Bittersweet

by Shewanda Pugh

  Edy sat up and looked at her shoulder. A white dust stain arched the back half of her shoulder. Hassan twisted around to show he had one of his own.

  “See? Put ‘em together and they make a heart,” her grandmother said. “It’s destiny. Now come and see your Christmas gift.” She paused long enough to frown at Hassan. “Except you’re not Christian, right? So, what should I call it?”

  “Just call it a gift,” he said with an even smile.

  “Good.” Edy’s grandmother rushed to the tree. “I spent all night working to make these.” After rooting under branches, she came away with two boxes. “One for each.”

  Edy exchanged a look with Hassan. As it were, her nutty grandma looked far too pleased. They took their presents to the couch, unwrapped them, and exchanged a smallish smile.

  Fruit cakes. How appropriate.

  Ten

  Another Kentucky night. Winter stillness. Grass crunched underfoot as tree branches swayed to an arctic, whistling melody. Fog tickled at the base of trees, easing here and there. The mist moved fast.

  Hassan stole a look behind him, felt the house still, and gave Edy a nod. Her lips trembled with a laugh and he gave her the second she needed to get it together. It took longer than a second. With his best, most level look she straightened—and in good timing, too—because he felt the rupturing, tickling fissure that meant he was about to crack himself. Her and her dang silliness. It always infected him. Hassan inhaled the Kentucky air: smoother, crisper, more forgiving than home, and took Edy’s hand in his.

  They were off.

  Or not, since she stumbled; he dragged her, and the two burst out laughing, tangling on the ground. This had been her plan, this stupid miniature escape, and they couldn’t get from the front door to the Scooby van without botching it.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Before they see us.” Maybe this time Frank wouldn’t be so forgiving with the rifle.

  Edy shoved away his hand and stood on her own. “I’m sorry,” she said and took the time to make a face. “I thought you’d say ‘go’ before we ran.”

  “Who says ‘go’ before running? You just go!”

  “Not when you’re holding hands!”

  “Why are we holding hands? Its six steps to the van. Let’s haul it before we get caught.”

  They broke out and slammed to a stop once at the vehicle.

  “Keys, keys,” Hassan muttered, rummaging from one pocket to the next. Once found, he unlocked the door, ushered Edy in, and followed suit.

  “Are we caught?” she breathed into darkness. “We are, aren’t we?”

  Cannon fire sounded off in his chest. They should be caught for all the falling and laughing they did. He waited, positive he’d hear those first sounds of capture.

  “We’re fine,” Hassan said eventually. “Just like home. Nothing to this sneaking out stuff after all.”

  Edy ruptured with giggles. She ruptured with that summer laugh, that sunshine laugh that brimmed and melted and spilled over everything, making him want to pull her in close. So, he did.

  “Kiss me,” Hassan said.

  The dark interior and crisp cold engulfed them. Shadows danced on that frigid night, each of them ominous and reaching. Edy grinned like she did when they were kids and she had some great big secret. She’d shake her head, swinging two puffed up pigtails, and swear he couldn’t pry it free. Truth was, her every secret belonged to him and vice versa.

  “Kiss me,” she said and leaned into him.

  Hassan curled an arm around Edy’s waist and drew her in tight as he dared. Always, he fought the battle of hunger and urgency versus tenderness and patience. Here was his Cake, hair slipping from that silly ponytail as her lips rose to his. He kissed her. Soft at first, before a flash of anxiety nearly pushed him to dread. Out here, without prying eyes, they had all night, so long as they could keep each other warm.

  Now what could they do to keep each other warm?

  A grin threatened his lips.

  “What?” Edy murmured, mouth irresistible against his. He nipped at it.

  “Survivalists recommend skin-to-skin contact to keep warm,” Hassan said. “Should I undress first or you?”

  It might have worked better had he kept his face straight.

  “Shu—”

  He stole her thoughts with a kiss as his fingers danced along the hollow of her back. Feathery brushes of the lips became hot sweetness that soldered with every caress. He wanted her close, infinitely close, and the ache of it shot straight through to his core. Hassan’s hands traveled upward and under her shirt for the feel of bare skin, then downward over her thigh.

