Panic washes over me and, all at once, I don’t want him to get it. I want him to fight, for me, for us. I’m frantic to backpedal. “Mati—”
“Wait,” he says, holding up his hand. “It’s selfish of me to ask for your time when I cannot promise you anything in return. My life isn’t my own, and I cannot run from my responsibilities. If you want me to keep my distance, I will. If you think walking away now is right, go, but know you’re taking a piece of me with you.”
I’m grasping at fragments of what he’s said, turning them over, trying to understand. I cannot promise you anything … I cannot run from my responsibilities. I want his promises, all of them. I want to be his responsibility, and I want him to be mine. I want to be the reason he wakes up, the reason he smiles, the reason he is.
He’s not selfish; I am.
But then there are his other words; words better than empty promises, because they sing the truth. You’re taking a piece of me with you. I understand these words. I feel these words. It’s as if he mined them from the quarry of my heart.
“I don’t want to walk away,” I whisper.
His eyes widen. “No?”
I shake my head. “And can we just … not talk about this again?”
He laughs, his whole body unwinding. “You brought it up.”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about how hard it’s going to be later.”
“Do you know what I can’t stop thinking about?”
“What?”
“How good it is now.”
He leans in and, at the same time, so do I. We meet, and we kiss, and there is nothing careful or neat or polite about it—it’s the opposite of every kiss we’ve shared since the night we spent at the park. He winds my ponytail around one hand and grips my hip with the other, using his height to angle me back until I’m leaning against the arm of the sofa. I open my mouth to his; he tastes like bliss, like daydreams, like home. Winding my arms around his neck, I tug his hat off so I can play in his thick hair. I ease back further, taking him with me, until he’s stretched over me, supporting his weight on his elbows. I spend a second fretting about his ribs, his comfort, but he seems pretty okay, actually, so I settle beneath him. His kisses become deeper, and mine become greedier, and it’s entirely possible I will never get enough of this. Of him.
We kiss for eternities, and oh God, it’s perfect. The sort of perfect I’m not likely to forget. The sort of perfect no other boy will live up to in a lifetime of kisses.
When he pulls back, he gives me a glazed-over smile. “I could get lost, kissing you.”
My lips feel full, swollen, and my chin is raw from the sandpaper stubble on his. Not that I care, because the burn is a reminder, a feeling of aliveness that’s been elusive for too many years. His hips are nestled against my hips, his feet tangled with my feet. He’s got one hand linked with mine, and the fingers of his other twist and twirl the locks of hair that have escaped my ponytail. He feathers his lips over my throat, my cheeks, my eyelids, kisses like dandelion fluff. He was right …
This is good.
Time passes and the light shifts, casting new shadows on the walls. I remember, with urgency, his parents. I check the time and find it’s growing late.
No, no, no. I’m not sure when we’ll get another afternoon like this.
“I should go,” I say to save him the awkwardness of booting me from the cottage.
He pulls away from where he’s nuzzling my neck. “Already?”
“Unless you want your parents to find me here … with you … like this.”
He smiles sheepishly and moves away so I can sit up. I let my hair down, combing my fingers through the tangles he made, and gather it into a smooth ponytail. He repositions his hat, watching me, riveted, and then I remember: most of the girls in his country cover their hair. It’s no wonder he’s always touching mine.
“Can we do this again?” he asks as I finish.
“I’ll check my schedule,” I tease.
He takes my face in his hands, kisses me again, briefly, fiercely. When he draws back, he says, “Remember when we were on our way to Sacramento? I told you I’m supposed to guard my modesty?”
I blink, my cheeks warming. This is what we’re going to talk about? After that? “Uh, yeah.”
“You probably noticed, but … I’m not guarding it so carefully anymore.”
I’m trying to make sense of what he’s saying, where he’s going with this line of conversation, but I’m coming up blank. His religion is important to him and I’m important to him, but I’m not sure how we connect—if we can connect. “What does that mean, Mati?”
His hands are still bracketing my face, his palms cool against my flushed skin. He says, “Kissing you. Touching you. Being here with you, alone. I’ve chosen to do these things, even though Allah and the Quran say I shouldn’t.”
“Because you think I’m a freebie?”
His brows pinch together. He opens his mouth, then closes it, like he’s lost.
“Context clues,” I say. “A freebie. Like, what you do with me isn’t a strike against your morals. We’re a window of time that doesn’t count, because as soon as you leave, that window will slam shut.”
He presses his lips to my forehead, branding my skin with his intensity. “Oh, I think we count. Since we met, I’ve been trying to reconcile my faith with my wishes, with my dreams, with my desires, and I keep thinking … It must be possible to be devoted to Islam while still holding on to my individuality. It must be okay to be Muslim, and me. I am a product of Allah. He created me, a person who has fallen for you. I just don’t understand how that can be wrong.”
I stare at him, struck silent by his honesty and his intelligence and his enormous heart.
We aren’t wrong; we can’t be wrong.
I kiss him, long and slow.
I file the sensation away for later, when kissing him is an impossibility.
I tell him breathlessly, “I love you for saying that.”
And then I’m out the door.
My heart swoops-dips-dives in the gray-blue sky.
elise
I love you for saying that.
God, the absolute worst time for my filter to malfunction. It slipped—totally slipped—because when I’m with Mati, apparently I am at all times compelled to say exactly what’s on my mind. I shudder with embarrassment as I walk down the sidewalk toward Audrey’s.
Janie proves to be an ideal distraction. We whip up a batch of chocolate-chip cookies (I do the measuring, and she does the mixing), then we sit in front of the oven, watching them soften and puddle, setting into gooey perfection. I tell her a story about her daddy: how, when he was fourteen, he ate an entire batch of cookie dough, raw egg and all, straight from the fridge.
“Nana was so upset,” I say, reveling in Janie’s wide-eyed amazement.
“Did Daddy get in trouble?”
“Well, sort of, but not because Nana punished him. His tummy got sick and he was miserable for the rest of the day.”
She giggles. “Poor Daddy!”
When our cookies are done, I put several on a plate, still warm from the oven. “We should only eat two each,” Janie says sagely. “We don’t want to have sick tummies.”
“That’s right,” I say, pouring glasses of cold milk for dunking.
We watch The Little Mermaid while we snack. Janie sings “Part of Your World” like she feels the lyrics in her little bones; I do, too. When the movie is done, we order pizza.
“Just cheese, Auntie,” she says, holding my hand as I make the call.
Later, after a bubble bath and a manicure of sparkly pink polish, we settle on her bed for stories. We make it through Beauty and the Beast and half of Aladdin before she’s out, sucking her thumb, squeezing a plush baby doll to her chest. I wind her music box anyway, then tuck her blankets up to her chin and kiss her squishy cheek.
Her eyes, rimmed in long blond lashes, flutter open. “I love you, Auntie,” she whispers.
“I love you, too, girlie.”
“Babysit me again soon, okay?”