by Witt, L. A.
“And that’s what you’ve always want to do?” I asked. “Skate?”
“Since I was a kid.” He laughed softly. “It’s addictive. I know that’s not what you want to hear before I teach Tariq, but there it is.”
“Eh, I’m getting a little better about the idea. As long as he learns how to do it safely.”
“He will.” Brennan saluted playfully. “I promise.”
Chapter 7
Brennan
A few hours and a ferry ride after we left Bluewater Bay, we were in Seattle. The boat had been great—gave me a chance to get out of the car and stretch, especially since my leg was getting kind of sore. And it was a clear, sunny day, so we had a gorgeous view of Seattle and Mount Rainier as we slowly sailed toward the waterfront.
Now that we were back in the car and leaving the ferry terminal, I was extra thankful Zafir had driven. There must’ve been a game or something today—the terminal was down by the football and baseball stadiums—because there were cars everywhere. We had to wait through four red lights to get past the first intersection.
“Ah, I love this city.” Zafir paused as he turned onto a slightly less crowded side street. “Could do without the traffic, but I love the city.”
“Yeah, it’s nice here. Except all of that.” Seattle was a cool city and all, but the traffic and some of the weird streets and intersections could go straight to hell. I turned to him. “You come out to Seattle very often?”
“Not really. You?”
I shook my head. “Almost never. I used to come down for concerts and shit when I was younger, but it’s such a hassle to get all the way out here, go to a show, and come back. I sometimes compete here, though.”
“Do you?”
“Mm-hmm. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve got a competition in this town pretty soon. If you and Tariq want to come, I’m sure I could get my hands on some tickets.”
“He’d love that.” Zafir glanced down at my foot. “Are you going to be able to skate by then?”
“It’s not for a couple of months yet. If I’m not skating by then, I’m pretty screwed.” I paused. “But if I do have to bail on competing, I’d still be happy to take you guys. Tariq seems like he’d enjoy it.”
“He would. I can’t tear him away from the TV when the X Games are on.”
I laughed. “Sounds like me.”
“Great.” He sighed dramatically. “And I’m going to let the two of you hang out.”
“I never said I wouldn’t be a bad influence on your kid.”
“Mm-hmm.” He glared at me, but then laughed. “Okay, so we’ve got tons of time to kill. Want to just grab some coffee and relax for a while?”
“That sounds great to me.”
He pursed his lips and tapped the wheel. “Let’s go over to Fremont. There’s always a shop or two with good coffee and empty tables.”
He was right—though two of the Fremont neighborhood’s coffee shops were jam-packed with people, we pulled up in front of one that was nearly deserted.
“That’s not a bad sign, is it?” I asked. “An empty coffee shop in Seattle?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Great. I’ll go grab a table while you park.” Getting in and out of the car with the boot and crutches was a pain in the ass, but I managed. While Zafir drove off to find parking, I went inside.
If the smell was any indication, the emptiness of the shop was not a bad sign. The coffee smelled amazing, and one whiff of their pastries made my mouth water.
The barista looked at me, and did a double take at my crutches. “Oh! Do you want to have a seat and we’ll bring something out to you?”
“No, no. It’s okay.” I smiled and stopped in front of the counter. “Light crowd today?”
“This is normal. Tonight, it’ll be wall-to-wall people.” She gestured at one end of the shop, and I turned to see a small stage.
“Oh, so everyone comes out for . . . music?”
“Yep. And poetry slams on Tuesdays.”
“Gotcha.” I looked up at the menu on the wall. There were a ridiculous number of options, but I finally narrowed it down to a cappuccino and some flaky-looking little pastry with chocolate in the middle.
“Go ahead and have a seat,” she said after I’d paid. “We’ll bring it to your table.”
“Great. Thanks.” I hobbled over to a table by the window, and was just sitting down when Zafir walked in.
“I swear,” he grumbled. “There is no parking in this town.”
I leaned my crutches against the wall behind me. “You’ve just been spoiled by Bluewater Bay.”
“The parking sucks there too.”
“But not as bad as it does here.”
“Hmm, yeah. True.” He glanced at the menu above the counter. “Have you ordered yet?”
I nodded.
“Let me get something for me. I’ll be right back.”
He returned a minute later with both cups of coffee, a piece of pie, and my pastry, the plates and saucers balanced carefully on his arm and hand.
“Need help with that?” I started to get up.
“Nope, I’ve got it.” Somehow, he managed to put all three things on the table without spilling a drop or losing a fork.
“Impressive,” I said. “You must’ve waited tables before.”
“Yep.” He chuckled. “And I can get pizzas from my car to someone’s door, while slipping and sliding on ice, without screwing up the toppings. I may not have many talents, but transporting food is apparently one of them.”
I laughed, slicing off a piece of the pastry with my fork. “Well, I’m the type who can sit down on the couch with a bowl of cereal and wind up wearing it.”
“That used to be me. But delivering pizzas and waiting tables . . .” He shrugged.
“Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work.”
We munched on our pastries and sipped our coffees for a little while. When my cup was empty, Zafir went back up to get refills for both of us.