  He cupped Edy with an arm and rolled sideways, planting her back against the seat of the van. But Edy Phelps wasn’t done with him yet. She captured his mouth slow, trembling and savoring at first, then stoking him up to insanity with her tongue. He had fingers fumbling at her jeans without knowing it.

  “Wait. Slow down. Hang on.” Edy hooked a hand around his wrist and laughed nervously.

  Hassan inhaled a mouthful. ‘Slow down.’ Yeah. He could do that. Hell, his heart pumped in his throat at the moment and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d exhaled.

  He shoved back and away from Edy, giving her whatever space she needed as he focused on breathing, on calming down. It struck him how hot and heavy he’d gone so quickly. Yeah, this was Edy and she shot him through the roof, but something else had been happening to him just now. He’d been in a race against time, a race against himself. What was he doing? Stacking memories for the road?

  “Hassan? Are you mad at me?”

  “What? No.” He looked up, realizing he’d checked out on her, and smiled gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Of course not, Cake. Just … breathing.”

  But she didn’t return his smile the way he expected. They straightened themselves out and Edy went for the frizzy checkered blanket folded neat in a corner. A picnic basket sat next to it.

  “Keep warm with me,” she said.

  They curled under the blanket together, him on his back and her with a cheek on his chest.

  “You know what?” Edy said. “I’ve been thinking about what my grandmother said.” She made a point of stretching luxuriously, or rather, as luxuriously as anyone could in an old van. “I don’t want to go to Harvard. My whole being rejects it.”

  He ran a hand up to her hair and freed the ponytail so that it all fell free: tight, black coils, thick and plush on her shoulders. That was a look she starved him of. It took him a minute to round up his thoughts. “No Harvard,” he said. “Then tell me what you do want.”

  She began to draw lazy Xs and Os across his chest with a fingernail. Time wilted between them before she spoke. “Time,” Edy whispered. “This feels like the beginning of the end.”

  Eleven

  On the steely Saturday afternoon before they returned to school, Edy and Hassan flew into Boston. Edy snuggled into him for the whole of the flight with his arm wrapped around her and someone’s old Harvard fleece draped over the both of them. She feasted on her nails and spit them, while Hassan flicked a glance or two her way. Anxiety settled between them thick as bubbling chowder. “Home” was the word they didn’t say. Home to what they dared not ask.

  Edy’s dad met them at the airport. Tall¸ rawboned, and somehow slimmer than usual, his pea coat, button up and slacks hung as if still draped on a hanger. He stepped toward them, then hesitated long enough for Hassan and Edy to exchange a look. Hadn’t they been gone for days instead of weeks? What exactly had gone on in their absence?

  “Hugs?” Edy’s father said awkwardly and extended his arms.

  He didn’t wait for their approval, stepping forward instead to sweep Edy in one arm and Hassan in the other; true as the days when they were knee high and his to chase, pounce on, and tumble with. Odd, since he’d lapsed from the practice a long time ago.

  Edy always could lose herself in those arms, pretending for a second that dad was the dad of old and the scen
t of home on him meant safety. But no, she knew better, and yanked free because of that. Hassan pulled away from her dad with the same sort of sigh.

  “Dad,” Edy said. But her words stilted right there. Where could she even begin? The illustrious grandparents who turned out to be poor Kentucky chicken farmers? Or the sudden way they were shuttered from the world and shipped off without the opportunity to speak up about the night of the party or the shooting?

  Edy shook her head. “Mom’s parents? The investigation?” Your marriage? “I don’t know where to start.”

  He aged before her eyes. “How about we get your luggage first? Then the three of us can talk in the car.”

  But with their luggage in the trunk and NPR on, her father concentrated on the Callahan Tunnel straight ahead.

  Traffic slowed to a crawl as a series of brake lights illuminated the darkened passageway. Edy hated the Callahan. She hated most tunnels, in fact. When she entered them she always had to shove Stephen King’s movie The Stand from her mind. That scene where Larry Underwood and crazy Rita Blakemoor have to trek through a dead-body-stuffed Lincoln Tunnel had haunted her from the time she and Hassan had stayed up to watch it. As a result, some tunnels made her feel two seconds from a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

  The radio’s volume eked up when talk turned to strife in the Middle East. Edy did her best to tune it out.

