-green, and they had to get up earlier to get to school. But though their parents fumed, the money they were saving by not being in the dorms was enough to soothe that wound for the moment.
And they lived for the moment, laying together on the sofa-bed watching old DVDs on their laptop, being able to say anything and know in the confines of this one room run down piece of nothing they were safe from listening ears and prying people. After a long day, there was nothing like having a place all their own to return to, where they could just be together. Somehow, inbetween the bad cooking experiments, fixing the washing machine together and being able to lay down together each night and just hold on, everything else fell away. The stress, the looks, the rednecks hitting the horn when they held hands walking down the street seemed a million miles away.
When they woke up with their hands intertwined, dark Arab skin and pale lily white laced together, it was all they needed to remember how they fell in love and why this love was worth fighting for.
She didn’t love him back to spite hers.
It wasn’t because of that, even if everyone thought that was the only possible reason the two of them could be dating. The truth was that they hadn’t seen the wave of hatred that was coming. They had been so blind with love for each other that their inner idealists took the wheel, and were genuinely surprised anyone had a problem with it. But oh, they did, and it snowballed, waterfalled, into an amazing storm that left them both quiet. It was one thing to have someone let you down; another thing entirely to have everyone do it again and again.
They lived in a small town with an even smaller campus, and the dorms proved themselves to be no escape from other people. Online there was the Facebook storm of messages, his cellphone was off most of the time so he didn’t have to discuss this with his ‘friends’, who were growing more distant with every day. Her mother, who lived close enough to drive to the campus, kept showing up and trying to convince her to come home for the weekends despite what that would cost in gas. Her father’s phonecalls left her teary eyed and unwilling to talk about it.
Eventually, when campus became a coffin and their classes gauntlets they had to endure, the talk turned to when they’d get over this. It was surely a phase. One day this was going to end, and soon. They got to-go boxes from the cafeteria and ate in her room, talking until they had to part to go to bed, and as their classmates and families hoped it was coming to an end, the real beginning was being planned, an escape from this prison where even walking to one another’s room drew ire.
Their apartment was small, one wall a kitchen with a washing machine, the opposite wall a sofa bed with two side tables they turned into desks. Their clothes they folded and put in baskets, carefully organized. It was crowded, the walls weren’t all the same shade of grey-green, and they had to get up earlier to get to school. But though their parents fumed, the money they were saving by not being in the dorms was enough to soothe that wound for the moment.
And they lived for the moment, laying together on the sofa-bed watching old DVDs on their laptop, being able to say anything and know in the confines of this one room run down piece of nothing they were safe from listening ears and prying people. After a long day, there was nothing like having a place all their own to return to, where they could just be together. Somehow, inbetween the bad cooking experiments, fixing the washing machine together and being able to lay down together each night and just hold on, everything else fell away. The stress, the looks, the rednecks hitting the horn when they held hands walking down the street seemed a million miles away.
When they woke up with their hands intertwined, dark Arab skin and pale lily white laced together, it was all they needed to remember how they fell in love and why this love was worth fighting for.