by Witt, L. A.
“Okay, but . . . Do you think the shop will mind?” I glanced at the stage. “They’ve got a band coming in later. She said it would get crowded.”
He pursed his lips. “You know, we could go to the group another time. Maybe tonight, we could just stay here and relax. They’ve got sandwiches and stuff, so we can have dinner, and it’ll give you a place to put your foot up.”
“Are you sure? You brought me all the way out here, and—”
“And the last thing you probably need to do is hobble down a steep hill on that foot.”
The thought of it made my stomach turn.
He nodded toward the stage. “Maybe the band will be a good one.”
“Want to stay and find out?”
“Sure.” He hesitated. “I’m a little tight on cash. I’m not—”
“My treat.”
Zafir’s head snapped toward me. “What?”
“I’ll buy. You’ve been letting me hammer you with questions, and you brought me all the way out here for a—”
“For a group that we’re going to miss.”
“Still.” I smiled. “I got it. Don’t worry.”
“I . . . Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He helped me put my foot up on the chair, and the barista even brought me a bag of ice. Then Zafir ordered us a couple of sandwiches, and we hung out while people filed in to find seats for the band’s performance.
Without the meeting hovering over my head, I relaxed a bit. Good food. Good music, as it turned out. Really good company.
Maybe we didn’t need to come all the way to Seattle for this. We could’ve found all of this in Bluewater Bay. We could’ve saved ourselves the trip.
But I was glad we hadn’t.
Chapter 8
Zafir
I’d heard a lot of really shitty bands play at coffee shops, but this one was pretty good. We ended up staying until after eleven, and Brennan bought one of their CDs before we hurried out to catch the ferry.
Fortunately, we made it in time.
In my car in the ferry line, Brennan swore as he scratched under his boot. “I am so ready to be out of this thing.”
“How much longer do you have to wear it?”
“Eh, another week or so, tops.”
“Any physical therapy after that?”
“No. My doc has this wild idea I’m going to stop skating for a few months, though.” He chuckled and adjusted one of the Velcro straps. “Fat chance.”
“You’re going to skate on an injured ankle?”
“Well, when you say it like that, I sound like an idiot.”
“If the boot fits . . .”
“Shut up.”
We exchanged glances, and both laughed.
He gazed out the windshield. “Oh hey, they’re loading.”
As if on cue, all around us, engines turned over and taillights started coming on. I started my car, and when my line moved, followed it onto the boat. I put the car in park, then killed the engine again.
Brennan twisted around, looking at something outside the car. “I’m going to go up and find the bathroom. Be right back.”
“Do you need help? Getting up the steps, I mean?”
He shook his head and unbuckled his seat belt. “Nah. I’ll be fine. They’ve got handrailings, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, as long as the boat doesn’t rock too much, I should be okay.” He tapped his crutches. “I don’t think I’ll bother with these, though.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. On stairs, it’s a lot easier without them.”
“Okay. Just, um, send me a text, I guess? If you need help?”
“Will do.”
He got out and limped toward the stairs. The seas were fairly calm tonight, fortunately, and he made it without too much trouble.
I watched until he disappeared and the big steel door had shut behind him. Then I took out my phone and texted Leyla. On the ferry now—will be late.
She sent back a picture of Tariq, sprawled out on the couch and sound asleep.
I smiled. Trust her and her kids to run him into the ground and wear him out. He’d sleep well tonight, that was for sure.
I hadn’t meant for us to stay over here so late. Usually, I left the group around nine and was home by midnight. Tonight, it would be at least two.
Tariq wouldn’t mind either way. As long as he got to hang out with his aunt and cousins, he was happy.
And I sure didn’t mind. An entire day with just Brennan? No complaints. Hell, where were all the other people like Brennan in Bluewater Bay? Or even on the Olympic Peninsula?
And why was I latching on to him so hard?
Well, okay, that made sense. Of course I was latching on to him—he was the first asexual I’d met in my zip code in recent memory.
As the ferry pushed off and started across Puget Sound, I leaned against the headrest and watched the dark water and the little sparkles of light in the distance.
I still couldn’t believe I was even considering letting him teach Tariq to skate, especially after he’d gotten hurt. I barely knew him. And letting him teach Tariq meant letting Tariq skate. Letting him do exactly what had put Brennan in that boot.
My heart flipped just thinking about it. So this was what my mother felt like when we were kids.
Footsteps—one normal, one heavy—caught my attention. I turned just as he opened the passenger door and got back in. “Holy crap, it got cold out there!” He shut the door and shivered. “Jesus.”
I laughed. “The sun’s down and we’re out on the water. What do you expect?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I glanced around to make sure none of the ferry workers were nearby, and then turned on the engine. As I cranked up the heat, I said, “Let me know when you’re warm enough so I can shut it off again.”
“Will do.”
“You did okay on the steps? With your boot?”
He nodded. “The boat rocked a little while I was on my way down, but . . .” He shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. Looking forward to losing the damn thing.”
“And I’m still supposed to let you show Tariq how to skate.”
