Bittersweet

by Shewanda Pugh

“I’m sorry,” Edy said. “But do you realize it’s Christmas?”

  “Yes, of course.” Her dad looked away. Floor. Wall. Desk. Couch. “I’ve placed presents under the tree, but these papers, my dear …” He trailed off at the slackness in his daughter’s face and sighed. “You’re absolutely right. I can spare some time.”

  “It seems to me like you have a lot of time to spare when you want it,” Edy said. Her gaze slid over to Hassan. “Can we talk about that?” She took a seat on his couch as if he’d already agreed. Hassan excused himself and closed the door to the study.

  He collided with Rebecca in the hall.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Getting coffee. What else?”

  He tried not to roll his eyes. “Drink it downstairs. You can’t be doing anything. You don’t even have a job right now.”

  “There’s preparation, you know.”

  That time he did roll his eyes. “Come on now, Becca. Everyone knows Congress doesn’t work.”

  She smirked at that. “You don’t want me down here.”

  “I don’t ask for things I don’t want.”

  They eyed each other suspiciously.

  “Edy doesn’t want me then.”

  “Look, Becca. Why are you here, if not to spend the holidays with us? You’re obviously waiting on an invitation. So, here it is: please, join us.” He resisted the urge to shove her down the hall and into a seat; her eyes blazed that bright with hope.

  “I’ll bring my work,” she said.

  “No! What is it with you people and work? Is it your crutch?” The second he cried it, Nathan’s study opened, and out, of course, stepped Nathan.

  Hassan clamped a hand on Rebecca’s arm instinctually. “We were just headed for the living room,” he announced. His brows lowered, frowning at Edy. Is this okay? Am I okay? Or did I overstep my bounds? She shook her head slight, no you’re fine, and met him with a small smile.

  So, Hassan celebrated a quiet Christmas with the Phelps intact. He suspected it would be for the last time.

  Thirty-Five

  After Christmas, the holiday season improved dramatically. Well, it did for Hassan, anyway. For one, Edy had decided to join him and Lawrence on their 5 a.m. jogs, which were beyond fun because she bundled up in a sweatshirt, woolen cap, gloves, and pair of track pants no matter what he told her. They paced their runs, not because she couldn’t handle the distance, which she absolutely could, but because Edy wore too much stuffing to keep up. Then she took to handing off her layers as she warmed up. ‘Hassan hold my scarf.’ ‘Lawrence hold my hat,’ which he wasn’t up to doing. Edy’s shenanigans made creaking his eyes open to sweat it out that much better. Especially after waking up next to her.

  The second bit of news came from across the street. On a bitter morning when the snow fell in gentle drifts, Wyatt Green lumbered from his house, steps still awkward, and piled suitcases in the trunk of a taxi. He asked Hassan to tell Edy goodbye.

  Which he did.

  Spring came and Edy rode down to New York with her dad and Hassan for the semi-finals. There’d only been a little talk between her and Hassan about potential schools. There’d been a lot of talk between her and her dad about Harvard. During their heart-to-heart in his study, she told him she wasn’t interested in an Ivy League education. He, in turn, felt ‘dismay, but not shock.’

  Slowly, Edy’s mom had begun moving things out, things that the household had forgotten were there. Boxes in the attic, files in the study, dishes that her parents never found a way to use. On the rare occasion that her parents crossed each other in the hall or the staircase, they averted gazes and tried to give each other the widest right of way.

  For the ride down to New York, Hassan was in ultra-support mode. He had registration forms, copies of correspondence, and the various itineraries stacked and sorted. He had words—the rights words he hoped—for her jittery nerves, nail biting and constant string of doubts. She could do this, he reminded her. Success was doing your best. She’d been validated, hadn’t she? She was there among the best.

