Have a Heart

by Nashina Makhani

  Of course, there wasn’t anything between us. I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad thing I suppose but, despite the messy brown hair, hazel eyes, reasonable height and muscular build that I usually found incredibly attractive, I didn’t think of Jai that way. I mean, I’d known the guy my whole life, known him when he was a lanky dork. Of course I didn’t think of him like that, definitely not. He was just my slightly dorky, kinda attractive, best mate.

  While I’d been internally monologuing, we’d reached our street. Just as we were getting to the driveway, a very familiar music started up and I groaned, looking around to confirm my suspicions and seeing that I was right, the ice cream van was coming up the street.

  Of course, now Zia would want ice cream and, even on the off chance I managed to actually say no, she had her uncle wrapped around her little finger; he couldn’t deny her a thing.

  As if reading my mind, my niece turned to me and asked, ‘fui, c’n I ge’ some iykim?’

  ‘How about we don’t get any now and I’ll give you some tonight, after dinner?’ I offered. I knew it was pointless but I thought I may as well give it a shot, daring to believe it might have even worked when she let out a huff and turned away from me.

  And then, not even a full minute later, I heard, ‘unc’a Jai, pwease c’n I have some iykim?’ Jai looked at me hopelessly and I couldn’t help but laugh at how much power the three-year-old had over him. Deciding I’d take pity on him before he was subject to the pout, sad face, doe eyes combination that Zia tended to employ to get her way, I gave him a nod and he sighed in relief.

  ‘Alright, tell you what, you can have a small one,’ he told her. I watched on in fond amusement as she let go of both our hands to clap excitedly before grabbing hold of Jai by the sleeve and dragging him to the van.

  Chapter Seven

  Surprisingly, it wasn’t long after that that the referral came in. I’d expected it to take a few months at the least but it took just over three weeks. As soon as the letter came in, I called Jai, who was, understandably, confused when he picked up the phone. ‘Ally, it’s half ten on a Saturday morning, why the hell are you awake?’ he questioned. I made a slightly affronted noise but decided to let the comment slide; after all, it wasn’t like it was an unfair comment to make – I hardly ever woke up before eleven on the weekends.

  ‘Little madam over here decided that she wouldn’t eat breakfast unless I fed it to her so bhaiya got me up at quarter past eight and I’ve barely been allowed to sit down since. Zia toh mari puchri taygyuche aaje,’ I explained, slipping into our shared mother tongue to express the sentiment that didn’t really have an English equivalent. My niece chose to prove my point at that very moment by trying to climb up my leg, sending us both straight to the floor. ‘Owwwww,’ I groaned, sitting myself up and helping the little monkey to pick herself up. Forgetting that Jai was still on the phone, I set it down and checked Zia over to make sure she was okay.

  Once I’d made certain that no damage was done, I dusted her off. ‘Little rascal, you’re fine. Jaa bagh,’ I told her, swatting at her but missing as she did as I’d said and ran off, giggling all the while.

  Grabbing my phone as I went, I got up from the floor, checking the screen to make sure the call hadn’t been cut in all the commotion. Seeing the ongoing call screen, I put my phone back to my ear, rolling my eyes when I heard him laughing on the other end of the line. ‘Everything okay over there?’ he asked through his chuckles.

  ‘Yeah, everything’s fine. I’ve only just been used as a bloody climbing frame,’ I muttered, dusting myself off and shaking my limbs out.

  ‘You know, you’d really think she’d have learnt better by now. More than a year she’s been trying to climb up your leg and it always gets the same result,’ he remarked, his chuckles renewing themselves.

  ‘Apparently not. Though, honestly, I think she just finds it funny when she sends us both flying to the floor,’ I mused, momentarily forgetting the reason I’d called him in the first place, too busy contemplating the inner workings of a toddler’s brain.

  ‘Li, as interesting as Zia’s brain is, I’m sure you had another reason for calling,’ Jai prompted after a few moments of silence.