I glanced at my watch. We still had a few hours yet before the asexual group met, but my stomach was already doing somersaults. What was I supposed to talk about with these people? Would they think I was a fraud? Accept me? Interrogate me to make sure I really belonged?
Shit. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“You okay?” Zafir put our fresh coffees on the table and sat down. “You look twitchy all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, I’m . . .” I pulled my coffee toward me, but didn’t drink it yet. Just letting it cool. Or something. “Thinking about the meeting we’re going to.”
“What about it?”
“I’m kind of nervous about it, to be honest.”
Zafir lifted his gaze, his eyes as gentle as they’d been the first time we’d met. “Why?”
“I’m . . . I guess I’m not quite sure what I’m doing? Or if I really am asexual?”
“Don’t worry about it.” That always reassuring smile came to life. “It isn’t like they’ll quiz you or kick you out. And non-ace people come to these things sometimes anyway.”
“They do?”
He nodded. “Sometimes people will bring a friend. Maybe someone who’s trying to understand, or maybe they just need some support the first time they show up.”
“Sort of like what you’re doing for me?”
“Kind of.” He reached across the table and squeezed my forearm. “Relax. You’ll be fine. And if you don’t click, it isn’t like you have to go back.”
“Well true.” I rolled my shoulders, not sure why they were so stiff. Probably from my crutches, though they’d been okay the last few days. “So, um, while we’re here, I’m kind of curious about something.”
“Shoot.”
I shifted in my seat. “You said before that your ex-fiancée had a high sex drive. But that wasn’t an issue at all in your relationship?”
Zafir shook his head. “I loved her. I enjoyed making her happy.” He shrugged. “Sex wasn’t my first pick
for ways she could make me happy, but I wasn’t opposed to it as long as she didn’t push me when I really wasn’t into it. Which she never did.”
“So . . .” I hesitated. “If it’s not too personal—what happened?”
His lips tightened. “We broke up when she found a guy who didn’t have a kid and did have”—he made air quotes—“‘the potential to do more than stand behind a cash register.’” Zafir rolled his eyes, and his tone was bitter as he added, “The really shitty irony is that I’d been saving to go back to school, and I dipped into that to buy her ring.”
“Wow. Ouch.”
“Yeah.” He stared into his coffee cup. “So that was rough. On me and Tariq. It’s a damn good thing my sister lived nearby.”
“How so?”
“Mostly because she took Tariq to play with his cousins, go to the beach, whatever, while Megan and I dealt with moving her out of the apartment.” He exhaled. “And even after things quieted down, she was kind of my lifeline. Kept me sane. Which . . . well, that’s what she’s done for a long time. I don’t know how I would’ve survived Tariq’s toddler years without her. When he was really little, she sometimes took him off my hands when I was too stressed out and needed a break.”
It was hard to imagine Zafir reaching that point with his son, but infants and toddlers were pretty draining. “Must’ve been great having that kind of support system.”
“Oh yeah. This whole parenting thing is no joke. Especially when you’re on your own.”
I shifted a little, studying him, trying to read him even before I asked my question. “What about Tariq’s mom?”
Zafir tightened his jaw. I was about to tell him to forget I’d asked, but he quietly said, “It’s just me and him. Has been since he was two months old.”
“Really?”
Zafir nodded. “She was gung ho about keeping him—we’d been in agreement about that from the start—but she found out newborns are a lot more work than she expected, and . . . here we are.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “So, no contact? Nothing?”
“She signed away her rights.” His tone was flat, but calm. “Every once in a while, she’ll email me and ask how he’s doing, but she hasn’t seen him since he was two.”
“Seriously?” My jaw dropped. “She just dropped off the face of the earth and doesn’t see her own kid?”
“Well.” He pursed his lips. “It’s not quite that simple. Every now and then, she contacts me and wants to see him, but until she either takes me to court or promises to stay involved with his life, she can forget it.” He scowled. “Tariq’s had enough people treat him like his life has a revolving door on it. It bothers him that she’s out of our lives, but he has no memory of her, or of her leaving. He doesn’t need to experience her abandoning him again when he’s old enough to know what’s happening.”
“That seems fair,” I said, barely whispering. “I just . . . I can never get my head around someone abandoning their kid in the first place.”
“I know. And . . .” He sighed. “It wasn’t entirely her fault. She’s not a bad person. We were both overwhelmed, plus we were living with my parents, which only made things worse.” Gaze distant, Zafir swallowed. “Then when the baby was about six weeks old, she got hit with some really bad postpartum depression. That, on top of trying to keep up with school, take care of the baby, and have my parents browbeating us the whole time . . . she just couldn’t handle it. So she moved back in with her parents, and they encouraged her to sign her rights away.”
“And she did?”
He nodded.
I shook my head. “Jesus. That whole thing—it must’ve been hell for both of you.”
“Yeah. After she left, it was better in some ways, worse in others.” He paused. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my son, and I wouldn’t trade him for the world. But we both would’ve been a lot better off if he’d come along, say, now instead of then.”
“I get that. I totally get that.”
