WEEKS AFTER THEIR MEETING IN THE TUNNEL, AMAR STEPS from a party into the basement for a moment alone. He has not heard from Amira in almost three weeks. Every day he had awoken hopeful that she would break the silence but by night he had known. In the basement he watches a man lift and lower a credit card so fast it is like he is mincing dust, then sweeping coke into a swift and delicate line, and Amar is alarmed by the sudden presence of a thought: I’ll try anything just to not feel this way anymore.
He knows then that if he does not try to win Amira back, she will be lost to him, and he too will be terrifically lost. Upstairs, the music is so loud he can feel the beat in his stomach. People are dancing in the dark, smelling of sweat, and he walks past them all until he finds Kyle, their designated driver. Can you drive me somewhere? Amar asks him, and he even says please.
“Tell me this is not about her,” Kyle says. All of his friends refer to Amira as “her.” They know not to say anything negative, but they have made their opinions clear too: that Amar and Amira would never work.
“Who else?” Amar says.
Kyle shakes his head. “I told you, she’s not good news. Just stay here.”
The song changes. People from the other room cheer. The beat thrums in his body.
“Fine,” Amar says, “I’ll ask Simon.”
He starts to walk away. Kyle grabs his arm and holds him back.
“Simon’s no good either. Come on.”
They walk out into the night. Kyle has eyes like a deer and maybe this is why Amar had trusted him almost immediately. Kyle and Simon were childhood friends but lately they had begun to drift apart. Kyle thought Simon was being reckless by using and selling painkillers. Simon had even offered to supply Amar, but Amar had shaken his head. Whiskey and weed’s enough for me, he had said, I don’t need anything fancy.
Now he steps into Kyle’s navy car and Amar gives him directions. He leans his heavy head against the window.
“Look. I’ve loved Simon like a brother for years. But I don’t like him anymore. He’s always been kind of an idiot. You’re not an idiot, Amar. We all know that. But if a decent guy follows an idiot, what does that make him?”
“Thanks for the compliment,” he mumbles, reading the names of streets until they become familiar. But something about Kyle’s words strikes a nerve: it reminds him of a saying of Imam Ali that his mother taught him. About how important it was for one to choose the right friends, that it was one’s friends who were the truest reflection of the self.
“It’s obvious you love her. And I’m sorry your heart is breaking. Really, I am. But you can’t just show up at her house at this hour. You’re going to scare her. And you might not remember telling me, but you’ve said it to me before—that she wants someone straight-edge and religious. Look at you, man. You say it’s hard enough for you to chill with your family, how are you ever going to chill if you end up with a girl like that?”
They are close to her home. He sits up in his seat and the seat belt stretches.
“I’m driving you all this way, the least you can do is listen to me,” Kyle says.
“I’m listening,” he snaps. “But I don’t expect you to understand. When I’m with her, it’s like I can live that life. I can be that guy. It’s like I want to. I don’t want this, I don’t care about any of this.”
Amar can’t expect Kyle to understand because he can’t quite understand it either. All he knows is that if he were with her, he could be Muslim. He could try his best to practice, if practicing meant trying, failing, and then resolving to try again. Sometimes he suspected that it was not her he was fighting for so much as what life with her would represent and promise him: a respectable life. A daughter-in-law his parents would beam at. Sure, he could not see eye to eye with his parents now, but with Amira he could grow into that practicing believer: he could have children and take them to the Sunday school, make the weekly trip to the mosque, show his face at the community events, roll out prayer rugs, never stock their refrigerator with beer. If she were the one he would wake up next to, he would do it all. And eventually, he imagined, his father might even respect him. He felt like a dam waiting to break open and he wanted her, unfairly maybe, to keep him contained.
“Do you have any gum?” he asks.
Kyle sighs loudly, then tosses him a tin of mints. Amar drops mints into the center of his palm, pops them in his mouth, and then bites down on all four.
“Just look at yourself.” Kyle grumbles. “She’s going to know. It’s one A.M. and your eyes are all red, for God’s sake.”
He flinches at the mention of God. He hates if he’s high or drunk and someone begins talking about religion. And tonight is the eighth of Moharram—he had wanted to make a point to his family, had not gone with them to mosque on purpose, but now the realization that he is drunk on so important a night almost makes him panic. He pops another mint into his mouth, crushes it with his teeth. Breathes into his cupped hand and tries to sniff for any scent of whiskey. They are approaching her neighborhood and he tells Kyle to slow down.
“Holy shit,” Kyle says. “She lives here?”
Amar nods sullenly. Kyle whistles.
“You didn’t tell me your girl was a queen. Don’t ever bring Simon here,” he says darkly. Amar is too nervous to ask why not.
At the party, when he knew he was coming, Amar sent Amira a quick message to tell her he would knock on her front door if he had to. He would sleep in her backyard until morning. He would aim tiny pebbles at the rectangle of her bedroom window, like every fool in every foolish movie. She had to speak to him. She had to see him. Just once more, he begged, and then he swore to never bother her again if that is what she truly wanted.
Amar steps out of the car, but before he shuts the door, Kyle ducks his head through the window and says, “Good luck, man. I might give you a hard time, but I’m rooting for you.”
It’s not until he feels his face go numb in the cold air that it occurs to him how much he has had to drink. He concentrates on keeping his steps steady. He aims mint after mint at her window until a light turns on. When her face appears he sparks his lighter and waves the small flame. Amira disappears and a moment later her room is dark again. Anything to be able to tell himself he did everything. That he tried again. The sliding door downstairs opens, slowly, announced by the squeak and the reflection of the moon shifting slightly. She walks toward him on tiptoe, barefoot. He did not know his heart could even beat this hard.
“Have you absolutely lost your mind?” she hisses.
She has been crying. Even in the dark he can see her eyes are puffy and small. For the first time since the tunnel meeting, it occurs to him that maybe she has also been hurting. She looks frail. He reaches for her face and holds it between his hands. She is startled, and for a moment, silent—he has never been so bold, so abrupt. She does not step back from him.
“They were right,” she says. “You’re drunk.”
“Amira.”
“You are,” and her voice is shaking. “You were never going to change.”
It was true. He was drunk. He holds on to her face to steady himself.
“I only drank because we’re not speaking anymore. I promise I will stop.”
“Lie to everyone else, Amar, but don’t lie to me. You’re being selfish.”
He lets go. Only his father had ever called him selfish. He doesn’t care what anyone says but he does care what she says. She takes a step back. He is about to say: I won’t do it again. I don’t need to drink. I don’t need to smoke. I don’t need anything. But I can’t lose this.
She looks past him to the thicket of trees where they once played hide-and-seek, where he watched her take a drag of her first cigarette. Her arms are crossed and held tight against her body. Then she looks up at him. There is a soft bruise, just beneath her eye; but maybe it is just a shadow. When he reaches out to press it carefully with his thumb, she recoils, swats his thumb away from her face like he is a fly.
“Go away, Amar. I’ll be in trouble all over again.”
“Everyone gives up on me. Give me one more chance.”
Her feet are pale in this light. This is the very lawn he stood on year after year, pausing while playing soccer to look up, hoping for that glimpse of her.
“Have you been lying to me all these years?” she asks quietly.