He hated himself for thinking it. After everything that had happened, all the danger, all the madness, he had to flirt with insecurity. He wanted to snatch the words back and swallow them, to ask her forgiveness, to tell her forget it. But he didn’t. He stole a look at her and kept quiet, letting the seconds tick by and his stomach roller derby as he waited on her answer.
Edy twisted her fingers together so they tangled. “I miss talking to him.” Something in his face made her hesitate. Maybe a flash of doubt, a sprinkle of sickness. “I miss his friendship. At the same time,” she said slower, “I don’t him back in my life.” She shook her head. “That stuff about his cousin?” Edy shuddered and shrunk into her coat somehow, growing smaller even as she grimaced. “It’s all so creepy. And we haven’t even talked about how he came over to snitch on us that night because he’s against the whole idea of me and you. I mean, I know you two have you’re your differences, but no true friend would do something like that.”
“He was tired of being your friend, Edy, and in need of a little promotion.” Frustration stabbed him with her tentative stare. Would she make him say it? Would she drag words out of him he’d tried to bury?
She would. “Listen, Cake. When he—we—thought Wyatt was dying, his last words were ‘tell Edy I love her.’” In his dreams, whenever Wyatt asked the same, Hassan backed away from him, firm in denial, uncommitted, unwilling.
In real life, he’d promised to deliver the message.
In real life, he’d promised to tell his girlfriend that the dying guy he hated was in love with her.
Edy blinked, blinked liked the world faded from sight, even as the sun sat fat on the horizon. “God, I’ve been stupid,” she finally said.
They walked on in thick silence for awhile.
“Even if he wasn’t my friend,” she said. “I was his. I know I’ve wronged him in some ways, too.”
There. Her mind was made up. Her mind was made up whether she knew it or not.
“I’ll go with you to visit him,” Hassan said. After all, she shouldn’t have to go by herself and there was no way she was going by herself.
He pulled Edy to him and tucked away a thousand complicated emotions.
“I’m sorry for being so difficult,” she said.
He couldn’t help the smile. “That didn’t just start.”
She slipped her gloved hands into his coat pockets and jabbed his side with a finger. He laughed and got the benefit of her squeezing him in even closer. Her head rested smooth on his shoulder as the winter wind howled. A toddler careened by drunkenly; a woman barreled after, shoving an empty stroller and shouting for Adam to come back.
Hassan tilted Edy’s chin up for one, two, three kisses. After that, he stopped counting.
“Hassan? Edy? Is that you?”
His heart petered to a stop. A thud, another thud, then death. Slowly, he and Edy untangled. He wanted to ask her if she was half as dead as him.
Dr. Chandra Dhumal pulled up right alongside them, long black ponytail swishing as she jogged in place.
“You know,” Dr. Dhumal said and shoved back her burgundy sweatband as it slipped low on brow. “When I saw you two kissing, I thought I had to be mistaken. Surely, Dr. Phelps or Dr. Pradhan would have mentioned this. So, I came over to see, and yes, it is you.”
They let her words hang, naïve and reaching, dangling in a bubble of absurdity.
“Yeah, well, you see it’s us now,” Hassan said. “So, you know.” Get bent.
Edy looked brittle enough to break. Maybe she didn’t like his tone. “Well, tell us, Dr. Dhumal, how have you been? Any new discoveries in …”
Hassan tried to bat back his smile before mouthing, “Sociology,” to her. It appeared one of them had been paying more attention than the other when some of their dads’ colleagues came over for dinner.
“Er … Geography?” Edy finished
Dr. Dhumal picked up the pace, knees high, fists punching the air. She came off a little high strung, enthusiastic even. Now that he thought about it, Dr. Dhumal and her husband liked to challenge his dad’s every idea. Dinners with them were always the loudest.
“My field is Sociology,” Dr. Dhumal corrected. “Funny you should ask about it. You probably don’t recall, but my primary areas of interest are gender, sexuality, family processes and inequality. At the moment, I’m researching family life and its influence on intimate relationships. It’s within the context of personal ideology. Fascinating stuff, really.”
