Elias seemed pretty laid back, but there was no way to tell how he would react once he realized what the book was about. I distracted myself by looking out the window. Everything was intensely green at this time of year, and as we drove, we passed the occasional mango or guava tree heavy with fruit. As we got farther into Gedeo, the area we’d be surveying, I noticed the dwellings looked different than the ones we’d seen on the way down from Addis.
“So are these houses traditional to the area? I know each tribe has its own style,” I asked Elias.
He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “Yes, these are the Gedeo houses.”
I looked out at the window at the homes dotting the lush green landscape. They looked almost like beehives: round on the bottom, but the roofs were cone-shaped and very tall. They were all surrounded by plants that looked like banana trees.
“Are those the false bananas?” I asked, aware that the plants were a major source of food for many tribes in Ethiopia.
Elias tipped his chin in the direction of a house on the left side of the road. “Eshi, that’s ensete,” he said snapping the syllables of the Amharic name for the plants. “They look just like a banana tree, but they don’t bear fruit. We use the root to make bread.”
I looked at some of the houses as we drove; they seemed to be built from bamboo and mud. “Right, I heard it’s an important part of the diet here.”
“We eat it with the kitfo.” He said with a nod, but kept his eyes on the road.
“Just so you know, I’ll be asking questions whenever I see a new kind of house,” he laughed but his focus stayed on the road. I missed his eyes on me, which of course was just…not good.
“I’ll be happy to tell you if I can. My family is from the Amhara tribe in the north, so I don’t know all the types of houses down here. But we can ask the guys. They’ll know.” He smiled and spoke in Amharic to the guys in the back, who uttered a barrage of eshis and nods at whatever Elias told them.
After a moment we quieted down, and I discreetly ran my eyes over Elias. He was wearing his Ray-Ban aviators—which looked so fucking hot on him—and an Aid USA hoodie. His curls held back with the ever-present elastic band. His lips were a dark brown, slightly darker than his skin, and they were perfect. The thought of sucking that bottom lip into my mouth and making him moan as I nibbled on it had me squirming in my seat.
Thankfully Elias saved me from myself and spoke up. “I think we’re okay to put it on. We should be on this road for the next hour or so.”
“Oh, okay,” I said reluctantly. Suddenly, playing this audiobook felt like a life-or-death situation, but I just hit play and sat back.
It was what it was. If Elias turned out to be a homophobe, I’d ask to be on another team and that’d be the end of it.
Chapter 5
There was nothing to worry about.
From the first words, the story and the narration by Lin-Manuel Miranda enthralled us both. Every so often we would both grunt in approval or sympathy with Ari, the narrator, who was in the throes of discovering who he was. Growing into who he would be, and falling in love with his best friend. We were on our fourth day in the field, and as Elias started the truck and got on the road headed to lunch, he spoke while looking straight ahead. “Can we keep listening to Ari and Dante?”
We were about two-thirds into the book and I suspected that very soon Dante, Ari’s best friend, was going to tell him how he felt. My own coming out had been bittersweet. I’d decided to tell my parents after my dad came back from that last trip, which he never returned from. At that point it was more like the rainbow-colored elephant in the room, and I’d been sure my parents would be fine with it. It was just a matter of finally saying it out loud, making it real. But when my dad died, it became one more thing that would never be whole because he wasn’t there.
Elias cleared his throat, and I realized I’d never responded to his request.
“Sorry. I’ll start it. We only have like, two hours left, actually.”
“Eshi, we have about thirty minutes to the first site. We can listen until then.” There was a certain eagerness to his voice, and I wondered what Elias thought about the book. So far he’d said very little about it, but he listened intently, asking me to pause and repeat certain parts.
Would he be able to empathize with the helpless agony of knowing that saying the truth about yourself could cost you everything? Would he still be the kind and charming man I’d gotten to know in the past week if he knew I was like Ari and Dante?
I looked at him as he listened and tried to figure out the expression on his face. As the story unfolded, and the angst between Ari and Dante grew, Elias would grunt or grip the steering wheel, his brows knitted together. He looked…pained. As I observed his handsome profile, I wondered if Elias understood a lot more than I’d given him credit for.
I stopped the book when he slowed and put on the blinkers, approaching a hotel we’d eaten at a few times already. I turned to him as I reached into my backpack to get
