As You Awaken

4. The Best Laid Plans

Kenza dragged her fork around her plate, giving the pool of au poivre sauce spikes that radiated to the edges gilded edges of the ceramic.

"Will you stop that?" Remy said without looking up from his phone. Issuing commands without looking people in the eyes came naturally to him, and Kenza had long ceased being the exception to all the habits that earned him his ruthless reputation at the firm his father built. Kenza drew one more spike, and then stuck her fork into the center of her half eaten filet mignon, leaving it standing up on its own.

"I don't want to do this anymore ," she announced.

"I thought you wanted the steak," he tapped a final message to his associate and then set his phone aside. 
"

This, Remy. Us," she repeated. "I don't want to do this thing between us anymore."

"This... thing between us?" Remy's mahogany brown eyes finally met hers, and he furrowed his brow. "We're getting married."

"Do you remember when we would come here with our parents?" Kenza swallowed the lump in her throat as she looked around the dining room. The spirit of old DC still lingered in the neoclassical decor, as if the ghosts of the past would congregate there when the lights were out. "They would get together every Sunday. And they would all say, 'little Remy is going to be the President.'"

"Kenza..." his jaw was clenched as he tried to interject.  


"Remy's going to be the President. And Kenza's going to be his First Lady," she went on.
"You did always object to that. You told them it would be the other way around," he pointed out.
"You never had a choice. We never had a choice," 
 she shook her head.

"You sound crazy. I love you," Remy's tone softened. "We've known each other forever. Our families are close. I've taken over my father's firm. This is everything we imagined."

"It is what was imagined for us."

"And what?" Remy's hands closed into fists. "That is your problem, Kenza. You're always looking for the tragedy in your story, so you can feel just a little bit different from all of these people you detest so much. But to anyone taking a peek into this room from the outside? Once they look past the racial ambiguity, and a few tattoos... What do we have here? Ah, just another rich girl from DC. Spoiled rotten? Yes. A degree from Georgetown? Check. The tabloid ready daughter of the Secretary of State. And an obnoxious rock on your finger courtesy of the guy who cleans up all the messes people in this town make. Family heirloom, by the way. Who are you kidding, Kenza?"
He sat back in his chair, and took a sip of his wine. "Can't you see, baby? We're perfect for each other. And that is what you hate. Me? I've made peace with who I am. I don't pretend to be anything else."

Kenza stared back at the man she had shared the entirety of her life with. She saw it all play out in a linear timeline. Their first kiss. Their first line of cocaine. Their sensational spats and reunions. They were fused together by something that felt ritualistic, emblematized by his name inked into her skin. She loved Remy, but it was a perverse kind of love. An attachment that was born out of the ugliest plans made over their heads before they were old enough to speak.

Kenza pulled the white napkin that was draped across her lap and tossed it onto her plate. She stood up, and then gasped. In an instant, she felt Remy's hand wrap around her wrist and forcefully pull her back down into her seat. He leaned forward over the table , not letting go of her wrist, and he spoke through gritted teeth. "I'm familiar with your tantrums, darling. But you will not perform them in public."

With his eyes cold, unmoved by the tears pooling in hers, he nodded his chin towards her plate. "Finish your steak."