“Yeah?” Hassan said. He exchanged a look with Edy. They could tell her how family life influenced intimate relationships. It smothered it. End of story.
Dr. Dhumal jabbed the air with enthusiastic fists, feet frantic in her stationary run. “Well, it was good chatting with you. Tell your dads to contact me on return. Maybe we can do dinner sometime.”
Right. So she could gush about seeing them kiss out by the Charles River. That message would be delivered promptly the day after never. Hassan only hoped Dr. Dhumal was the forgetful sort.
Fourteen
Wyatt liked roses, Edy told herself. Or maybe he liked them because she did. Edy pinched the wilting peach petals and scowled at the indent left there, before swiping up the vase and bringing it to the gift shop counter. Next to her, Hassan scowled in silence. They’d exchanged hot whispers over the message of the flowers; with him thinking they’d trigger hope and her saying they were a sign of decency. Roses purchased and a short ride up the elevator later, they made it to Wyatt’s door and stared.
Edy swallowed a boulder of apprehension, gave Hassan a nod, and knocked on the door. A girl told her to come in.
Bright lights. Stark white painted the floor, wall, and ceiling, while steady beeps drew the eye. They drew the eye to tubes, monitors, machines, machinations, all droning and concerting in a miniature symphony of life. At the center of it all lay Wyatt. His gaze lifted slow, weighted, and the door slammed behind Hassan.
The frail, ghastly, gown-draped figure was and wasn’t her old friend. No, this Wyatt Green resembled old bleached bones, with flat brown eyes, concave cheeks, and frost-white chapped lips. Hadn’t she been told he was on the mend physically? He looked in need of a blood transfusion, an organ donation, a resuscitation, something.
His cousin Sandra sat in the corner.
“Hi,” Edy said.
“Hi,” Hassan said.
Sandra offered a tight-lipped smile. Wyatt continued to stare. Edy, suddenly remembering the flowers, set them down on the side table near him. She took a step back, then another, before realizing she moved as if she’d just planted a bomb. A steady rise of nerves tickled at her belly, climbing, gaining strength as it spread through every pore. Why had she come? What did she need to prove? That she was human? That she was sorry?
Well, she was.
She should say something, she knew. Someone should say something. Yet the silence gaped on for millennia.
“So,” Hassan said an octave too chipper. “How’s the recovery coming?”
Wyatt turned dead eyes on him. He looked Hassan over once and closed them.
Pain. It pinched and rolled his features, slicing the corners of his mouth down in a haunt of a grimace.
“Wyatt—” Edy tried.
“Go away,” Wyatt said.
Edy froze, certain she’d heard wrong.
“I hate you, Edy,” Wyatt said and eased down a swallow. “I hate what you to do to me, what you make me feel. Stupid. Poor. Desperate. Worthless. Like I’m a bookmark for him, nothing better.” His eyes flooded, bordering, then spilling with the angriest of tears. “I wish it were you lying here on morphine, not me.”
Edy gasped.
“Yeah well,” Hassan said and put a hand at the small of her back. “On that note, we’re out of here.”
He steered her toward the door.
“No wait,” Edy said. “I want to say something.”
Hassan’s chest inflated with the enormity of his inhale. But after exhaling, he didn’t sa
y a word.
Edy went back to Wyatt’s bed and looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry our friendship turned to shit. Sorry I didn’t—couldn’t love you the way you craved. But I did care about you. I do care about you. You were my best friend and that was never insincere.”
Wyatt’s gaze slid up the length of Edy. Then he reached over and jabbed his bed’s intercom. “Can I get security in here?” he said.
Hassan grabbed Edy by the arm and ushered her out the door.
Fifteen
One of the essential components of punishment was enforcement; a threat was only as good as the ability to carry it out. Being grounded worked the same way; someone had to stick around to make it obligatory. Otherwise it became a suggestion, a recommendation, then not even that as time wore on. Being grounded became a debatable question.