He chuckled, rubbing his hands together in front of the heater vent. “It’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll admit—I’m overprotective.”
“Eh, beats the alternative.” He sat back and sighed. “Okay, I’m good. Not cold anymore.”
I killed the engine. The heater stopped, but the car stayed pleasantly warm.
“Anyway,” I said. “Yeah, I know I’m overprotective. Way too paranoid and all that. I swear, every time he wants to do something that might give him so much as a bruise, I can hear my mother coming out of my mouth.” I laughed, rolling my eyes. “Not gonna lie—I’m a parent who’d like to send his kid out into the world wrapped in titanium armor over bubble wrap padding.”
“But you’ve said you’ll let him skate, so you must not be that overprotective.”
I gazed out at the dark water, tapping my nails on the steering wheel. “I am, but I don’t actually say it, if that makes sense. Like, it scared me to death to teach him to ride a bike, especially when it came time to take off the training wheels, but I still let him.”
“I think that’s most parents, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” I shifted in my seat, resting my elbow on the steering wheel. “The thing is, I grew up in a ridiculously overprotective household. Like, if there was the slightest possibility of something being dangerous, my mother wouldn’t let us.”
“Really?”
“Yep. After she turned her back one time and my brother fell down a couple of porch steps when he was like two, she panicked. From then on, she was adamant about protecting all of us from any kind of danger. I swear, any time we saw a commercial or an article about some new childproofing thing, we all face-palmed because we knew it would be adopted in our house the second it was ava
ilable.”
“Oh God.” Brennan groaned. “You had that mom.”
“Uh-huh. And of course, we all still managed to get banged up, so she’d just get even more strict, but she had no clue that she was making it worse.” Sighing, I shook my head. “Every scare tactic news article meant new rules, and every new rule meant all of us rebelling even harder.”
“As kids do.”
“Right? So, we had to wear every piece of safety gear available if we got on a bike. Tree climbing? Not a chance. When we were teenagers, she heard that kids staying out late were more likely to get into trouble, so we had insanely strict curfews.” I laughed humorlessly. “We weren’t allowed to even have friends of the opposite sex because she’d read about twelve-year-olds giving each other STDs.”
“Jesus. Seriously?”
“Uh-huh. So, in the end, my brother got on a friend’s motorcycle without a helmet and split his head open. My sister broke her arm falling out of a tree. My youngest brother stayed out so late he fell asleep at the wheel.” I exhaled, turning toward Brennan. “And I knocked up my girlfriend.”
He watched me in the low light. “So basically, you have your mom’s overprotective instinct, but you don’t want to restrict him so much that he rebels and hurts himself?”
“Exactly.” I pressed my head back against the headrest, staring out at the water. “Every time that instinct comes up, I fight it back down and remind myself Tariq needs to skin his knees and elbows. It’s part of being a kid. If I let him take some lessons from an experienced skateboarder, then he’ll probably fall a few times. Get some scrapes and bruises. From there, he’ll either decide skateboarding isn’t for him—”
“Or he’ll continue, but with a healthy respect for how hard the pavement can bite.”
I shuddered at the thought of Tariq hitting the pavement, but nodded. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“That seems perfectly sane to me. I mean, I’m not a parent, but I see a lot of kids at the skate park. Some parents let their kids wipe out occasionally. You know, the ‘rub some dirt in it and get back out there’ parents.” He shrugged. “And then there are the ones who refuse to let their kid even think about going on any of the ramps or learning tricks. When those kids show up with their friends and no parents, we pretty much put 911 on speed dial because we know something bad is going to happen.”
I sat up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, those are the kids who think, ‘Hey, Mom’s not watching, so I’m going to get on the half-pipe and do some of that cool stuff she won’t let me do.’ We try to stop them, but sometimes you don’t realize it’s happening until he breaks his arm.”
I shuddered.
Brennan held my gaze. “I’m not a parent, and I’m no expert. But it sounds like you’ve got that balance, you know? Between being protective and being too protective. You let him take risks, but don’t let him do things that’ll get him seriously hurt. You know, enough that he knows that if you say not to do something, there’s probably a reason for it.” He smiled shyly. “Seems like Tariq’s a lucky kid.”
“Thanks.”
He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “So, he’s going to be grown-up and out of the house before you’re forty. What are you going to do?”
I blew out a breath. “Haven’t really thought that far ahead, to be honest. The past few years have just been about making ends meet and taking care of Tariq.”
“You think you’ll go back to school? Start a career?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I have thought that maybe once Tariq is old enough to be on his own after school, I’ll go back to school myself. Inshallah.”
“Huh?” He eyed me. “That last part? Inshall . . . what?”
My cheeks burned, though I wasn’t totally sure why. “It’s an Islamic thing. It means ‘if it’s God’s will.’” I turned to him. “So like if we say we’re going to do something in the future, we add that as kind of a nod to Allah. We’re acknowledging that we know our plans aren’t, you know, entirely up to us.”
“So, like knocking on wood?”
“Well, a little less superstitious and more submitting to God’s will, but close enough.”