  Edy fell short of advancing to Prague, but wound up with a trophy and scholarship ten grand scholarship nonetheless.

  ~~~

  “Wings,” Hassan said, stretched on Edy’s bed.

  “Pixie dust,” she answered as she lay next to him.

  “Pixie dust? Oh my God, Cake, choose different. That’s a dumb answer. You’d get killed.”

  Edy punched him. “Like you’re so equipped for survival. I could tear your wings off.”

  “I could knock over your pixie dust!” Hassan swept for Edy’s hand to demonstrate and her body went taunt; stretching from bed to the floor in an effort to escape his reach. He tickled her and she smacked at him, giggling and crying out foul.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “So, the two of us are going into battle and we each get one magical power.” He clapped his hands. “Easy. I’d pick power and slay you. Boom.”

  “Power?” Edy sat up and made a show of thinking. “I’d pick invisibility, Mr. Show Off. Good luck with your mission.”

  Her bedroom window rattled with a thunk.

  “Jeez!” Hassan cried and scrambled on over. Edy met him there as he yanked it open and a wash of humid air flushed in.

  Hassan lurched and a rock sailed straight past Edy. “Whoever this is, I plan on killing them,” he said.

  “Sorry!” came a familiar hiss from below.

  Hassan’s head darted out. He clearly wasn’t thinking because Edy had to pull him back in. He could have been seen, of course.

  “Lawrence?” Hassan whispered. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  He waved a sheet of paper like a truce flag. “I’ve got the rankings. They don’t come out officially until tomorrow, but my dad’s friend at The Globe let him get them tonight.”

  The rankings. The rankings listed every blue chip football player in the country in order of worth. These were the guys who pretty much had their pick of school. These were the guys that made athletic officials think about breaking the law.

  “Come up!” Hassan said.

  Lawrence didn’t move.

  “Man, come on! Everyone’s asleep.” Hassan glanced behind him. “And hurry.”

  Lawrence scaled the tree. Lithe as a cat and quick, he was at the window in five motions.

  “Well?” Hassan demanded, pulling his friend inside. “Did I make it?” He felt game day nausea, plus a bout of appendicitis.

  Lawrence took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  Hassan nearly punched him. “Well? Tell me before I chuck you back the way you came. What’s my number? Don’t soften it; just give it to me straight.”

  “Okay,” Lawrence said. “Number one.”

  Edy clamped a hand over her mouth, but him, he couldn’t do that. Number one running back was phenomenal. Insane. He’d have his choice of strong offers.

  “Are you sure? Number one running back?” He whispered it as if afraid he’d jinx the rankings in some way.

  “Not running backs.” Lawrence thrust the paper in his face. “Just number one, Sawn. Number one in the country.”

  Hassan snatched the paper from him, tearing it, and held on with trembling hands. His eyes gaze swept from bottom up, until there was no more up to go. On a list of one hundred and fifty of the best high school soon-to-be seniors in the country; Hassan Pradhan topped them all.

  He was the very best.

  Edy threw her arms around him, bouncing like she did when excited, but he could barely register her hanging on like the world’s wildest noose.

  “Where’s Lawrence?” she said.

  “I didn’t make it.”

  “What?” Hassan said. “I thought I saw…”

  A stab of horror found him as his eyes swept over the list. He went from the top down. Nothing. Then back up. There.

  Forty-seven. Relief came in torrents.

  “Lawrence,” Hassan breathed. “You made it.” He deserved to make it, too.

&n
bsp; “And you look so surprised.” Lawrence grinned.

  With a laugh, Hassan swept him into an embrace so tight, Lawrence grunted with the squeeze. He’d done it. They’d done it. They were the best in the country.

  Thirty-Six

  The press and recruiters turned maniacal not only on Hassan, but on his parents, too. Ali’s assistant fielded countless messages from jockeying athletic departments and reporters. Rani stopped answering the phone at home and had to clear the voicemail daily. Hassan even changed his cell phone number, but found that the people he wanted to avoid most were the first to find him anyway.

  Though they had more alone time with Youth International in the past and football season over, all their conversations revolved around the college selection process or his latest plan to get out of his arranged marriage fast. Try as she might, Edy couldn’t convince him that a quick scheme wouldn’t solve their problems for good.

