“It’s not that simple,” I say.
“Karin and Mohammed have done it. She said they are blissful.”
“They’re married.”
“True,” she says. “Your timing is too soon, but that does not mean you cannot be together. Fight for her, Adam.”
“Would you be able to do this?” he asks finally. “To tell our mother that love is more important than her opinion and that you do not care what she thinks?”
Aya slumps back in her seat. “No.”
I look out the window at a blurry Cairo as we drive silently to the soccer field, wishing we lived in a world where religions didn’t matter and being with the person you love was easy. At practice I am distracted by his presence, until Karin comes over. “What the hell is wrong with you today?”
“He’s here. Sitting over on the stands, watching me suck.”
“Then stop sucking. This”—she gestures at the field, at the women around us—“has nothing to do with him. This realm belongs to you.” Karin touches the center of my forehead. “If you can’t put him out of your mind, at least show him that in your realm you are the queen.”
Laughing, I wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
She benches me as we start scrimmaging, and as I stand on the sidelines, I do some juggling tricks with my feet and knees. Total showboat moves. When I look over at the metal bleachers, Adam’s attention is on me. I throw a smile over my shoulder, then do a rainbow flick, a move that sends the ball back, up, and over my head. It lands on the ground in front of me. It’s a trick that’s taken me years to perfect, but the payoff is worth it. Adam is smiling as he shakes his head.
“Caroline, you’re up,” Sophie says as she jogs to the sidelines.
I run onto the field and spend the next ten minutes playing as hard as I can, scoring on Karin. I do a cartwheel and she puts both hands up for high fives. “The queen.”
When practice is over, Adam comes down to the field. I kick the ball in his direction and he stops it with his foot, pinning it to the ground as I approach. I’m not sure what to say now that we have a chance to talk. “I named my lovebird Stevie G.”
His shoulders quake as he laughs at how I named my bird after Liverpool’s former captain. “Hopefully he will be worthy of the name.”
“He lets me hold him without biting.”
“Give him time and I am certain he will love you.” Adam rolls the ball back to me. I trap it with my foot.
“How’s your new job?”
“Waiting tables is not so bad, but it’s very difficult to be so near the kitchen in a fine hotel and not be cooking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I want to believe this is not my final fate. But sometimes I fear I will spend my life standing beside what I desire and not be allowed to have it,” he says. “Geddo called it a dreaming disease and said I should gratefully accept whatever Allah gives me, but I cannot turn off my dreams. It is like asking me not to breathe.”
“Your dreams will happen, Adam,” I say, but the only thing I have any certainty about is my faith in him. His reality may never live up to his expectations, even with both of us rooting him on.
He reaches out as if he’s going to touch me, then drops his hand away. “You are better at football than I imagined. And in my imagination, you are always better than me.”
I kick the ball to him. “Show me.”
He rolls it back and forth beneath his shoe, hesitating. I sweep out with my left foot, taking it from him and running toward the goal. Adam gives chase—I can hear his footsteps pounding in the grass behind me—and comes up level, but when he tries to steal the ball, I step over it, protecting it, and keep moving forward. As we close in on the goal, Adam runs forward to guard the net. I launch the ball. He dives to block. He misses.
He laughs from down there on the ground. “It is a very good thing my esteem is not tied to my ability to play football.”
I help him to stand and there, in front of the team, in front of his sister, I kiss him. My hands on his face. My hands in his hair. My toes skim the ground as he lifts me nearly off my feet, kissing me back.
“Next year I’ll go home and someday you’ll marry someone else,” I say. “If I’m only meant to be a footnote in the history of Adam Elhadad, then maybe we should make it a really good footnote.”
He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “I have tried to put you out of my mind, but you are always there.”
Despite having known each other most of our lives, Owen and I took a long time to use the word “love.” Adam and I could be mistaking what we feel for something else. Except my parents eloped after knowing each other for only a month and they’re still together. Maybe it’s possible that what Adam and I have is real.
I rest my forehead against his. “Bahebik.”
“Caroline.” He bites his lower lip, trying to keep a smile from overtaking his face. “To me you would say bahebak.”
“Save the language lesson for another day, Elhadad. I love you, too.”
CHAPTER 29
Whoa. What?” Hannah says after I fill her in on everything that has gone down since the last time we had a video chat. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“You were busy with Vlad.”
“The bracelet is so beautiful, by the way.” She holds up her wrist so I can see it. “Thank you. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a crappy friend.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been busy too.”
“Obviously.”
I laugh. “I meant that I’m playing on a soccer team with Aya and hanging out with Vivian, a girl from my new school. Oh, and I almost forgot! Adam bought me a lovebird that I’ve been training to do tricks. Hang on.”
I bring Stevie G. out of his cage and Hannah squeals when she sees him. The bird climbs from my hand up to my shoulder, where he plays with my earring and chatters softly in my ear.
“So what happened with Adam’s family?” Hannah asks.
“They attempted another family intervention, but Adam basically told them he’d be making his own decisions about his relationship from now on, which—well, match meet gasoline. His uncle blamed Adam’s dad, saying that if Mr. Elhadad wasn’t so obsessed with westerners his children wouldn’t be behaving like them. And now every time I’m in the car with him, I feel like he’s up there in the front seat thinking about how I’ve corrupted his son. Mr. Elhadad used to be kind of . . . fatherly . . . and now he’s not. And Adam’s mother feels pretty disrespected. My mom invited the family for dinner, hoping maybe we could talk through the whole mess, and Mrs. Elhadad said no.”
“Seems like it would be easier not to date Adam.”
“Sure. Break up with Vlad and tell me how easy it is.”
Hannah’s eyes go wide. “Wow. You really like him.”
“I really do.”
“What about when you come home?”