  ‘Right, yeah. You busy today?’ I asked, anticipating his answer but thinking it best to double check just in case he’d suddenly decided it would be a good day to sit down and revise – though that wasn’t really very likely.

  ‘Nope, not really.’

  ‘Well then, you wanna meet up for lunch? Maybe get something from the chippy and eat at yours?’

  ‘Yeah sure, we could. Or, I dunno, we could go eat somewhere? Try something different, maybe even go to Nottingham, get some Chinese?’ he offered

  ‘Oh really? And what’s the special occasion then?’ I asked, fairly astonished by his offer. Jai wasn’t particularly fond of going in to the city, especially not on a weekend.

  ‘There’s no special occasion. Just thought you might wanna get out of Blidworth for a couple hours, out of Mansfield. Change of scenery and all. But if you’d rather not, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘No, no, I’ve not got a problem with getting outta here for a bit,’ I assured, figuring I better take advantage of the opportunity. ‘Am I driving?’

  ‘I was actually thinking we could take the bike. You’ve been doing a lot of driving recently. And it’s been a while since I’ve taken the bike out on a journey longer than ten minutes; thought it might be nice to open her up a little.’

  ‘Jai, you’re really being quite sweet today, you feeling alright?’ I questioned.

  ‘I’m not sweet Li,’ he refuted immediately.

  ‘As much as you’d like to believe you’re some kind of bad boy, you’re really a sweetheart Jai-Jai; a motorbike and a leather jacket won’t change that.’

  ‘Way to crush my dreams Li,’ he grumbled sarcastically.

  ‘Ah face it, you’re an emotion fool you are.’

  ‘Says the one who tells me I need to learn to show emotions,’ he scoffed. ‘And even if I am, nothing wrong in it.’

  ‘I never said there was. Just don’t want you to go thinking you’re cool or something all of a sudden. Someone’s gotta remind you you’re really a dork.’

  ‘Do you actually want to go get that food at some point or are you planning on insulting me over the phone all day?’ he asked, almost sounding exasperated.

  ‘Well, I do want to go for lunch but I’m not sure it’s worth it if I have to stop taking the mick out of you,’ I joked.

  ‘Oh, real nice Lia.’

  ‘Aww, did I upset you Jai-Jai?’ I teased with a laugh.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, I would apologise but we both know I’m never gonna stop takin’ the mick outta you so…’ I trailed off, not needing to fill in the blank.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever. So I’ll pick you up around twelve-ish then?’

  ‘Normal time or Jai time?’ I checked, practically able to hear the eye roll.

  ‘Believe it or not, I can be punctual.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it Jai.’ He let out an indignant hey! and I laughed before telling him I’d see him at one and ending the call.

  ***

  The great thing about taking Jai’s bike instead of my car was that there’s too much noise to allow for any kind of conversation. Of course, there was always the option of Bluetooth headsets inside both helmets but, considering there weren’t too many occasions that there would be two of us on the bike at the same time for extended periods of time, there’d never been reason for it. The downside to that was that the silence on longer journeys can give you way too much time alone with your own thoughts.

  Which is exactly what happened to me over the half hour it took us to get to our destination.

  Letting my thoughts swim around uninterrupted for extended periods of time wasn’t a great idea on the best of days – and it wasn’t exactly the best of days for me. There was one thought that kept running circles around my brain, and the
fact that the object of my thoughts was sat right in front of me, driving us to lunch.

  As glad as I was to have Jai to confide in, part of me, a rather large part of me, still didn’t want to put him through any of this. He wouldn’t let on that this was hitting him, hitting him hard, but I knew that it was far from easy. Jai would take me to town if he knew what I was thinking, that much I knew for sure, but that didn’t make it any easier to stop thinking that maybe involving him wasn’t exactly the best idea. Not only would this likely end up putting him through hell, I was asking him to keep it a secret from everyone. I knew that I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have told him that he couldn’t tell anyone but I’d had to, there was no two ways about it.

