I force a smile. “Consider me cheered.”
He goes. I eat a quick lunch, then hustle through a shower and pack my camera bag. I interrupt my mom’s writing to tell her I’ll be shooting around town.
“Hopefully, I’ll be able to return your phone soon,” she says as I stand in the doorway of her library. She’s staring at her computer’s giant monitor, her mind caught somewhere between Cypress Beach and the Wild West. “Oh!” she says, swiveling in her chair to face me. “I almost forgot: Audrey called earlier. The restaurant asked her to fill a shift tonight, and she was hoping you’d watch Janie.”
My mouth pulls into a surprised smile. God, I’ve missed Janie. I’m practically jumping up and down at the chance to babysit. “Yeah, I can do that. No problem.”
“No boys,” my mom says sternly.
“You think I’m stupid enough to make the same mistake twice?”
She turns back to her computer. “Sometimes I don’t know what to think, Lissy.”
I leave her to her manuscript.
I once had a thousand desires.
But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.
—Rumi
elise
Mati’s waiting in his front yard.
I spot him from a ways down the block, before he sees me, and study him as I make a quiet approach. He’s sporting his slouchy hat, the one he wore the first time he held my hand, which makes it my favorite of all the hats in the world, and he’s got his notebook propped on a fence post. He’s bent over it, scribbling. As I get closer, I notice his mouth moving, silent words flowing to the page. Even from a distance, he appears buoyant, a thousand times healthier than he did at the hospital last week.
I catch his effervescence as if it were contagious.
I stop. Carefully, silently, I retrieve my Nikon. I locate him in its viewfinder, bringing him into sharp focus. I’ve got only one chance at this—the first photograph has to be perfect because the sound of my camera will interrupt the moment. Biting my lip, relaxing my muscles into stillness, I press the shutter release. My camera emits a soft click-click-click as it captures Mati in his element, all quiet contemplation and peaceful inspiration. I feel a similar rush of creation as I review the digital image—it’s flawless, and not because of anything I did. It’s him, caught spinning something from nothing. He’s stunning.
When I look away from the Mati I’ve frozen in time to the Mati who stands twenty yards away, I find him gazing back at me. Returning my camera to its bag, I walk the rest of the way down the sidewalk. He opens the gate. I step into the yard.
“You made it,” he says.
“I did.”
We stand a few feet apart, on separate cobblestones that feel like rafts in a churning sea. He really does look good; he’s standing straight and tall, and the bruise that marred his cheek just a week ago has faded almost entirely. I want to launch myself into his arms, but I’m worried about his ribs, and thrown by the way he’s clutching his notebook, regarding me with apprehension, like we’ve never been alone before.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I tell him. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better. Glad to be away from the hospital.” His gaze falls to the ground, then, shyly, returns to mine. “Will you come inside?”
“If it’s okay.”
He shrugs. “It is for now.”
He doesn’t mean anything by it—there’s not a barbed bone in his body—but his words pierce me. I’m not welcome here unaccompanied—in his mother’s eyes, I might not be welcome at all. I am a surreptitious social call, a cursory friend, a dirty little secret. I am temporary. That’s all I ever can be.
You knew going in, I think. You’ve known all along.
Nothing changes in the cottage. We’re quiet, circling each other, waiting to see who’ll make the first move. It hasn’t been like this in weeks, since we visited Nicky in Sacramento and found a semblance of comfort, and later, at Audrey’s, where we fell into an intimacy that felt special and sacred. Somewhere in the space separating all that from now, the closeness, the contentment, has funneled away.
He sits on the sofa. I do, too.
“Do you want something to drink?” he asks. “Chai? Water?”
“I’m okay.”
“Did you get your photo?”
“Of you? Yep. Did you write your words?”
“About you? Yep.”
I smile, though his mood is serious.
“Elise … I’m sorry I had to be away.” He reaches across the vastness between us, letting his hand rest on my knee. His skin is warm, as always. “I’ve wasted our time.”
“You haven’t wasted anything. What happened wasn’t your fault and anyway, healing is more important than hanging out with some girl.”
“You are not some girl.”
“Well, I’m not the girl.”
He flinches. “What does that mean?”
My heart is slashed down the middle, torn between sticking whatever this is out as long as possible, and saving itself from the agony of telling him goodbye later. “It means this is never going to work,” I say with all the tenderness I can spare. I’m not out to hurt him, but I have to be honest. “Mati, you know we can’t last. So what if we’ve been talking around it? In a couple of weeks, you and me … we’re done.”
He pitches forward to take my hands. His eyes, doleful, search mine, like if he looks long enough, the impossible will rearrange its pixels and become feasible. “Don’t say that.”
“Tell me how we can possibly survive. You, moving back to Afghanistan with no plan to return, with this duty you’re always talking about. Me, in America, working toward a degree I need and want and won’t give up. Our families, who’ve made no secret of their disapproval. And don’t get me started on language barriers and religious complications and cultural chaos.”
“But none of that—”
“Don’t say it doesn’t matter. It does, all of it, and it always will. Did you know I haven’t seen Audrey and Janie since the day after Aud caught us in her cottage? She’s letting me babysit tonight, but only because she thinks I’ve stopped seeing you. My mom does, too, and today, for the first time in too long, she was almost pleasant.”
His grasp on my hands tightens; despite everything I’ve said, I’m clinging to him, too. “I’m sorry I’ve caused trouble for you and your family.”
“But you haven’t. That’s my point. It’s not you and it’s not me—it’s you and me in combination. It’s us.”
“If there is no us, everything is easy,” he says, gravelly, as if the phrase scours his throat on its way out.
“Easy for everyone else.” My vision goes blurry. I squeeze my eyes shut because, God, this is the worst time to cry. I need to speak with confidence. I need to appear strong.
He frees my hands so he can press his palms to the column of my neck. I suspect he can feel my pulse strumming beneath my skin, the rapid beat-beat-beat of desperation. “I don’t care about everyone else,” he says, and I believe him. “We should spend our time with people who make us happy. You make me happy. I want to see you as often as possible, every day.”
“But—”
“But what? Elise, I don’t want to be miserable before it’s necessary.”
I blink up at him, covering his hands with mine. I inch forward, until I can see the variations of copper and bronze and gold swirling in his eyes. “When you go, it’ll be like you’ve disappeared. The chances of us seeing each other again … I just … I can’t.”
He draws back, making a hopeless sound deep in his throat, a combined half sigh, half groan, as if he’s steeling himself to whatever course he’s decided to follow. And then his eyes harden, like the blunt points I’ve been trying to force into his head finally fit, pegs into holes.
He gets it.