Ryan catches Bambi and me as we’re headed out the gate toward the ocean. “Find your lip balm?” he asks, falling into step beside me.
“Huh?”
“The other day? You dropped it?”
“Oh … no. Gone forever. Figures, right?”
“Figures.” He gives me a side-eye. He reeks of suspicion, though he’s still ambling along next to me. I only have to wonder at what he’s thinking for a moment, because he says, “Elise, if you don’t want to hang out, all you have to do is say so. I swear, I’ll take it like a man.”
“That’s not—I do want to hang out. It’s just … The other day, I needed time alone and I didn’t know how to say so.”
“What about today? Still need time alone?”
Bambi hurls herself toward a squirrel that’s crossing her path and, a millisecond later, I’m yanked after her. I recover, barely, and tuck an escaped lock of hair back into my ponytail. “I think I’m over time alone, actually.”
Ryan grins. “Cool, ’cause I’m over sitting around my gram’s.”
Fine as I am with Ryan’s company, the closer we get to the shore, the more I feel like I’m sneaking around behind Mati’s back. Ridiculous because, God, he and I are nothing, but after yesterday, the beach feels special, like our place. Visiting with another boy—a cute, blond Texan with a broken heart in need of mending—seems wrong.
We’re approaching the stairs, passing the picnic table with the tumultuous history, when I feel the phantom tingle of Mati’s palm on the backs of my hands. My heart does a little flip, and then I’m spewing a stream of imprudent words in Ryan’s direction: “I’m seeing someone. Talking to him. Hanging out with him … I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, edging me around so we’re face-to-face. I’m expecting him to be chagrined or indignant or maybe even pissed, but his eyes are lit with mirth and his mouth is turned up in an amused smile. “You think I want to be your boyfriend?”
“I—uh, that might be premature. But you’re up early again, just to help me walk my dog.” My face blazes as I say, “Am I reading the situation wrong?”
“Just a little. Weren’t you listening the other day when I told you about Jordan?”
“Yeah, but you guys are over. I thought you were looking for someone to distract you.”
He laughs, but not unkindly. Now I’m chagrined. Damn it—I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Bambi must feel my confusion, my discomfort, because she sits at my feet and lets out a long, low whine.
“Sorry,” Ryan says, coughing laughter from his throat. “I thought I was clear.”
“Apparently not clear enough.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am looking for someone to distract me. Just … not you.”
“Wow,” I say, taking a step back. “Don’t soften the blow or anything.”
He looks me up and down in a decidedly nonthreatening manner. “It’s not personal, Elise. It’s just, my tastes run toward people of the more … masculine variety.”
In the swirling mess of my head, a lightbulb blinks on. “Wait—Jordan’s a…?”
“Guy.”
“Oh God,” I say, covering my face. “No wonder you were laughing at me.”
“Not at you. At the situation. I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Maybe now that I’m paying attention!” I recall the way Iris spoke about him last week, before he arrived in Cypress Beach, her mention of living next door to a pretty girl, and her implication that Ryan would appreciate as much. “Wait—does your gram know?”
“Nah. My parents are cool, but Gram’s old-school. She’s hung up on big weddings and bigger families and white picket fences—she’d never understand.”
“But you can have a big wedding and a bigger family and a white picket fence.”
He grins. “Truth. So, we’re cool? You’re not worried about my trying to seduce you?”
I laugh. “We’re totally cool.”
elise
After my walk with Ryan, I hustle through a shower and, despite the don’t try too hard whispers of my conscience, stumble through a blowout and a basic makeup job. Coffee at Van Dough’s isn’t a formal affair, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to walk in looking like a slouch.
I leave Bambi on her doggy pillow in the library (Mom barely glances up from her computer to mumble a goodbye), then walk the few blocks from our cottage to town. The bakery’s empty—now’s the downtime between lunch and dinner—and the middle-aged woman behind the counter appears happy to have someone to serve. I tell her I’m waiting for a friend, then pick a table in the front corner, close to the window but hidden from the glances of passersby. Somehow, solitude seems judicious.
Mati walks in a few minutes late. He’s wearing jeans, plus a gray T-shirt that’s doing his frame all sorts of favors. His dark hair’s tousled, like he’s been pushing his hand through it, and he’s full of apologies. His father’s appointment ran over, they ended up stuck in noontime San Jose traffic, and there was a questioning about where he was going and who he was meeting.
“What did you tell them?” I ask while we wait for my coffee and his chai.
“That I was meeting a friend in town—the truth.”
The woman behind the counter peers at him as she makes our drinks. She doesn’t seem so pleased to have customers anymore, and I’m puzzled—she was so nice before. When our order’s ready, steaming in trough-size mugs, she clanks them onto the countertop. Liquid sloshes over the mugs’ rims, but she doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t say anything, actually, which is weird. And annoying. But Mati pretends not to notice, so I do, too.
We take our drinks to the table I claimed earlier. It seems intimate, tiny, now that Mati and his long limbs are present. Before sitting, he empties the back pocket of his jeans: key, pen, wallet, and notebook of what I suppose are eloquent words. I’m so preoccupied by it and its secrets, we bump knees as we scoot in across from each other. I giggle nervously. He looks like I stuck him with a hot poker.
“Would your parents be upset,” I ask when my laughter has died, “if they saw you now?”
He hesitates—because he doesn’t want me to think negatively of his parents, or because he doesn’t want to offend me, I’m not sure. He clears his throat. “My father would probably understand. He knows what it’s like to be…” He fiddles with the string of the tea bag dangling from his mug. When he glances up again, he’s flushed. The sight of him discomfited is so endearing, it’s hard to resist the urge to touch his hand. He starts again. “My mother would likely disapprove. She is very traditional.”
As far as…? I want to say.
“How’s your chai?” I ask instead.
He smiles. “Weak. But I’m not complaining. Ramadan recently ended and after a month of daylight fasting, weak chai in the afternoon is a treat.”
Ramadan. I make a mental note to look it up later. “How was your father’s appointment?”
His smile thins, though I can tell he’s trying to maintain an intrepid facade. “There’s been no real change. His doctors tell us the medicines take their time to work. They tell us not to be discouraged, but my baba—my father—was quiet during the ride back to Cypress Beach.”
“I can’t even imagine. I’m really sorry.”
He shrugs even as worry tightens his jaw. “We’ve been hearing the same for months. One day, the doctor will give us good news and my father will have reason to celebrate.”
“I hope so. Also, if you call him baba at home, then you should call him baba when you’re with me, too.”
He smiles again, appreciative. “How’s your coffee?”
“It’s okay. I only really like it when it’s swimming with sugar.”
“Sweet,” he says. “Khwazza is the Pashto word.”
“Khwazza,” I repeat, wishing I could say it with the elegance that’s inherent to him.
“And bura is sugar.”
“Bura.”