People entering had looked at them with indulgent smiles even though they were causing a little bit of a traffic jam. Deuce remembered thinking that he missed getting that look and missed what it felt like to be part of a couple.
But he knew now that what he had missed most was being with Zora. Getting that look, but with Zora.
Leaning against the kitchen counter opposite where Regan was slicing the babka and making their coffee, Deuce noticed the unsteadiness of her hands.
She knew what was coming.
“Regan,” he started again after a moment. “I want to …”
She turned abruptly, handing him two small plates, each with a slice of the aromatic bread.
“Did you want yours warm?” she asked.
Deuce shook his head.
“Okay. So, take these out to the living room?”
He did as she asked, then remained there, sitting on the arm of the sofa waiting with his hands clasped between his knees. He tried not to look at his watch, nor to think about how long it might take him to get to Bedford if he spent too much time here, eating pastry and drinking coffee he didn’t even want.
Finally, Regan emerged, carrying two steaming mugs. She walked gingerly, trying to avoid a spill. As she placed his on the coffee table in front of him, she looked fragile, especially because she was so thin, and Deuce felt like an asshole for what he was about to do. But it was overdue.
The mug she set in front of him was navy-blue with a white rim. The slogan printed on it in a swirling font read: My Girlfriend is Hotter Than My Coffee.
Deuce had grinned when she first served him coffee in it a few months back. Now, the word ‘girlfriend’ seemed to mock them both.
“Thanks,” he muttered as she took her seat, across from rather than next to him.
Her mug, she clasped between her hands. Her knuckles were white, she was holding it so tightly; and her nose looked slightly pinker than it had when he first entered the apartment.
Shit. She was going to cry.
“Here’s the thing,” he began, “about last night …”
“Baby, I am so sorry,” she said in rush, cutting him off. “I know I was inappropriate, and I don’t know what got into me. I think it was just that being at your father’s house, and … being maybe, I don’t know, intimidated …”
“No, that isn’t what I ...”
“And seeing all those people and realizing for the first time that like, you have all these friends who are like, I don’t know … way out of … Like people I wouldn’t even meet … And you have this entire other life that …”
“That isn’t …”
“And then your ex-girlfriend who couldn’t be more different from me was there, which made me feel like …”
“Regan. Lemme talk,” he said.
She stopped.
“It’s not about how you behaved last night. Although all that definitely wasn’t cool either. But some of what you said, some of what you felt, it wasn’t … wrong.”
He paused when her nostrils flared, and her lower lip began to tremble. She took a sip of her coffee.
When she lowered the mug again, Regan exhaled a long slow breath.
“It’s just … Zora is …” He couldn’t find the words.
“The one you want to be with,” Regan said with finality. But there was an inquiring note in her voice as well, a sliver of hope.
Deuce gave a brief nod.
Like the opening of a spigot, there were tears suddenly streaming down her face. The worst kind of tears. Silent, and plentiful.
She swallowed hard and then she was the one nodding.
“I could see it,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “From the way you looked at her, I could see it.”
“I know it’s a really tough time for you right now. After the robbery. And I want to be here for you, but I can’t be what you want m…”
“Don’t.” Regan put a hand to her forehead. “Don’t give me the ‘honorable guy’ speech. I swear to God, if I have to listen to that right now, I’ll vomit.”
“It’s not just a speech, I mean it. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
“Exactly. I didn’t.”
And just like that, hurt became anger.
“I didn’t do anything to deserve having someone put a fucking gun to my head. I didn’t do anything to have my boyfriend promise my father look out for me, and then dump me as soon as another more attractive …” Regan broke off and laughed harshly. “Well … that part is subjective I guess, although I’m pretty confident that if you were to ask the average person …”
“We gon’ go there?” Deuce asked, biting into his lower lip. “That’s where you wanna go?”
“Fuck you!” Regan said. “You got on the phone with my father! You told him you would look after me!”
“I told him what you wanted me to tell him.”
“Because you didn’t really give a shit, right?”
Now the hurt was back in her eyes, but the tears streaming down her face were angry, frustrated. Swiping at them, Regan stood.
“You’re a fucking asshole. Just like all the other assholes!” she screamed.
Deuce stood as well. “You want it to be like this? Then cool. We can do it like this, too.”
He turned to walk away but felt himself grabbed from behind. Regan had wrapped her arms around his waist and was holding him in a bearhug.
Deuce tensed, not knowing for a fraction of a second whether he should expect to feel a literal knife in the back.
“Wait, wait!” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry … I know what it’s like when you see an ex and wonder about them … and I know I haven’t made it easy to love me these last few weeks, but … please … I’m getting better. I just need to …”
Exhaling, Deuce pried her arms from around him and turned, holding her by the wrists. Regan’s eyes were pleading now, and desperate. Some of her hair had come undone from the ponytail and her nose was red, her eyes almost bloodshot.
“That’s just the thing, Regan. I don’t know how to say this without … But maybe the only way to be kind is to be straight with you. I don’t love you. Not the way you need me to. I lo…”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” she screeched before he could finish the sentence.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said as he opened the door.
