Arranged Affair

~Arrival~

I thought the plane would never end. As bad as it sounds, a part of me hoped that each wave of turbulence would lead to a freak accident keeping me from facing the disapproving stares of my very own parents.
I walk through the airport in a numbed dazed. As I walk my feet seem to detach from my brain and walk without me even telling them to. My parents seem to appear out of nowhere hugging me. I'm suddenly ripped from my dazed state and forced to smile and pretend I want to be standing here right now.
The car ride to the house is uncomfortable and filled with questions of boys and grades and boys and grades and boys and grades. Miserable.
The familiar red oak roof quickly emerges it's self above the hill showing my childhood jail inch by inch. The rustic yellow paint scuffed down to the dry oak beneath. Suddenly were in the oil stained driveway, my parents beckoning me to step out of the back of their old grey Buick and leave the safe boundaries between me and that hell house.
I open the door letting the spirit of the house take over my safe space, stepping back into the house I could never call a home.
As I pushed open the heavily splintered oak door that was once red, I see him sitting there.
"Mom, Dad? Why am I here?" I ask knowing the answer, anger building up inside of me.
"Daniella, this is Adriano. He is who we have set you up to marry, next week," my mom says through her thick accent, singing his name as if it were a song of tradition and love.
I drop my bag in utter disbelief of the news I have just received.
"Excuse me?" I stutter through the numb daze that has returned once again.
"He's going to be your husband!" Mom exclaims, ignoring to see the cold sweat dripping down my forehead.
My knees weaken sending me to the floor, I can't breathe. Feeling betrayed, shocked, numb, dizzy, and distressed all at once I whisper to my parents what only my own ears could hear,
"How could you? How could you?"
In the blink of an eye, the racing of my heart, the shakiness, the hurt, it all stops. Suddenly my world goes dark.