  “Well, have you got something better?” he’d snap again and again. “Something guaranteed to work? A magic spell? A potion book?”

  “Not everything can be handled at a rush, Hassan.” That was her line to speak. She never missed it, not ever. “All this takes patience. We’ll figure it out in the end.” She believed. She hoped. She prayed it was so.

  She’d watch him pace her room, mowing creases in her carpet. His looks came fire branded, his strides lightning quick.

  “You won’t lose me,” she’d have to tell him. “I won’t go. I promise.”

  That night he stopped, took a breath and shut his eyes. “Mala’s dad is a fan of American football. He spent time in the States awhile back and … he’s told everyone that his—his …”

  Just say it. Future son-in-law.

  “That his future son-in-law was ranked number one in the nation?” She didn’t achieve the lightness she’d hoped for, and found her voice did something weird instead.

  Suddenly, she was nose to nose with Hassan.

  “You know, I can read you as well as you can read me,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Her gaze dropped to his lips, which made her lick her own. He had a way of stealing all the oxygen, no matter the conversation.

  “New plan,” Hassan said and stood up straight again. “Mala’s not going to crack. I’ve tried talking to her a thousand times. But the girl she runs with seems like—”

  “We could sit our parents down,” Edy said. “And tell them we’re together. Then see what happens.”

  Hassan looked at her. “You know what would happen.”

  “But we can’t be afraid forever.”

  Edy stood, warming to the idea. “Maybe this is the time to do it, while the excitement is high from the rankings release. You can’t possibly think your parents would send you away now. Not going into senior year.”

  “What about you and mom?” Hassan said. “You’re on again, off again. You can handle what comes with that? The fall out? The drama?”

  Maybe she was naïve in thinking they could talk it all out and reach a resolution. After all, people took up arms and died everyday for religious and philosophical differences. Whole countries had been ransacked, destroyed, burned, forgotten, because differences like theirs couldn’t be talked out.

  Thirty-Seven

  Summer came and Edy enrolled in another intensive at Boston Ballet. Meanwhile, Hassan trooped across country as if on a world tour. He’d been invited to elite skills camps for top running backs, top offensive players, top football players, and more. He had weekends set aside for the best specialty clinics in the nation. He and Lawrence would hop from one training facility to the next, milking every minute of summer until they returned home for the fall.

  Edy decided that she would major in dance. She had lunch with her mother at a Back Bay café to break the news. It was accepted in steaming silence, like most everything between them. When her mother had asked how she expected to fund her ‘education of leisure’, Edy informed her that she had a ten thousand dollar scholarship useful for college anywhere.

  That got a laugh, a wild laugh, an uproarious laugh that drew eyes. ‘And the rest?’ And the rest? And the rest? She’d insisted. ‘I could work. I will work. I’ll get two jobs, if I have to.’ No, Edy had never had a job. No, she’d never considered what she was qualified to do. She was a hard worker, though, and someone would give her a chance. ‘Well, I won’t support this,’ her mother said. ‘You won’t use my savings to play around with your life.’ Her father, like usual, had concurred tactfully when Edy took it to him.

  So, the decision stood before her: a ‘respectable major’ and the safety net of her parents, or dance, dance in a freefall of life. Some choices the soul made for the mind, while others were willed by the heart. For Edy, there was but one option at all: dance and the life it brought with it.

  Edy thought back to when she took her first summer intensive in New York. She’d been feverish from missing Hassan and desperate to hear his voice. Now, they were seniors and distance was what they knew. The physical distance that came with her competitions, his training, from their life. Then there were the subtleties of separation they tried to ignore: his media attention, the ravenous recruiters, and the weight of being number one.

