“This is different,” he said. “This just seems wrong.”
“Why is it wrong? What if I actually like one of them? What if it’s actually something I want?”
His eyebrows flew up. He seemed suddenly unmoored. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you—I mean—do you actually like one of them?”
I almost laughed.
“Why would I tell you, even if I did? You’ve just spent this entire conversation horrified by the idea that anyone would even consider marrying me, and now you want me to dissect the inner workings of my heart for you?”
His eyes widened. “Shadi, I just—I care about you. You’re like— I mean, I’d be upset if this were happening to my sister, too, you know?” He straightened. “Wait, there aren’t dudes kargarying my sister, are there?”
I went still. “No.”
“No one at all?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t talked to Zahra in a long time.”
“But, like, to the best of your knowledge?”
“No.”
“Huh.” He looked out into the night. “I think I’m offended.”
“Yeah.” I tried to laugh.
I sighed, instead.
The first time someone’s mother proposed to my mother the whole thing struck me as unbelievably funny, and I shared the story with Zahra, shared it so we could analyze this strange situation and laugh about it together. The second khastegari, too. But after the third one, Zahra threw up a wall. She started making fun of me, started wondering aloud why any of these guys would ever be interested in me. And I, because I did not want to fight with Zahra, would laugh along with her, insist she was right. I’d always agree that it didn’t make sense that anyone would be interested in me.
“Well, it’s because you have green eyes,” she’d said to me once. Everyone is obsessed with your eyes. It’s so dumb.
It was true.
People were obsessed with my eyes, and it was dumb. Still, I should’ve known then. I should’ve seen it then, that our friendship was fast approaching its expiration date. My problem was that I didn’t know friendships could have an expiration date at all.
“Hey,” Ali said quietly, the sound of his voice startling me back to the present. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Honestly. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Yeah,” I said, whispered the word into the darkness.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I was tired. I was growing weary of jokes made at my expense, growing weary of carrying untold weight. I felt so heavy some days that I could hardly get out of bed, and I found it increasingly difficult to take so many different hits on a daily basis. My body had worn thin, lacked refuge. I no longer knew where I might fall apart in peace.
“Sometimes,” I said softly, “I wish I could just leave.”
“Leave where? Your parents’ house?”
“Just leave,” I said, staring up at the night sky. “Start walking and never, ever stop.”
Ali was quiet for a long time. I’d begun to deeply regret my entire conversation with him when he said, softly:
“Why?”
I turned to face him and realized he was sitting close to me, much closer than before. I nearly jumped out of my skin. We locked eyes and he made as if to speak, his lips parting for the briefest moment before they froze like that, a breath apart. He was just staring at me now, looking into my eyes with a startling intensity. I felt fear skitter through my blood.
His voice was different—almost unrecognizable—when he said, “Were you crying?”
Too fast, I turned away.
“Is that what you were doing out here?” A little louder now, a little sharper. “Shadi?”
I felt it then, felt the awful, burning threat, felt it building inside me again. I swallowed it down, tried to regain my composure.
Ali touched my arm, gently, and I stilled at the sensation. Could not meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on? What happened?”
The heat would not abate. It was ravenous again, hungry and terrible, pooling in my gut, my throat, behind my eyes. I’d tried for months to keep everything inside, to say nothing, speak to no one, soldier through. For nearly a year I’d held my breath, stitched closed my lips, devoured myself until I could not manage another bite. I’d not known the limits of my own body at the onset, had not known how long it would take to digest pain, had not realized I might not be able to contain it or that it might continue to multiply. I spent every day standing at the edge of a terrifying precipice, peering into the abyss, wanting, not wanting to plummet.
When his fingers grazed my cheek, I stopped breathing.
“Shadi,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
He took my face in his hands, pinned me in place with his eyes and I, I was so desperate to exhale this pain that I could not bring myself to break away. I was shaking, my heart trembling in my chest. Even now I was trying to push it all back, pretend it away, pull myself together, but there was something about his skin against my skin, the heat radiating from his body—that broke the last of my self-control.
When I started sobbing, he froze.
And then, before I could take another breath, he pulled me into his arms.
I was crying so hard I couldn’t speak, could hardly drag air into my lungs. I collapsed against him, bones shuddering, and was surprised to feel his skin against my face. His jersey was a V-neck, exposing a triangle of his chest to the night, to my cheek. I pressed my face against that heat, wet eyelashes fluttering against his throat, listened to his heart pound recklessly. My hands were caught between us, the thin jersey doing little to conceal his body from mine. He was warm and solid and strong and he was holding me in his arms like he needed me there, like he’d hold me forever if I wanted.
It all felt like a strange dream.
I might’ve never let go if it hadn’t been for my brain, for my stuttering brain, for my slowly dawning