The first post-Reggie party approached already. Hassan and the others wanted to know if she’d be there. Edy would. She had to. Not because she wanted to stick one to her mother either, but because she feared if she didn’t go, if she didn’t do these things right away, she’d slip into the sort of complacency where she’d find excuses to be fearful. She’d become afraid to unlock the doors. Afraid to go out. Afraid of all the Reggie Knights of the world. Afraid of all the Wyatt Greens.
She squeezed her eyes against the last thought.
For all the talk on Facebook of not letting some Blue Hill Ave. losers get the best of them, no one seemed keen on offering up their house for a party. Which made Edy realize there was no party to go to per se. “Temporary problem,” Hassan explained. “Temporary problem with a permanent solution.”
The permanent solution turned out to be Lorenzo Carpenter. Creepy Lorenzo Carpenter who had been hemmed up when Edy abandoned his last party after seeing Hassan with the redhead. This time Lorenzo’s house wasn’t available, then it suddenly was. Edy almost didn’t ask what deal was struck. Then as the Mustang pulled up to that familiar three-story Victorian the color of the setting sun, she couldn’t resist.
Hassan looked her over. “Lorenzo likes to party. He doesn’t take much persuading, okay? We only told him he’d be doing all of us a huge favor and would get instant kudos from a lot of people for it. Imagine being the first guy with balls enough to throw a party after all this? And so soon? He’d have his pick of any girl.” He leaned over and kissed her soft. “Almost any girl.”
Edy grinned. “I should have known. He’s in it for the girls.”
“He is,” Hassan agreed.
They climbed out the Mustang and a strange thing happened. Strange as an aurora over Texas. Yeah, the crowd, sparse for a South End party, was odd in and of itself. And yeah, the scattered folks went out of their way to give shouts of hello for Hassan. Then one by one ripples of greeting broke the surface for Edy, too. First one, then another, until she stumbled, so distracted was she by the task of stopping and returning each ‘hello.’
Hassan laughed at her bewilderment and slipped an arm around her waist to steady her. “It goes better if you just throw a few waves,” he said. “Maybe concentrate more on the walking.”
“You two come to party or to be a fire hazard?” Mason Dyson asked.
Edy twisted free from Hassan to rush him. She hit a wall of sheet muscle, before the longest arms wrapped her, squeezing as if he could protect her from everything.
“See that?” Matt said to Hassan. “Your girl loves us.”
“She’s in my arms.” Mason pointed out.
Alyssa cleared her throat, Mason jumped, and Edy made the distance from one twin to the other.
“Hey,” Alyssa said once both guys had been properly hugged. She surprised Edy by opening her arms really wide.
Okay. Hugs. She could handle that. Even if it did seem a little … startling?
Alyssa cleared her throat and motioned with a hand for Edy to get on with it. Mason snickered. With the feel of a doltish calf, Edy went into her arms.
She hugged hard, stronger than anything expected from a girl so slight, and she held on tight as if promising the best parts of a beautiful friendship.
“I worried about you,” Alyssa said. “I wrote you on Facebook, but…” She drew away, eyes scolding. But with the scold, Edy saw something else. Forgiveness in the same light. No wonder Mason teased and played. No wonder he ran back and forth, in and out of their relationship. Impatience spiked quick in Edy. He’d better treat her right, she thought.
Alyssa released her to squeeze Hassan’s arm in greeting. “Hey, twenty-seven. Got a touchdown left in you?”
“Maybe one.” Hassan smiled.
The wind whipped up just then, reminding Edy that lounging in glacial conditions wasn’t fun. When Alyssa and Mason headed indoors, Edy and Hassan decided to follow.
More hellos and claps on the back came as classmates shouted over the music and fist pounded her in greeting. Their sudden interest weirded her out, as if she were the freeway wreck to gawk at. She’d known and seen these people her whole life and they’d never shown an interest in her.
“Cake?” They’d gone as far as the couch, pasted with girls in blinging bracelets and skinny jeans, before Hassan pulled her aside. “You okay?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
Relief came with the sight of Lawrence and Chloe. The hugs came a little easier this time, even between Chloe and Edy. Not much small time for small talk passed before the twins transformed into, well, the twins.
