The morning of Vivian’s engagement party, I woke up in my one-bedroom apartment with a knot in my stomach so tight it felt like it had teeth.
My ceiling had a tiny water stain I kept meaning to fix. It stared down at me like an accusation.
My phone buzzed at seven on the dot.
Ethan.
I answered on the second ring.
“Hey,” his voice came through warm and steady. “You okay? Today’s the big day.”
I stared at the stain on the ceiling and let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Define okay.”
He chuckled softly. I could hear his smile through the phone. “Okay, fair enough. Want me to pick you up early? We can grab coffee, decompress before the firing squad.”
That was what I loved about Ethan. He didn’t pretend my family was normal. He didn’t do that thing where people try to reassure you with lies like I’m sure they mean well or maybe you’re taking it the wrong way.
He’d met them once at a painfully awkward dinner six months ago. He understood exactly what kind of battlefield he was walking into.
“I’ll be ready,” I said, though my stomach didn’t believe me.
“I’ll be there at noon,” he said. Then, softer, “And Dalia—whatever happens today, you don’t owe them anything.”
My throat tightened. “Okay.”
When we hung up, I lay there for a minute and tried to convince myself that I could skip it. Fake sick. Claim an emergency at school. Pretend my car wouldn’t start.
But even as I thought it, I knew I wouldn’t.
Because part of me still had that old, foolish hope that one day my father would look at me the way he looked at Vivian and see something worth being proud of.
Part of me still wanted to be chosen.
I got up, showered, and put on the navy dress I’d borrowed from my colleague Rachel because I couldn’t justify spending two hundred dollars on something I’d wear once. It was elegant enough. Simple. Clean. The kind of dress that said I belonged at a country club even if my bank account screamed otherwise.
I added pearl studs—mine, not borrowed—and stood in front of my mirror for a long minute.
“Just get through it,” I whispered. “Smile. Keep your head down.”
The words tasted like surrender.
Ethan, the chair-stacker I fell for
At noon, Ethan’s Tesla pulled up exactly on time.
Model S. Sleek and silent. The kind of car people buy to be seen, but Ethan drove it like it was a Toyota—no pride, no show-off energy, just transportation.
I slid into the passenger seat and exhaled like I’d been holding my breath for eighteen months.
As he pulled away from the curb, his phone rang through the car’s speakers. He glanced at the screen and declined the call, but not before I caught a fragment on the display.
Board meeting Monday.
“Work stuff,” he said easily, eyes on the road. “Nothing that can’t wait.”
I didn’t think twice about it.
That was the thing with Ethan. He never acted like his job defined him.
We’d met a year and a half earlier at a fundraiser for Chicago public schools. I was there representing Lincoln Elementary. He was there because, as he’d put it with an easy shrug, “I believe in education.”
Everyone else wore suits. Ethan wore jeans and a simple blue button-down.
After the speeches, when the auction ended and people drifted out with gift bags and satisfied smiles, Ethan stayed behind and helped stack chairs. Like it was natural. Like it didn’t occur to him that someone else should do it.
He asked about my day. About my students. About what I loved and what frustrated me and what made me laugh.
He didn’t ask what I earned.
When you spend your whole life being measured by career achievements, you learn to appreciate someone who treats you like a person instead of a résumé.
On the drive to Lakewood Country Club, I gave him the refresher warning anyway.
“My father is Dr. Richard Martin,” I began, watching the suburbs blur past. “Retired cardiologist. Thirty-two years at Northwestern Memorial. In our family, medicine isn’t just a career. It’s… a religion.”
Ethan listened, hands steady on the wheel.
“My mother was a nurse before she retired,” I continued. “My sister Vivian is a nurse at a private hospital. And then there’s me.”
I let out a laugh that had no humor in it. “The black sheep who chose to teach first grade instead of following the sacred path.”
Ethan’s eyes stayed forward, but his thumb brushed my hand on the center console.
“When did it start?” he asked quietly.
“As long as I can remember,” I said. “When Vivian got into nursing school, Dad threw her a party. When I got my acceptance letter into UIC’s education program…” I swallowed. “He told me I was wasting my potential.”
Ethan’s grip tightened slightly, like his body hated that story even if his face stayed calm.
“I was eighteen,” I said, voice thin. “Clutching the letter like it was gold. He took it from me, read it once… and tore it in half.”
Ethan’s jaw flexed.
“‘Teaching?’” I mimicked my father’s tone, and it made my stomach twist. “‘You could be saving lives, and you want to teach children to count to ten?’”
The memory was vivid: paper ripping, my mother’s silence, my sister watching.
“There’s something else,” I said, staring out the window because looking at Ethan felt too intimate for how raw this was. “Dad hasn’t called me by my name in three years. When he talks about me to Vivian, he just says ‘your sister.’ Like I’m not even worth naming.”
Ethan didn’t fill the silence with empty comfort. He just squeezed my hand.
Sometimes that’s all you need.
Lakewood Country Club and the way money screams
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