LJ Idol Season 7, Week 8 - First World Problem.
She was so house-proud, the night that she set the table for four in her little "flat".
Her living space was, in reality, two adjoining rooms on the second floor of a turn-of-the-century house on a private street, with access to a kitchen sink in the third floor attic.
But it was all "hers", for the princely rent of a hundred dollars a week. One room was her bedroom, with an overstuffed armchair, a closet and a bureau; the other room had a refrigerator and a kitchen table and a counter, where she cooked extraordinary meals with nothing but an electric griddle and a four-burner hot plate.
The very first piece of furniture she ever bought with her own money was in that room as well... a bookcase of chrome and smoky glass. It housed her meagre library, along with several pieces of bric-a-brac which were precious in her eyes. A crystal unicorn in blue; a pair of hand-painted ceramic dolphins; a carving of a dancing lady in a full sweeping skirt.
The kitchen table, this autumn evening, was adorned with a fresh tablecloth and a vase of flowers; candlestick holders waited to be filled; cutlery was laid out. The food simmered away.
She waited.
About half an hour after she expected her guests to arrive, she heard her beloved's footsteps on the stair. She was not yet worried about the lateness of her company, and chatted amiably with her dear one about his day as she puttered about making last-minute adjustments to the meal.
She lit the candles as the sun set and darkness began to fall.
Another half-hour went by, and then an hour.
The two of them began to wonder whether their guests had had a road accident, or if one of them had fallen ill. A telephone call to their residence went unanswered.
The candles had burnt down and guttered out when her phone in the bedroom finally rang. Her beloved held her hand as she spoke to her brother, who told her that he and his wife had decided that they were not coming to dinner after all, that they could not support a relationship so different to their own, that they could not approve of her caring for someone who was not of their kind.
After she hung up the phone, she was too broken to weep.
The care she'd taken with the meal, the tidying up of her living space, the months she'd spent in becoming financially independent and off the streets... all rendered pointless when her family would not even deign to break bread with her because of the person she chose to love.