One of Those Faces (14)

“Do you come here a lot?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, this is where I eat a ton of meat before I go running,” he joked. “So, where are you from?”

And with that, the tennis match of first-date questions began. “I’m from Evanston, originally,” I said. This was the tamest background question that I didn’t mind responding to. “What about you?” I batted back.

“Oh, so you’re a local,” he said, grabbing one of the waters the waiter had placed in front of us before disappearing again. “I’m from Washington.”

“DC or state?” I asked.

He smiled. “State.”

I saw the next question coming.

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No,” I said quickly. Not anymore.

He waited for more.

“What about you?”

He nodded. “Two sisters. One of them, Rose, has two adorable girls, and they’re amazing. I’m kind of the helpless pushover in the family when it comes to my nieces.”

The smile on his face when he said it filled me with a strange jealousy. What must it be like to grow up with a loving family? To have a father whose first impulse wasn’t violence?

“Are your parents still in Evanston?”

My skin went cold. “My father still lives there.” And Mom is buried there.

He looked at me, waiting for more of an explanation.

Thankfully, the meat arrived, saving me from blurting out the last part. “Thank you,” he said to the waiter.

I pulled my hair back into a bun low on my neck in preparation for the messy food. The longer my hair grew, the more often I found it accidentally in my mouth while eating.

Iann stared at my neck and then looked away when I caught his gaze.

I tapped the scar where it began below my ear. I traced it to the point it stopped, just above my collarbone. “My hair usually covers this, but it’s pretty hard to ignore, I guess,” I said.

He shook his head and looked down. “No.”

I weighed the cost of telling a small truth. “I was in a car accident when I was a kid,” I began. It was hard to make this sound light hearted, but I tried. “I was lucky to get out with only this.” Nothing scared people off like telling a story about confronting your own mortality as a child.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking me in the eye again.

I wasn’t used to people making eye contact like that. I didn’t mind, though. Who wouldn’t want to look at those eyes a little longer?

“It was a long time ago.” It still felt like yesterday. The scar on the outside was nothing compared to the gruesome wounds inside our family that lingered. There was no moving on from that accident. But people liked to hear about personal tragedies dismissed and overcome.

Iann grabbed the tongs handed to him and loaded up the tabletop grill with all the meat. “What does your dad do?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. “He’s a music professor.”

“Really? At Northwestern?”

I nodded, watching as the meat sizzled and darkened on the grill.

“So, I bet you went to school there too?”

“I actually dropped out after a year.” I chose a fleck of pepper on my plate and locked my eyes on it.

Iann had started chewing a piece of beef. He moved on smoothly once he swallowed. “What were you studying?”

“Music.”

“What instrument do you play?”

I sighed. Clarinet was my first love, but I had poured everything I had into piano. Not by choice. “I studied piano, mostly.”

“How did you get into visual art?”

I had always been passionate about painting. It was challenging, and I enjoyed being able to see my creations, not just hear them. I loved music, too, but I didn’t feel it in me at every moment of every day like Issi had. Music had become a weight around my neck near the end. I hated it now. “It’s more tangible, I guess.”

“Sounds like you knew what you wanted to do and you didn’t need school for it. I’m sure your dad is really proud that you’re making it on your own in Chicago.”

I shook my head. “Not so much.” I had followed his plan for Issi perfectly as long as I could. I’d graduated early from high school but had only lasted one year at university. Fleeing Evanston and moving alone to Chicago with no money at sixteen wasn’t his idea of success.

He looked at my face and furrowed his brow. “You’re not close with him?”

“Is this a psych evaluation?” I asked, fiddling with some pork between my chopsticks.

He shook his head. “No, I-I’ll stop asking about your family.”

The tightness in my chest lifted. “Yeah, let’s talk about yours. Do they come to visit you here?”

Iann turned over a piece of meat on the grill. “Occasionally, maybe twice a year. And I go back home for the holidays usually.”

“How did you end up in Chicago?”

He paused, a frown briefly flashing across his face. That expression surprised me. Maybe he was holding back as well.

“I wanted to get out of my hometown,” he said. “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to study psychology, so I applied for the undergraduate program here, and I never left.”

“Why psychology?”