Choose Me: a novella Read Online Free Page A

Jessica said. She was about to lay into Gillian and remind her of the news reports that had greeted Jessica during her first week in Scotland when three White Power skins in Glasgow attacked a young Indian woman after a football match but then Gillian’s face went beet-red as she burst into a fit of staccato laughter.
    “Sweet lord, you said ‘bollocks’! I was beginning to think you’d never start absorbing little Scottish ways!”
    Jessica set down her cup of tea. She had said ‘bollocks’, come to think of it, instead of her usual ‘load of crap’. And that was enough to distract Gillian that Jessica started teasing her about wanting ‘taters an’ neeps’ and ‘the dreaded haggis’, which set them both off in another fit of giggles. 
     
    After her seminar, Jessica walked up to Princes Street with the intention of going to Waterstones’ for an American newspaper and a cup of coffee. A part of her wanted to meet up with Chris, but they’d spent so much time together the last few weeks that it som etimes scared her to think that it couldn’t go on like this. In May they’d both be returning to Philadelphia, and it didn’t seem likely to her that they could continue seeing each other. It was one thing to be together in Europe where hardly anyone stared just because a white man kissed a black woman. In the States everyone reacted to interracial couples, even when they were pretending not to react, and made it their business to state their approval or disapproval.
    She’d commented on this once to Chris and it was the closest they’d ever come to an argument. At first he’d brushed her co ncerns. “We don’t live in the Fifties anymore, Jess,” he’d said with a lopsided smile. “Nobody’s going to burn crosses in front of our house or lynch us in Philly!”
    “I didn’t say they would, but it has happened before—just a few years ago there was that couple in Frankfurt whose house was burned down by their neighbors and the black family in South Philly whose house was vandalized by those stupid bastards who painted “Nigger” and “Go Back to Africa” all over their front porch and the house façade.”
    “It doesn’t have to be that way. All we have to do is show people we don’t care what they think—”
    “But I do care—I have to care!”
    “Why? If we want to be together, whose business is that other than our own?”
    “You can say that because you’re white—”
    “Don’t even turn it into that . You make it sound like the color of my skin is the only thing that defines who I am.”
    “It’s not the only thing that defines you but it’s a part of who you are, just like I can’t ignore the fact that my skin in black and no one else ever ignores it either!”
    “So what are you saying? That we can be together like this now but the moment we hit American soil you don’t want to have anything to do with me just because somebody might not like the fact that we enjoy being together?”
    She didn’t say anything. She was almost afraid to. If she told him the truth, that she was terrified of how things would change once they were back in the States surrounded by their family and friends, he wouldn’t take her seriously. He was so easy-going he just didn’t get that their being together would rub a lot of people the wrong way. 
    His jaw had gone tight and a flush of red spread over his face. He shifted away from her and a pocket of cold impenetrable air formed between them. Then he mumbled that he had to get back to work. He paid the bill for their coffee and stalked out without saying goodbye. She’d remained sitting in her chair, unable to move because her legs were shaking. If she’d turned and looked out the plate glass window, she would have seen him pause just outside the door and rub his hands over his face. She would have seen how unsteady his hands were and that his skin had gone pale and ashen. But she didn’t turn, not even when she felt him standing there on