“My dad wants me to marry a Christian boy,” she said. “It matters to some people.”
She felt annoyed by the way Shadi hinted about the future. He’d just received a job offer from Google but, he’d mentioned once, almost slyly, that if she wanted to move back to California after graduation, he could transfer to the Mountain View office. She’d laughed at his underestimation of the expansiveness of California. Didn’t he know that Mountain View was an eight-hour drive from San Diego? Still, it scared her, his willingness to pick up his life and follow her. She’d fallen for him when he wanted to become an international reporter, flying on choppers into war-torn countries. His independence liberated her. But now he was going to work in an office and she felt crushed already by his hopes for her. As graduation approached, she found herself picking fights with him more, like when she told him she didn’t plan to walk at commencement. Shadi told her she was being selfish.
“Graduation’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about everyone who cares about you. Don’t you think your dad wants to see you walk?”
“Don’t you think it’s none of your fucking business?” she said.
She didn’t want to walk if her mother couldn’t be there to watch her. Her mother had never gone to college but said she would someday, always someday. When the Palomar College catalogue came in the mail, she would lean against the countertop, scanning the bold titles of courses she would never take. Once, Nadia’s father had thrown out the catalogue with the rest of the junk mail and her mother had almost rooted through the trash can for it before her father said he’d already taken it to the dumpster.
“I thought it was trash,” he’d said.
“No, Robert, no,” her mother said. “No, it’s not trash.”
She’d seemed desperate, like she’d lost more than a catalogue that arrived in their mailbox every six months. By then, her mother was too busy with work and family to return to school, but she’d always told Nadia that she expected her to go to college. She reminded her of this when she checked over her math homework or chided her for her sloppy handwriting or quizzed her on reading assignments. Nadia knew she was the reason her mother had never gone to college and she’d wondered if, after she left home, her mother might finally go. Now graduation seemed silly. Why should she dress in a cap and gown and sweat in the sun, when her mother was not there to pose in pictures with her and cheer when her name was called? In her mind, she only saw pictures they would never take, arms around each other, her mother gaining little wrinkles around her eyes from smiling so much.
Nadia apologized to Shadi that night. She slipped inside his bed naked and he groaned, rolling toward her, stiff before she even touched him. She tasted the salt off his skin, the ticklish spot on his neck, as he fumbled in the nightstand drawer. She was on the pill but she always made him wear a condom too.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asked after.
“I hate when you do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Ask what I’m thinking. As soon as you ask, my mind just goes blank.”
“It’s not a test,” he said. “I just want to know you.”
Later in the night, she shrugged his arm off her. She felt sweaty with him hugging her all night. Sometimes she wondered if she only loved him when it was cold, in the middle of winter when everything was dead.
—
AUBREY EVANS’S entire life boiled down to the places she’d slept.
Her girlhood bed with its pink princess headboard, pullout couches in relatives’ living rooms when her father left, the backseat of her mother’s car when hospitality ran out, the trundle of Mo’s daybed when they’d moved into a new apartment, her mother’s bed because she hated to sleep alone, her own bed after her mother’s boyfriend moved in, her own bed where her mother’s boyfriend touched her, the bed in her sister’s guest room where she’d escaped, and now Luke’s bed, where they had never made love. His non-making-love bed was her favorite. The department store normalcy of his blue plaid bedspread, always a little mussed as if it’d just been sat on. There wasn’t much else in his studio apartment: a wicker basket from his mother, now filled with free weights, a crumpled pizza box jutting out of the trash can, Nikes lined up near the door, wooden cane propped against the wall. The first time she’d visited him in his apartment, she’d frozen in his doorway, unsure of what to do. They had never been this alone before—in a place that belonged to no one else, where no one else had a key and might interrupt. Luke had gestured toward his bed.
“Sorry,” he’d said. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”
So they’d sat on his bed and watched a movie. Other things they did in his bed: ate pizza on paper plates, played cards, played Madden with the injury setting turned off, watched the Super Bowl, listened to music from her tinny laptop speakers, held hands, kissed, argued, and prayed. They had slept together, as in beside each other. She’d fallen asleep on pillows smelling faintly of his cologne and he’d curled against her, kissing the back of her neck as she drifted off. But she hadn’t felt afraid. All beds told stories, and Luke’s told a different one. She pressed her ear against his pillow and heard no rage. Just the rustling of his covers as he scooted close to her and her own thudding heart.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “All that stuff about the party.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
“Tell her to stop if it’s too much. My mama’s like a runaway train once she gets going.”
“She’s just trying to help.”
“Still,” he said. “Once she gets going.”
They’d just returned from his parents’ house, where his mother had hooked an arm around Aubrey’s waist and ushered her around the backyard, explaining the layout for the bridal shower.
“Now, the waiters will be right there,” Mrs. Sheppard had said, pointing toward the center of the yard. “Not too close, though, we don’t want them hoverin’ over folks while they eat. Lou’s Catering wasn’t my first choice but you know John wanted to support Deacon Lou’s business. Of course, he had nothing to say the whole time I was planning things but he’s got all the opinions right before I book the catering. I hope Lou’s boys paid attention. I told them cranberry tablecloths but I just know they’ll bring red.”
If it was exhausting to worry about tiny details, it was even more exhausting to pretend to. Aubrey felt guilty for not caring about whether the tablecloths were cranberry or red. Mrs. Sheppard was working so hard to plan a beautiful shower for her, she should at least share in her concerns. But she had other worries. Months before her wedding, she had stopped sleeping. Like any big life change, it happened both gradually and all at once. At first, she shaved off minutes, falling asleep later, waking up before her alarm. Then an hour here and there as night fell and she lay under her covers, her laptop toasting her stomach, another episode of television reflecting off her glasses. Then big chunks of time, scoops of it, patches in the middle of the night when she woke to get water and tossed in bed and sat by the window and read her Bible until light cracked through the blinds. By April, she was only sleeping a few hours a night and those few hours made her feel more tired than if she hadn’t slept at all. She was unsleeping, and it wasn’t the wedding jitters like everyone tried to tell her. She had decided to invite her mother and she hadn’t heard back from her yet. She was both worried that she would and would not come.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Monique had said. The two of them were sitting around the kitchen table, which had been covered for the past few months in wedding books Mrs. Sheppard sent over. The war room, Kasey called it.
“Mo, relax,” Aubrey said. “She probably wouldn’t come anyway. Mrs. Sheppard said I might regret it if I don’t at least invite her—”