Read Online Let It Shine by Alyssa Cole - Free Book Online Page A

to his father. “I have to get home.”
    “I’ll give you a ride,” he said.
    “Not in my car you won’t.” Mr. Friedman moved to block his path.
    “I paid that car off with my own money. I’ll never use it again after tonight, but I’ll be damned if I let Sofie get hurt by the bigots who just chased us down.” Ivan shook his head. “You’re just as bad as them. Worse. You know what it is to be on the other side, you know what it is to be hated for no reason, and you still can’t sympathize. You think they cared about the difference between a Sephardi and a schvartze in the camps?”
    He walked around his father, as if he couldn’t bear to be in his vicinity, and Sofie followed behind him. By the time she reached the car, she was shaking. She didn’t know if it was anger or shock as the adrenalin left her.
    “Sof.”
    She ignored his voice.
    “Sofie. Please look at me.”
    She turned her head slowly. She wanted to hate him, as his father’s ugly slur echoed in her head, but she also wanted to take out her handkerchief and wipe off his face. It seemed that when it came to Ivan, conflicting emotions were the rule and not the exception.
    “You need to go home and clean up, and I need to go home and be told what an ungrateful child I am.” She sighed, feeling a weariness that went deep into her bones.
    “In that case, you should understand that fathers and their children often have differences of opinion.”
    “Difference of opinion?” She whirled, suddenly angry. “Your father thinks I’m a schvartze. A nigger.”
    He started the car. “And your father thinks Jews are cheap, hook-nosed bastards. At least, that’s what he called my parents when he came to collect the last of your mother’s things. ‘Cheap, hook-nosed bastards who worked Delia to the grave,’ but I might be paraphrasing. It was a long time ago.”
    Sofie sucked in a breath. All of the little asides her father had made over the years ran through her mind. How the mechanic tried to “Jew him down” instead of saying he haggled. How he’d always referred to the Friedmans as those people . “So, what? Is that supposed to excuse what your father said?” Sofie asked.
    “Nope,” Ivan replied, and his calm riled her all the more. “But it excuses us. I’m going to have words with my father later, but I won’t be held responsible for his.”
    Sofie sat in her seat, feeling as if she were being torn in two. She had stood up for herself today, and she had been attacked for it, just like before. Ivan had been with her just as before, too. Sofie was waiting for the wrath of God to rain down on her now. Wasn’t that what happened when she took a little something for herself? But the wrath of Mr. Friedman was nothing compared to what she’d been through. And Ivan was still beside her now, glancing at her with a warm seriousness as he navigated her home.
    “Why did you kiss me?” she asked quietly. She couldn’t control anything else in the world, despite how much she wanted to, but she could control what happened between them. A few days ago she wouldn’t have even considered such a thing a possibility, but now she desperately wanted to hear his answer, and not only so she could discount it.
    “Because you’re beautiful. God, you’re beautiful.” The words rasped out of him like they were painful, and instead of fire in her chest, Sofie felt a cool fluttering sensation. “Because you’re smart and sexy and strong as hell, and you’ve got everyone fooled but me. I see you in there behind the quiet voice and the pillbox hats, Sofronia. And I’m still here waiting.”
    Sofie opened her purse and pulled out a handkerchief. She reached out and gingerly wiped away at the milkshake that had spread over his face. It was the only thing she could think to do besides bend over and weep from the blow of such an unexpected kindness. It seemed the last years of her life had been a Twilight Zone episode in which she’d been stuck in