The wild hoots and fist stabs in the air came first, followed by shouts to turn the music up, way up, way way up, as no one could stop their party. Pretty soon, the blinging girls were off the couch, much to Lorenzo Carpenter’s grinning, hand rubbing delight, and everyone had picked up the chant.
“With the music this loud,” Hassan shouted into Edy’s ear, “it seems like we should move something, right? Before the police show up, I mean.” He held out a hand to Edy.
Her fingers laced with his and they crossed the floor together as the music suddenly throbbed. It boiled and thumped and turned sensual, back beat heavy and begging. It begged with a bounce for grinding bodies and sweat the way only club rap could.
Hassan grabbed her waist and pulled her in, so that the two cinched together. The moving happened in time with the music, barely there, barely obedient, but making it happen because they had to. Coarse presses of the body rendered to an absolute beat. Shots of heat, feverish heat. Was this dancing? She wrapped an arm around his neck, more for balance than for anything.
She said his name. No, she thought his name. Then his lips found hers in a nibble, a lick, a teasing little bite. Edy gripped him by the hair and crushed his mouth to hers. A touch of cool skin meant he’d found the hem of her shirt.
So, breathing. It went in out in, right?
Their foreheads fell together with a thump.
“Turns out we’re bad at this,” Hassan said. “Dancing together, I mean.”
Edy grinned. “That and remembering we’re in public.”
She pivoted just enough to see the gawkers with their knowing little smiles. Then there were the Dyson twins with eyes like thunder, both trained on Hassan.
“You have enemies waiting for you,” Edy teased. She touched Hassan’s face. “Don’t look now, but the twins are on to us.”
Hassan’s brows danced. Behind him a freshman wideout sloshed while balancing half a dozen plastic cups of tapped beer against his chest. More girls replaced the ones formerly sitting on Lorenzo’s couch. Undoubtedly, this guy sought to hydrate them all.
“I have it on great authority that the twins have been on to us for awhile now,” Hassan said and kissed her nose. “They’ll bring it up later, when we’re alone, and argue the strong points of their case with their fists. But in the meantime, are you moving slow because you’ve forgotten how to dance?”
Edy looked down at herself. Forgotten how to dance? Her? He’d made her forget to hear the music.
Still, he’d pay for the jab.
“You just bought a night of
embarrassment, twenty-seven.”
Hassan’s grin spread wide. “Bring it for me, Cake.”
When Hassan’s Mustang crept into his drive later that night, neither could miss the Lexus parked at Edy’s. After so many nights spent campaigning or working late in the office, the sight of her mom’s car sucked the air from Edy’s lungs. She exchanged a single, fluid look of worry with Hassan.
“Let’s hang out here,” he suggested, “in the car, and see if she leaves again.”
“Yeah,” Edy said. “Sounds good.”
Then a light came on upstairs in the Pradhan house and Hassan had to kill the engine. The two of them slouched and waited, the silence thick as cream between them.
“Okay,” Hassan eventually said. “I think we’re good.”
They were definitely not good. But crouching down in the front seat of a Mustang was like bowing down in a milk crate; knees digging into hardness, back scraping into more; it just wasn’t sustainable. Edy groaned in relief with the opportunity to sort of stretch. When she found her seat again; she saw the Lexus remained.
There were really only two destinations: her house or his. She didn’t know how welcome she’d be at his house; which meant her only true destination was home.
Edy inhaled deep and cracked the passenger side door.
“What are you doing?” Hassan hissed as the car chimed. Hurriedly, he snatched his key out the ignition to kill the sound.
“I’m going home. We can’t sit here all night. The heat won’t even hold out.” Already, a bit of winter had started to seep in through the cracks, dropping the temperature bit by bit.
Those green eyes swept wild. “Wait. Are you going through the front door? Up the tree? What? We need a plan.”
Okay, yeah. Marching through the front door did feel a tad too bold, even if she thought everyone was asleep. Up the tree it was.
“I’m scaling.”
“Then I’m coming,” he said.
Edy sighed. “Don’t, Hassan. I’ll be okay. Really.” She gave him a reassuring smile. After all, they were over thinking this whole enterprise. In a few seconds, she’d slip in her room and tuck it in. End of story.
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