I didn’t know Sarah’s address, but she and Smokey had been on numerous double-dates with me and Electra, and – having dropped her off after a few of those – I knew where her house was located and what it looked like. Thus, almost exactly when I said I would, I pulled up in front of a two-story house with a mixed stucco-and-stone exterior and waited. A few seconds later, the front door opened and Sarah came out.
She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a jacket. In addition, she was sporting a backpack, and also had a small purse in her hand. Her dark hair hung loose, framing a remarkably beautiful face with Asian features. The only thing that seemingly marred her appearance were her eyes, which were red and puffy – a sure indication that she had been crying.
If she thought it odd that I had shown up in a car, it didn’t show in her demeanor. (The truth of the matter is that I felt a vehicle would afford some degree of privacy for the conversation I wanted to have. Popping up a little ways from her house had been an attempt to be low-key.) Upon reaching the car, she opened the front passenger door, slid her backpack off, and dropped it on the floor. She then slipped inside and shut the door.
“So, did you talk to him?” she asked eagerly, repeating the question she’d asked on the phone as I began driving, heading towards her school.
“Uh, not exactly,” I said, not sure how to begin.
“This is all a mistake,” she suddenly stated. “I’ll admit it’s my fault, but it’s not what it seems.”
I cleared my throat. “Look, I know you said we talked on Friday, but–”
“It’s my fault,” she repeated, cutting me off. “Plus, I really didn’t tell you everything.”
“I need to stop you,” I chimed in. “You and I didn’t–”
“I really love Smokey, you know?” she interjected, as if she hadn’t heard me. I realized then that she wasn’t really listening to anything I was trying to say. Moreover, I could sense empathically that she was racked with guilt and almost consumed by melancholy and depression. Whatever was going on, she obviously needed to talk to someone about it. I probably wasn’t the ideal candidate since I had my own agenda here, but the best course of action at the moment seemed to involve lending a sympathetic ear.
“So what happened?” I asked.
She looked at me askance. “Didn’t I tell you all this on Friday?” I opened my mouth to speak, but she went on without waiting for an answer, saying with a sigh, “It all started with my family.”
I waited a few seconds, but she didn’t say anything more, just stared out the window.
“What do you mean?” I prompted after a few moments.
“My parents are immigrants,” she said. “Came here from the old country. They also brought some of the old traditions with them – notions about courtship and relationships.”
“Such as?”
“Arranged marriages.”
Taking my eyes off the road for a second, I looked at her in shock, finding it difficult to believe that another teen could have the same matrimonial problem I did. “They want you to get married?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I mean, someday, but not soon. The real issue is that they want me to be with someone from a similar background.”
“What?”
“It’s like that movie about the Greek wedding,” she explained. “They want me dating someone from the same culture.”
“So your family doesn’t like Smokey?”
“They like him well enough. I mean, they know he’s a nice guy and that he treats me well. They just don’t see me with him long-term.”
“Isn’t that your choice?”
“Not exactly. They’re my parents and I have to obey them, so in order to date Smokey, I had to make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” I asked, not sure where this was going.
“I’m free to date Smokey, but if they find someone who they feel is appropriate for me, I have to go out with him.”
“You mean they make you date someone else while you’re going out with Smokey?”
“It’s complicated. I only have to go out with the guy they pick once, and if I don’t like him that’s the end of it. They’re basically banking on me having so much in common with one of these guys that I’ll dump Smokey.”
“What do you mean, ‘one of these guys’?” I asked. “How many times have you done this?”
“Too many,” she admitted, sounding despondent.
“Does Smokey know about this?”
“Of course. In terms of dating me, it was the cost of doing business. But he always knew when it was happening, where we were going, what we were doing, and so on. And I’d always tell my parents I didn’t want to see the guy again.”
I shook my head in confusion. “Then I don’t understand. Smokey said you went out with another guy, but if he’s aware of this deal you have with your parents and has made his peace with it, I’m confused about what the problem is.”
Sarah lowered her eyes. “The problem isn’t that I went out with one of these guys. It’s that I went out with him a second time.”
“Okay,” I droned, letting that roll around in my brain. “Well, what did Smokey say when you told him about the second date?”
She looked up at me but didn’t say anything, and I could see tears streaming down her face. In that moment, I knew what had happened, and didn’t even need my empathic abilities to figure it out.
“You didn’t tell him,” I concluded as she pulled a tissue from her purse. “You didn’t tell him about the second date.”
“No,” she admitted, wiping her tears with the tissue, “but somehow he found out about it and now he won’t talk to me.”
My first inclination was to say, “Can you blame him?” but I held my tongue. Sarah appeared to be suffering greatly,
