“Because we should talk about it,” Amina presses. “All your exes were white girls. This is new.” She points at herself and at me. “Do they know?”

“It’s not like I’m hiding you or something.” I get up off the bench and pace a little. “It’s not like I told them, ‘Hey, I’m dating Becca, she’s a white girl’ when I was seeing her. What’s the difference now that I’m dating a brown girl? Did you warn your parents about me?”

“I didn’t say you had to warn your parents. And no, I didn’t, though maybe I should have.”

“What’s the difference between all that and saying I’m dating someone like me? They’ve seen photos of us!”

“Like you—” She starts and stops, taking a breath. “The difference is that they were white girls, and I’m not.”

“I’m not white either!” I exclaim, heat brewing up in my chest. “And my parents are the last people in the world who are going to be racist. Would they adopt some ambiguously brown Middle Eastern kid if they were racist? Hell, my sister is from Honduras.”

My family is like a Saturday morning television special, one of those old ones you can laugh at on YouTube, in grainy washed out colors with some powerful lesson about acceptance. The more you know.

“I’m just saying.” Amina says, getting up, and I can hear her patience fading. “You should maybe tell—”

“There’s nothing to tell! We don’t even see color in my family, you know?”

There’s a beat, a bit of silence in the air as Amina glares at me.

“Wow.” She breaks the quiet first.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She shrugs. “It must be nice.”

“Can we . . .” I reach out and take her hand, but she shirks away from it. My chest tightens. “Look, can we just drop this? I hate talking about this. It’s the only thing we seem to fight about, and I don’t want to fight.”

“It’s a privilege to be able to drop things like this in the first place,” Amina says, sitting back on the bench. “Not everyone can. Most people have to fight because of what they look like. Who they are.” She grabs the little plastic container with her barely eaten salad and closes it up, tossing it back in the Wawa bag.

“Wait, where—” I start.

“I’m going to go help my parents get things ready,” she says, standing back up. “Just come meet me at my house at, like, four, and then we’ll head to see your . . . colorblind parents after.”

“I’m— I’m sorry I messed up our lunch date.” I reach out for her hands, and this time, she takes one of mine. “I just, what do I say? To make it better? I have no idea what to say to any of this.”