  I couldn’t turn back the clock and stop myself from telling him but I could stop him from getting to know anything else. I’d still be asking him to keep a huge secret for me but the secret wouldn’t be getting any bigger at least. On the other hand, with him knowing as much as he already did, keeping him out of the loop now might do more harm than good; he’d drive himself absolutely insane thinking of all the things that could be happening, Googling symptoms and treatments, worrying over things that could probably be nothing.

  For the entire thirty minutes we were on the road, I went back and forth with myself, trying to figure out which choice would be the lesser of two evils. By the time I got off the bike, I’d almost settled on keeping him in the dark from here on out, thinking that, while whatever he cooked up with that overactive imagination of his might take its toll, knowing things for sure could very well be worse.

  Almost being the operative word there.

  The problem with hiding from Jai was that he was the only person I’d never lied to, never been able to lie to. He knew me too well, knew me better than I knew myself, having to hide from him all the time was something I just couldn’t imagine. It’s why I’d not thought twice about telling him any of this up until now, even despite the fact that I knew it was a selfish thing to do, pulling him into my problems like that. But hiding from Jai had never been an option for me before, something that I’d never even considered before.

  But since the day at the park, the day when I realised he’d decided to be the strong one in this situation, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about the impact it would have on him. About how maybe keeping just this one thing a secret from him wouldn’t have been too bad an idea.

  Maybe that’s something I should have considered earlier but, like I said, it’s not really a thought that would even come to mind. I’d told him my every secret and he’d kept them, the big ones that nobody could know, the ones that my siblings had told me that had been too big to keep to myself, even the silly little ones like where I hid my secret sweet stash when I was a kid. How was I supposed to keep something as big as this from him when I couldn’t lie to him about what I’d had for breakfast?

  I wanted so badly to tell him that it had all been a false alarm, a mistake, that there had been some kind of mix up with the results but I knew it was too obvious a lie, that he wouldn’t believe it in a million years. There was a slim chance that he’d play along but, even if he did, I’d feel so damn guilty for lying to him – not to mention, there was a very good chance it’d destroy our friendship. Maybe saving him the pain of it was worth it but I just so happened to be the world’s biggest coward and I honestly didn’t think that I could go through whatever was coming my way without my best friend being by my side, like he’d always been.

  I was so absorbed in my thoughts, trying to figure out my dilemma that I didn’t even notice where we were going, just blindly following Jai as he made his way through the streets. At some point, he must’ve started up a conversation but, lost in my own head as I was, I hadn’t noticed he was even saying a thing until he stopped walking and turned to me. ‘Lia, everything okay?’ he asked, cocking his head to the side and looking me over.

  ‘Huh?’ I mumbled, looking at him in confusion.

  ‘You okay?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, everything’s good.’ I guess I wasn’t very convincing at all because he didn’t even indulge me and pretend to believe me like he usually would.

  ‘Liar. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I insisted. He shot me one of his don’t-lie-to-me looks but I was determined not to let him know what was going through my mind so I continued to do the exact opposite of what he was asking of me. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing wrong yaar, I’m just tired; it’s been a hell of a week at college and I was relying on getting some extra sleep in today.’ Obviously, it still wasn’t a good enough answer because he shook his head and fixed me with another look.

  ‘Okay, yeah, sure, wanna try again, make that more convincing?’ he offered sarcastically. I sighed and he laughed, both of us fully aware that he had me.

  ‘Jai…’ I sighed, desperately thinking of a way to put the conversation off as long as possible, hopefully even long enough that he’d forget he’d even wanted to have it in the first place.

  ‘Alia…’ he mimicked, clearly telling me that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.

  ‘Look, I will tell you what I’m thinking but can we at least eat first?’ I asked, giving him a sheepish but hopeful look and hoping against hope it’d work.

  ‘Right and then you’ll conveniently forget all about this conversation and have no clue what it was you were even thinking about anymore and we’ll never start this conversation, let alone finish it,’ he told me, basically reading my mind – not that I was all that surprised at that. I tried not to look guilty but, unlike my seemingly emotionless best friend, I was absolutely horrid at keeping my emotions from showing on my face, no matter how hard I might try. ‘We’re having this conversation whether you like it or not. And you know me better than to think than I’m going to budge on that.’