“Oh. Cool.” He smiled. “Learn something new every day.”
I returned the smile. “So. Yeah. That’s as far ahead as I’ve thought. I don’t even know what I’d study at this point.”
“I’ve taken some online courses at one of the universities in Seattle. If you want the information, I can email it to you.”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
I was more relieved than he could imagine that he’d just taken the casual mention of Islam in stride. I tried not to bring it up too often with him or anyone else because that had a tendency to derail conversations and turn them into heated debates. But it was part of who I was, and it was naturally going to come out once in a while.
Every time my religion had entered a discussion, though, Brennan had approached it with nothing but curiosity. He never rolled his eyes or said anything snide. Even though he didn’t fully understand my beliefs, he’d simply accepted them as part of me.
An asexual man who’s good with my son and doesn’t bat an eye at me being Muslim? Is this even possible?
Please let this be real. Inshallah.
Chapter 9
Brennan
It was almost two when Zafir pulled into Leyla’s driveway. I stayed in the car—my ankle was throbbing like mad now, so he insisted I just relax while he went in to get Tariq.
As I waited for them, my mind wandered through the last several hours. I was a little disappointed we hadn’t made it to the asexual group, especially since it was anybody’s guess when we’d have the opportunity again. Still, the day hadn’t exactly been wasted. Quite the opposite. I was tired, and my ankle was sore, and I was ready to just face-plant in my pillow, but I still felt kind of . . . high? It was a little like when the adrenaline was tapering off after I’d competed—I was wrung out and completely done, but still kind of giddy. Like I desperately needed to sleep but wasn’t ready for the day to be over.
At least it was better than feeling sorry for myself and pining for Aimee. Had I been pining for her? Now that I thought about it—not really. I’d been pining for that year and a half where I’d been cruising along in a relationship, taking for granted that things would never change and that I knew who I was. Ignorance was bliss, apparently.
But now she was gone, and my ego was healing because I’d found out some things that had never occurred to me, and I was grinning like a dumbass in the passenger seat of Zafir’s car because we’d just spent the most awesome day together. My life felt like it had flipped on its head overnight. Everything seemed different now than it was a month ago. Or even a week ago. And I liked it. A lot.
The door opened, and Leyla stepped outside to hold the storm door. Then Zafir followed, his son in his arms. They were backlit, so I couldn’t make out anyone’s features, but Leyla’s hijab gave her away, and Zafir . . . well, I pretty much knew his shape by heart now.
Slowly, balancing his son in his arms, Zafir came down the front steps. Tariq wasn’t a big kid, but Zafir wasn’t a big guy either. I would’ve offered to carry him, but with my ankle in that stupid boot, I was a little off-balance. Getting myself down the stairs would’ve been enough of a challenge without being scared to death I was going to drop Tariq. Today had been a good day—didn’t need to end it on a sour note by breaking Zafir’s kid.
After Zafir had cleared the steps, his sister jogged past him and opened the car door.
I twisted around as Zafir gently set Tariq in the booster seat.
“Another year,” Leyla said, “and you won’t be able to carry him like that.”
Zafir groaned as he buckled the seat belt over his sleeping son. “Another year? More like another month.”
“He’s growing fast.”
“Explains why my back is all jacked up.”
I chuckled. “Could just be you getting
older.”
“Hey.” He playfully wagged a finger at me. “That’ll be enough out of you.” He stood, rubbing his lower back gingerly, and exchanged a few words with Leyla in what I assumed was their native language. He hugged her, and as she headed toward the house, he got back in the driver’s seat.
He started the engine. “Sorry that took so long.”
“Nah. Wasn’t that long.” But I’m glad you’re back. I turned around again. “He really is out cold, isn’t he?”
Zafir smiled fondly at him. “Always happens when he spends the day with his cousins. Even when I don’t pick him up at—” He glanced at the clock. “Two forty-five.”
“Rough life.”
“Right?”
We both laughed.
Zafir drove us back into Bluewater Bay. At my apartment, he stopped on the curb and put the car in park. “Well, even though we didn’t make it to the group, I had a good time today.”
“Me too. I think I needed to get out of town and not be skating for once.”
“Yeah. I needed a break too.” He smiled. “Next time, we’ll make it to the group, though. Promise.”
“Sounds great.” I glanced back at Tariq. “You gonna be able to get him into your apartment?”
Zafir shrugged. “I’ll wake him up if I have to. He won’t be happy, but he’ll just fall into bed and pass out anyway.”
“Him and me both.”
He laughed. “Right?”
“Well, I should . . .” I reached for the door, but hesitated. I didn’t want this to be over yet, but it was starting to get really late. And Tariq was still snoring away in the booster seat, so Zafir was probably itching to get the wiped-out kid home and put him to bed.
“Anyway.” I smiled. “Thanks again. For taking me out to Seattle.”
“You’re welcome. Even if we did waste the trip in a random coffee shop.”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t call it a wasted trip.”
He held my gaze for a moment, then smiled too. “Neither would I, now that you mention it.”