  Eventually, her father cleared his throat. “You two should know that I’ve, uh, been called away. Given the meteoric escalation in tensions—ongoing tensions—and the likelihood of civil war serving as a catalyst—”

  “You’re leaving?” Edy said.

  She felt a dull pang of impatience. After all, she’d been shot at and shipped off. Now her father was leaving. Why couldn’t she muster up outrage? Why couldn’t she stir up a bit of shock?

  He met her gaze in the review view mirror. “Ali and I are leaving. For Washington D.C. and then onward to study contributing variables to volatile conditions in specific Middle Eastern nations.”

  ‘Volatile conditions.’ He didn’t have to go far to turn a critical eye on those.

  Her father adjusted the rear view mirror, fidgeting as they idled in traffic. “We’ve been engaged by the federal government,” he said, answering questions no one asked. “Beyond that, I’m not exactly at liberty to say.”

  “Did you know that my grandparents lived in Kentucky?” Edy said suddenly.

  She felt Hassan’s hand slip over hers, fingers gentle.

  “I knew no more than you, sweetheart.” Edy’s father hesitated. “Honest.”

  She supposed he felt the need to bolster up his case, though she had to admit adding ‘honest’ wasn’t exactly the glue to do it. Right now, both parents felt dishonest to her when it came to this grandparents business, and while she was used to her mom holding that title, it choked her to add her father there.

  “Dad, you must have met her parents? The fake ones?”

  A dirty white hatchback with a Live Free or Die New Hampshire tag cut them off and her dad leaned on his horn.

  “Yes,” he said testily. “We met once. But they weren’t introduced as her parents. She called them Frank and Mary. They weren’t at our wedding, of course.”

  Okay.

  “You’re not making sense. Who did she tell you they were?” Hassan said.

  “Poor relatives,” her father shot back. “As I’ve said, I didn’t know these were her parents. Like you, I thought her parents were well off.”

  They spent the remainder of the ride in silence. When they pulled into the drive, the Pradhan door opened and Ali burst out as if he’d rip the wood frame and take it with him. He waved an envelope wildly in his hand. When Rani followed she did so primly. Dirty snow crushed beneath their steps.

  Hassan threw open the car door; Edy stayed him with a hand before he stepped out.

  “What in the world’s happening?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Nor do I,” her father murmured.

  “Hassan, I took the liberty of opening your mail!” Ali pitched on a patch of ice, flailed, and found his composure for a half dignified power walk. “It looked really important!”

  Hassan climbed out of the car to accept the letter. Edy bounced out of the car and came around to read at his elbow. You’re as bad as him, those green eyes said, laughing at the sight of her.

  Dear Mr. Pradhan,

  This year, the New England Patriots will launch an inaugural camp created for the sole purpose of cultivating the area's most talented youth. Participants, selected by invitation only, will undergo intensive initial assessments facilitated by veteran college and professional league coaches, dieticians, and personal trainers. Afterward, participants will receive increasingly advanced personalized instruction, instituted with the aim of exploiting individual strengths, exposing weaknesses, and emphasizing high order football thinking. At the conclusion of this week-long program, players will return having received league-quality instruction, guidance for the future, and exposure to a number of elite players. The camp is scholarship-based and offered at no cost to the 16 participants selected. We would like, at this time, to extend an offer to you. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

  Sincerely,

  Hayward Carmichael

  Assoc. Director, Communications

  New England Patriots

  Edy squealed and vaulted into Hassan for a side hug. He lumbered for a step, laughing with the letter fisted, before cradling her in the warmth of his arms.

  “Hassan!” she cried, laughing. “Hassan!”

  “I know!” he said.

  “Hassan!” Could her mouth even form another word? Her brain shrilled joy and her legs did a pogo bounce nine, ten, nine hundred times, until Hassan crushed her to stillness with a hug.

  There was granite in that hug, cement in that hug, steel forcing her to quiet. She hadn’t understood it, hadn’t made sense of the way he subdued her, until a quiet tremor through his body.