  He was right, there was no point in arguing with him, not when he’d made his mind up. Jai was stubborn as a mule when he set himself to something and even I wouldn’t have much luck persuading him, not when he was in the right. I knew he’d get the truth out of me eventually, I wouldn’t try to dodge around it. But that didn’t mean the conversation had to happen right away, it could wait until after lunch at least; knowing Jai, if I told him the truth from now, he’d take us straight back home the second I got the words out. ‘Alright, I won’t argue with you. But I’m not having this conversation here,’ I said after a beat.

  ‘Then let’s go home and talk instead.’

  ‘Oh, come on Jai, we’ve come all the way here and now you wanna just turn around and go home?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to talk here, what other option is there?’ he questioned, arching an eyebrow and gesturing for me to go ahead if I had a better idea.

  ‘We compromise. I’ll tell you while we’re eating,’ I offered. He thought about it a moment before nodding, probably figuring he wouldn’t get a better deal out of me. I gave him a half-smile and he stuck out his tongue before continuing to lead the way to our favourite little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant.

  Chapter Eight

  Much to Jai’s annoyance, I refused to actually say a word about what was bothering me until we’d actually ordered the food, knowing that he’d be far less likely to get up and leave once we’d already put the order in; after a summer working in a restaurant when we were sixteen, he hated to ever cancel an order for anything less than an actual emergency having seen first-hand how much stuff ended up in the bin thanks to people changing their minds.

  ‘So,’ he said almost as soon as the waiter had walked away with our menus; ‘we’ve ordered. Now how about you tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?’

  ‘Well,’ I began, taking a short pause to figure out how best to word my thoughts; ‘what if I told you I got a phone call from Dr. London last night and he told me it was all a big mistake? Somehow, there was a mix up with the files that got sent from the hospital, the ones that came in my name were actually for someone else. Turns out, I
’m completely healthy. Would you believe me?’ I asked, not entirely sure which answer I would prefer.

  ‘Honestly,’ he started, speaking slowly as though he were choosing his words carefully; ‘if that were the case, I’d be really happy and really, really relieved. But, if you want the truth Li, if you were to tell me that right now, I’m not sure I’d believe you. I mean, there’s a lot of holes to it don’t you think? Least of all that you’d wait more than twelve hours to give me good news like that.’

  ‘’S there any chance you might go along with it anyway?’ Of course, I was already about 99% sure of what his answer would be but I figured it couldn’t really hurt to ask.

  ‘Ally, give me one good reason I should pretend to believe you when going along with this could very well destroy our friendship?’ he deadpanned, practically taking the words from my brain.

  ‘Because you know I’m only lying to you because I don’t want to hurt you.’

  He gave me a look that said thanks for looking out for me but stop being an idiot, and shook his head. ‘Alia Rahul Sharma, I have known you for going on eighteen years now and not once, in all that time, have you ever said something as ridiculously stupid as the words that just left your mouth. How the hell could you think that going this alone would be a good idea? You refused to tell your parents, asked me not to, and the only reason I agreed was because you weren’t cutting me out. But now you’re telling me that you’re going to lie to me as well, pretend that everything’s fine and try to hide from all of us?’ he demanded, clearly aggravated. ‘You have a fucking heart disease! Maybe you think that’s not a big deal, that you’re young and that gives you some kind of advantage but it doesn’t. Diseases like this, they don’t discriminate. Young or old, it doesn’t matter. My mum was young, not as young as you but she sure as hell wasn’t old. And you may not remember what it was like for her but I sure as hell do. I may have been a kid but I remember it clear as if it was yesterday. Between my dad and your parents, she had the best damn support system a person could ask for and it still screwed with her mental state big time. I’m not going to sit by and watch you do that to yourself and pretend that it’s not happening.’