Member-only story
Love Is Willing Blindness
In That Haze — No3 (Micro)
Suri and I had never met before our first date.
You might laugh — “In this day and age?” — but that was what our parents wanted. My parents were tired of my dating app shenanigans, and supposedly Suri had been spurned by her last match. I didn’t know all the details; I didn’t really care. I wanted to see her picture, but my mother refused to show me any incriminating information ahead of time. I didn’t even know Suri’s last name prior to that October day.
“Mom, you’re being ridiculous,” I said the day prior. In truth, I was a bit nervous. I had never dated someone this way before. I was totally out of my depth.
“What, you think I’ll cave in?” my mother asked me, narrowing her eyes in that way that had once made my stomach clench in childhood. She wagged her finger at me. “My dear, you have to understand where I’m coming from. You won’t even give this girl a chance if there’s one thing you don’t like about her face.”
“Okay, now you have me worried,” I said. “She looks like Aunt Nori, doesn’t she?”
My mother looked ready to hit me, but thankfully she held back. I didn’t need to explain away a black eye caused by my overly zealous mother.