Regan was still standing there, staring at him with hot, reproachful eyes when he stepped out into the hallway and shut it behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Asif had been in a whirlwind after the screening, brimming with ideas and excitement. So, he’d seen Zora safely home from Jersey, left immediately afterward and not been back since. The solitude was not unwelcome, because she didn’t want to have to talk about anything and was still a little annoyed with him for having shown that clip without giving her the heads-up.
That night, Zora fell asleep after having spent only about an hour or so obsessing about whether Deuce was sleeping at Regan’s place, or on his own. Before the screening, his girlfriend was only a name. Now, there was the image to go with it, of a graceful and swanlike creature in princess-pink, and smelling like flowers.
Regan was pretty much the epitome of the girl you hoped your ex wouldn’t replace you with.
To lessen the torture, Zora replayed in her head, Deuce saying, ‘I love you. So, so much.’ He meant it. She knew that he meant it, so he couldn’t be someplace sleeping with Regan, right? And also, the girl had been falling on her face when Deuce, Kal and Asha left. Definitely in no shape for anything other than passing out.
But there had been nights like that, nights when Zora had gotten tipsy, and she and Deuce still messed around. Nights like the one of their last party on campus as seniors. Zora had been more than tipsy, then. She had been what her mother would have called “rip-roaring drunk.”
She remembered dancing without her shoes on a grimy dancefloor and Deuce laughing and coming to fetch her, lifting her off her feet, an
d carrying her over his shoulder back to their table.
She remembered him putting her shoes back on, and then everything was a blank until she was leaning against him, sitting on the edge of the bathtub while he washed the sooty soles of her feet in warm water.
She remembered telling him that she loved him so much that just thinking about it made her want to cry. And she remembered him kissing her, shaking his head with a laugh, and saying she could cry anytime she wanted.
There was another blank in her memory after that, and then Zora recalled them undressing and getting ready for bed what must have been much later.
Deuce was straightening the sheets, smoothing things out so it would be more comfortable when they lay down; and she was clumsily pulling one of his football jerseys over her head.
I have all these cute nightshirts, she slurred. All of them … so cute … and you never let me wear them.
‘Cause you’re cuter naked, Deuce said almost offhandedly.
At that, she’d pulled the football jersey back over her head and tossed it aside, so he had turned to find her standing there, wobbly on her feet, and completely bare-assed.
Grinning at her, he shook his head.
Quit playin’. You’re in no shape for …
And she’d literally tackled him onto the bed, knocking the air out of him as she wrestled to get his shirt off and tugging at his boxers while he laughed at her.
You tryna rough me up?
But when she kissed his chest, sucked his nipples and raked her nails across his back, all levity came to an end.
The next thing Zora remembered was them tumbling and turning, twisting and thrusting, sucking and kissing, moaning, and then kissing some more.
People who said drunk sex was never good sex didn’t know what they were talking about.
But what was the point making things harder on herself, by remembering all of that?
~~~
“Oh my god, it’s so …”
“Hard, right?”
“Yeah.” Zora leaned back, letting her hand fall away from Asha’s abdomen.
“I can’t stop touching it,” Asha said. “Maybe to reassure myself or something. Or because I’m imagining him swimming around in there.”
She was staring down at her bump almost as though it was already a baby, and Zora felt a pang.
“Him? Do you know that …?”
“No.” Asha shook her head. “He says he doesn’t care, but I know Kal wants a boy.”
“Either way, that’s going to be one beautiful baby,” Zora said.
At that, Asha looked up again and smiled. “Kal says that a lot, too.”
“Well, he’s never been one for false modesty,” Zora said dryly.
“True,” Asha acknowledged. Then the smile gradually dissolved from her lips. “But … enough about me. I’ve got a few months more to drive you crazy with baby talk. What about you and …?”
Zora was already shaking her head before she would finish the question.
“I don’t … Well, you know he has a girlfriend, so …”
Asha rolled her eyes. “She’s a nice girl, but honestly … I don’t even understand what that could be about.”
“I have a few ideas what it could be about,” Zora said before she could stop herself.
Asha laughed, but the laughter didn’t make her feel better. It made her feel worse.
“But even that … That’s an awful thing for me to say, because I don’t even know her, and Deuce isn’t like that. I don’t think he’d be with someone just for, you know, for sex.”
“He really isn’t like that, is he? Asha said. “Although he used to be, I guess? I mean that was his reputation, but when I started hanging out with you guys, I really saw him for who he is for the first time, y’know?”
Zora looked up, curious at what Asha saw. She knew what she saw, but sometimes wondered how others viewed Deuce. He had a famous family, nice car, nice clothes and apartment, more-than-nice looks. He was an easy person to misjudge, and to dislike, if you didn’t know him.
“He’s just such a sweet and sensitive soul,” Asha continued. “You have no idea … With Kal, he’s just so supportive.”