  Ah. Of course.

  Edy squeezed him with a fierceness born of surety and adrenaline. If uncertainty coursed through his veins, then certainty flowed through hers. They were as they always had been. Strong where the other fell weak.

  “You okay?” she said and drew away only a tad.

  If he knew that his mom and dad stood in full view, he didn’t let on. He didn’t so much as flinch as he still held on to her sides.

  “Yeah,” Hassan said. “It’s just, you know how it is. So exciting you don’t know whether to scream or throw up. My problem is I always choose the second one.” He smiled weakly.

  “We’re throwing a party,” Ali announced.

  Hassan sighed. “Dad, no,” he said loudly. “Please don’t.”

  “Nonsense.” Ali stepped closer, footing cautious, distrustful of the ice. “Lawrence received a letter, too, you know. You boys are our pride. We should celebrate grandly with the Dysons, with all our neighbors, in fact! You kids would love that.” He turned to Edy for the first time. “Help me out, my princess. Tell him he’s earned the treatment of a king.”

  Huh. Well, for starters, this wasn’t the homecoming they’d anticipated. ‘My princess?’ ‘Treatment of a king?’ If Edy had been a braver girl, she would stole a look at Rani, but she could feel Hassan’s mom trying to cook her with her eyes, so there was no need to look over there.

  “And you two,” Ali said and looked from Hassan to Edy. “This is how it’s meant to be! Good friends, each with true happiness for the other. When one succeeds, it’s as if the other does, no?” Ali looped an arm through Edy’s father’s arm and looked from Hassan to Edy, face blotched and shining. How had she missed that before?

  “I think I’ll have another drink,” he announced. “You’ll join me, won’t you, old boy? Our Hassan is on his way!”

  Edy’s father grinned. When was the last time she’d seen him with the lips peeled back in a glamorous smile, baring teeth as if modeling for a dental commercial? “S
ure,” her father said. “Let’s toss them back like the old days.” Except she couldn’t imagine her dad tossing anything back. At best, he might have sniffed and sipped.

  “Perhaps, one of you have had a few too many,” Rani said, but already the men were turning away.

  “This is a day of celebration!” Ali called and threw a fist in the air. “I hereby declare this Hassan Pradhan Day!” He paused long enough to give Edy’s dad an exaggerated, unsteady look of seriousness. “Look here, listen, Nathan. I have never properly thanked you for the time you took cultivating this talent in my son. Were it not for you … were it not for you ….” He trailed off, adrift in his passion, speechless and coasting. Unlike Edy’s father, Ali willingly gushed the full spectrum of unbridled emotion. Around him, her dad became alive.

  “The whole of New England and The National Football League recognizes the excellence in my son,” Ali continued. “Who’s next? The world? The universe?” He turned a critical eye on his wife as if she might answer. “If a man can’t drink his fill to the legend of his son, what can he drink to?”

  Well.

  “Jeez,” Hassan said into Edy’s ear. “I better not screw up. Since he went and made me a Greek god and all.”

  Edy squeezed his hand. “Just a lesser god. So you should get over yourself. You haven’t been drafted, you know.”

  Oh, that smile. Could it really be all for her?

  “I haven’t been drafted yet,” he corrected.

  Edy grinned. “I bet optimism tastes delicious on your lips,” she whispered.

  “Stop that. I already wanted to kiss you.”

  Ugh. Like she hadn’t been thinking the same, thinking the same under Rani’s watchful gaze. Like she hadn’t been thinking of kisses and touches and his hair sweeping her skin. She’d been thinking all that with his mother right there.

  Why hadn’t Rani told on them?

  They were being watched though. It hit them collectively, belatedly, almost cartoonishly. They froze together, stiff as an ice sculpture in the snow, Edy with the realization that the front door had slammed behind their fathers and that Rani alone had remained. And so they stood close, Edy and Hassan, with the only other person who knew their secret mere steps away. Mirrored in Hassan’s eyes was her reluctance to look. But then he did. But then she did. And Edy saw Rani on the stoop, face curdled in fury.