“It was the way it was meant to be, though,” he said quickly. “So . . . it is what it is. Allah’s plan.”
I nodded. “And when Tariq was born and you were raising him on your own—you were going to school at the same time?”
“Well, I . . .” He lowered his gaze, and I thought his face darkened a little. “The punchline is that I have a GED. Couldn’t quite pull off that last year and a half of high school when I was trying to raise him. My kid had to come first, you know?”
“Of course.” I whistled. “My hat’s off to you. Seriously. That you were able to take care of him when you were, what, seventeen? That’s impressive.”
“I turned seventeen two weeks before he was born,” Zafir said quietly. “And it wasn’t like I had a choice. It was either take care of him, or he was going up for adoption.” He tapped his fingers beside his cup. “Sometimes I think I was selfish, keeping him when someone else could’ve given him a better start, but I think I’ve done okay. He’s happy. He’s healthy.” Zafir lifted his drink as if in a toast. “Can’t really ask for much more than that, can I?”
“No, not at all.” I grinned cautiously. “And to be fair, I’ve got a high school diploma and half an associate’s degree, and I’m working in retail too. So.” I shrugged. “It isn’t like the diploma is an express ticket to a corner office.”
“Fair point.” He smiled and seemed to relax a little. “Of course, you’ve also got the skating going for you.”
“Pfft.” I waved a hand. “This isn’t baseball. Going pro doesn’t mean much unless you start getting video game endorsements or something. And I’m already old enough, that probably won’t happen.”
“Old enough?” He blinked. “You’re twenty-five, right?”
I nodded. “Yep. And there are seventeen-year-olds with major endorsements under their belts. Guess I should’ve stuck with snowboarding—at least they go to the Olympics now.”
“You were a snowboarder before?”
“I was an ‘anything where I can stand on something and go fast’ guy.”
Zafir burst out laughing, which made my heart speed up for some reason. “I’m not surprised. You kind of seem like that type.”
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I’ve literally never seen you without your skateboard except when you’ve been on crutches.”
“Okay. Fair.” In fact, it felt really weird not having it with me. These crutches were bullshit.
Zafir sipped his coffee. “So why’d you give up snowboarding?”
“Because I hate being cold.”
“Really?” He laughed again. “That’s it?”
“How many more reasons do you need?”
“Fair.” His expression turned more serious. Resting his elbows on the table, he said, “So, as long as we’re getting personal . . . I’m kind of curious about your relationships.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “What about them?”
“Well, when you came into Red Hot the first time, you’d said they’d cheated on you.”
“Yeah, because I sucked in bed.”
Zafir didn’t laugh. “But . . . what were the relationships like otherwise? I mean, were you happy?”
That was a good question, wasn’t it? Was I happy with any of them?
“Well.” I ran my knuckles back and forth along my jaw, then folded my hands on the table. “I thought I was. But after we broke up, I do kind of remember feeling like I was free. You know, like I didn’t know I was being suffocated until I suddenly wasn’t.”
Zafir grimaced. “Wow. So, not happy?”
“I guess not.” I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I am apparently the worst person ever when it comes to picking out women.”
“What were they like?” he asked quietly.
I swallowed. Then I shifted my gaze to the window and stared out at the street. “Kasey was just . . . I don’t even know why we dated. You ever had one of those relationships?”
“Uh-huh. The kind
where you split up and wonder what you were on for the entire relationship?”
“Yes. Exactly.” I met his eyes. “The funny thing was, the sex was about the only thing I enjoyed. Obviously I was the only one.” I sighed. “After her was Alejandra. We were friends for a long time, and as soon as we started dating, the whole thing went downhill. It was like once we realized we had no chemistry at all, suddenly we couldn’t stand to be around each other. It was weird.”
Zafir nodded. “That happens. And it sucks.”
“It does. And after her was Aimee. You know how that turned out.”
“Yeah.”
“On the bright side,” I said with a shrug, “now I have a better idea of who I am. So, I guess I can’t complain too much.”
He smiled faintly. “There’s always a silver lining, isn’t there?”
Nodding, I held his gaze. “Yeah. There is.”
We shifted to more pleasant subjects, and at some point Zafir went up for yet another coffee refill. And those pastries were pretty damn good, so we split another one. We bitched about jobs, chatted about the various TV shows we were both way behind on watching, and he smiled proudly when he talked about Tariq.
Zafir glanced at his phone, and jumped. “Oh crap!” His eyes bugged out. “It’s almost five!”
“What? Already?” I grabbed my phone, and sure enough, it was quarter till. “When does that thing start?”
“Five thirty. And traffic’s going to be a nightmare, so we’d better leave now.”
“Got it.” I started to get up, but my foot—which had been aching mildly all day—suddenly hurt worse. A lot worse. I dropped back onto the chair, grabbing the back of the boot as if that would do any good. “Shit . . .”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I think I’ve been sitting too long without putting my foot up.”
“Maybe you should put it up now.” He looked around. “I’m sure we can find another chair to use.”
“But we’ve gotta go.”
Zafir gestured dismissively. “You need to take care of your foot first. If we’re late, we’re late.”