  On the cusp of their eighteenth birthdays, truth bore down on Edy; she and Hassan could talk or not talk, either way she’d be okay. The rush, the burn to make contact may have ebbed away. She was too used to withdrawal and knew more would come. Most of the camps and clinics he visited over the summer took away his cell or otherwise put restrictions on outside calls. Even when they didn’t, the demands on his time were so overwhelming, conversations could last only a moment or two. So, when Edy heard from him, he was usually about to board a flight or check in at a camp in a state they’d never been to. Their conversations stayed brief because he needed to call his parents, too. And then he was off again, for a day, a week, sometimes two.

  Not that she hadn’t set the precedent for busyness and made him suck it up. Now that their roles were reversed, Edy found the sharp stab of emptiness at his absence dulling to a quiet ache.

  She filled her days with dance and hung out with Chloe, Kori, and Gwyn at night. Sometimes TJ came along and they had quiet conversations where he’d ask questions, like, “are you sure you already know who you want to spend your life with?” Or, “what’ll you do if he walks away one day? After you guys wreck this whole family setup?” Always, TJ asked in this philosophical way, as if all answers were valid, as if a lack of an answer was equally valid. They were long past the days of him hitting on her or otherwise acknowledging his attraction; Edy and TJ had real conversations, long conversations, in quiet, tucked away moments at parties. He never said Edy and Hassan wouldn’t work. He never said they would if they believed in love, either. Instead, questions curled from him as if Edy piecing together her feelings was all that mattered, not how the future unfolded.

  At seventeen, nearly eighteen, she wasn’t ready to say that she’d do anything her whole life. But her love for Hassan was the purest she’d ever known. She didn’t doubt that and she didn’t doubt him, whatever the future may bring.

  Hassan returned on a Tuesday and Edy forgot that she hadn’t missed him. Edy forgot that she thought herself content for a second without him.

  Lies.

  She rushed the taxi as it pulled up and nearly skidded when the back door flew open. He emerged broader and bulkier in the morning sun, and his hair, fluttering back from his brows, had been burnished in streaks from the sunlight. He was rugged muscle and thick-carved perfection, with a pure, bright smile. Her smile.

  Edy dove into his arms.

  “Cake,” Hassan said and squeezed her extra tight. “I’ve been crazy without you. So crazy.”

  She swallowed guiltily. “What are you doing in a cab? Why didn’t you get picked up?”

  That seemed to remind him that the driver needed money. Afterward, Edy helped him lug the luggage into the house, up the staircase, and into his room.

  “My flight was o
verbooked and I got bumped to the 9 p.m. departure,” he said. “I told mom and dad I’d get a cab home. Then suddenly they had a spot for me. So here I am.”

  “Here you are,” Edy said.

  Was it her or did he look older? Hardened? Sharpened in some fundamental way?

  “Don’t stand so far,” Hassan said. He took a seat on his bed and pulled her into his lap. “I want you close. I love you close.”

  Oh, he smelled incredible. Leather, yes, and a touch of sweat, a promise of sweeping masculinity.

  “You’re right,” Edy said. “I’m not nearly close enough.”

  She nuzzled at his neck and warmed the second his arms wrapped tight around her. What had she be thinking? What had she believed? That she’d prefer a day without him? It would never happen. It could never be. She trailed kisses from the pulse of his neck to his lips and they kissed.

  Oh, did they kiss.

  He pulled her up as he leaned back, cradling with both arms so that she lay on top of him. His touch came slower, gentler still, stirring ribbons of desire straight down into her toes.

  She kissed him harder, hungrier, and felt his hands on her back, caressing, massaging, touching skin on skin as they heated.

  “Edy,” Hassan groaned and worked at the buttons of her shirt.

  “Your mom? Your dad?” Fear, sparked in her.

  “Gone,” he gasped and pulled at her shirt even harder. She fumbled, hands shaking in her haste to help him. Buttons flew off; her chest constricted; it really had been a long summer.

  Downstairs, a door slammed.

  “Hassan? Hassan, are you here?”

  Rani.

  Edy leapt from his lap and yanked at her gaping shirt. Absent buttons meant the lace of her bra peeked out in condemnation. Hassan strung curses like a chant and scrambled to smooth his bed. Edy swung around and caught a glimpse of her frizzed hair in the mirror as the bedroom door flew wide.

  Rani screeched. The sound made Edy want to paw at her ears, push past her, and rush out the door.

  “Mom,” Hassan said. “Mom, please. Be calm!”