“Yeah, they’re very close. I know it’s a relationship that means a lot to him.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. I’m going to tell you something that I’m not sure either of them would want you to know …”
Zora leaned in.
“Deuce is sponsoring Kal’s training for the Olympics. Paying for everything—all his gear, sports doctors, our living expenses … everything.”
Zora exhaled in a short burst. “That’s a lot.”
“Yeah. It is. Training costs alone can be about thirty-five thousand dollars, Kal says. And Deuce is doing more than that. Our living expenses …?” Asha shook her head. “Kal is struggling with that … But when I’m further along, he doesn’t want me to work, so he accepted …”
At that, Zora smiled. “He just wants you at home, huh?”
Asha shrugged. “Honestly, I want that, too, eventually. I’m thinking that when the baby comes, I’ll probably not want to work for a year. But until then, I would have had to, since what I make is going be more significant while Kal finishes up B-School.”
“You don’t want to work?”
Asha blushed. “It sounds unambitious of me, I know. But …”
“It doesn’t.” Zora touched her hand across the table. “If it’s the life you want, why not?”
They had met in Luke’s Diner for lunch and to hang out afterwards, since their previous plans had been thwarted by Asha’s health scare. Kal was hanging out with friends, since this was his and Asha’s last day in New York. Zora didn’t know and didn’t ask whether Deuce was with him.
“My mother told me I’m crazy. She thinks the whole thing is crazy—me moving in the first place, me being pregnant, me wanting to stay home …”
Asha reached for her glass of water and took a long sip. When she looked up again, her eyes were a little wet. Zora squeezed the hand closest to her.
“It’s your life, Asha. Maybe we’re too old to live the lives our parents might want for us, if that’s not the life we want.”
“Then … all that stuff you said,” Asha began. “In the clips from the documentary … about not wanting to let your father down …”
“That’s different.” Zora pulled her hand away.
“How?” Asha’s eyes were frank and inquisitive, not at all challenging.
“That’s about culture, about family, religion. Not just parental pressure.”
Asha’s eyes narrowed, and Zora knew she didn’t quite buy it. And she also knew that it wasn’t Asha’s fault for not understanding. She wasn’t sure she understood herself.
“If you … Would you be turning your back on your culture, family and religion if you were … if you and Deuce …”
Zora shrugged. “Some might see it that way. For one thing, he’s not … he’s not Muslim ...”
Asha was squinting even more now, as though struggling to understand. “Do you need him to be?”
“No,” Zora said quickly. “God, no. Of course not. He’s who he is, and I love …”
Asha said nothing for a moment, discreetly pretending not to notice the almost-slip into a profession of love. Then she took another sip of water and sighed.
Finally, she spoke, lobbing Zora’s own words back to her, but with kindness in her eyes.
“It’s your life. We’re too old to live the lives our parents want for us, if that’s not the life we want.”
“It’s just that … I feel like I’ve always disappointed my father,” Zora confessed. “Always. Disappointed and confused him. Like he looks at me, and he loves me, but doesn’t … understand how I could even be his child.”
“So, you plan to fix that? By finding a Muslim husband and … what? Like, what’re the rules for this … plan to un-disappoint your father?”
Zora managed a laugh, though part of her
felt trapped by the question.
She had never talked to anyone about this before, and but for Asif and his camera and his damned gift for making people spill their guts, maybe she never would have. Hearing these ideas, these fears of hers reflected to her in Asha’s words made them sound silly.
“There are no rules …”
“Well, there seems to be at least one rule,” Asha said.
“What’s that?”
“Self-sacrifice.”
“No,” Zora said, shaking her head. “That’s not …”
Asha shrugged. “Sounds like it. I mean, is that even what he would want? Your father I mean. For you to sacrifice yourself to the temple of his ideals?”
“Wow. The temple of his ideals. That was really deep,” Zora said.
But Asha didn’t smile. She just held Zora’s gaze, unfalteringly.
Kal sure had given her a shot of confidence, Zora thought ruefully.
Being loved had a way of doing that.
Deuce once told her that she helped him be brave enough, confident enough to broach the idea of starting a label. That if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have dared.
You hold me down, he told her one night. When I might’ve just drifted away into some dumb, aimless bullshit life, you held me down.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Zora said. “Let’s go back to talking about the insanely gorgeous child you’re going to have, and about when Kal wins the gold in 2020.”
Asha smiled, and Zora knew her gambit had worked. Asha was so in love that if there was any opportunity to talk about Kal, and she was powerless not to take it.
“He’s running with his dad too, now,” she said. “They used to do that when Kal was little, and now they run together again, on weekends.”
“How ‘bout you?” Zora asked. “You guys used to run, right?”
“Yeah, but now he seems to think it’ll shake the baby loose or something.” Asha shook her head. “So, I stopped. And honestly, I don’t love it the way he does. I always did it mostly to spend time with him.”
Asha was glowing. People said that all the time about pregnant women, but with Asha it was true. She was tan and golden, and ablaze with obvious satisfaction with her new life.
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