He wouldn’t stop laughing.
“My dear sister in Islam,” he said, affecting horror. “Astaghfirullah. This is shameful.”
Mortification was a powerful chemical. It had dissolved my organs, evaporated my bones. I was loose flesh splayed on concrete.
He did not seem to notice.
He placed a hand on his chest, continued the show. “A young sister in hijab,” he said, tsking as he towered over me. “Alone, late at night. Smoking. What would your parents—” He hesitated. “Wait. Are you bleeding?”
He was staring at my knee, at the tear in my jeans. A dark stain had been spreading slowly across the denim.
I dropped my face in my hands.
An arm reached for my arm, waited for my cooperation. I did not cooperate. He retreated.
“Hey, are you okay?” he said, his voice appreciably gentler. “Did something happen?”
I lifted my head. “I fell.”
He frowned as he studied me; I averted my eyes. We were now positioned under the same shaft of light, his face so close to mine it scared me.
“Jesus,” he said softly. “My sister is such an asshole.”
I met his gaze.
He took a sharp breath. “All right, I’m taking you home.”
That rattled my brain into action. “No, thank you,” I said quickly.
“You’re going to die of pneumonia,” he said. “Or lung cancer. Or”—he shook his head, made a disapproving noise—“depression. Are you seriously reading the newspaper?”
“It helps me de-stress.”
He laughed.
My body tensed at the sound. Ancient history wrenched open the ground beneath me, unearthing old caskets, corpses of emotion. I hadn’t talked to him in over a year—hadn’t been this close to him in over a year—and I wasn’t sure my heart could handle being alone with him now.
“I already have a ride home,” I lied, staggering upright. I stumbled, gasped. My injured knee was screaming.
“You do?”
I closed my eyes. Tried to breathe normally. I felt the weight of my dead cell phone in my pocket. The weight of the entire day, balanced between my shoulder blades. I was freezing. Bleeding. Exhausted.
I knew no one was coming for me.
My shoulders sagged as I opened my eyes. I sighed as I looked him over, sighed because I already knew what he looked like. Thick brown hair so dark it was basically black. Deep brown eyes. Strong chin. Sharp nose. Excellent bone structure. Eyelashes, eyelashes, eyelashes.
Classically Persian.
He rolled his eyes at my indecision. “I’m Ali, by the way. I’m not sure if you remember me.”
I felt a flash of anger. “That’s not funny.”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking away. “It’s a little funny.” But his smile had vanished.
Ali was my ex–best friend’s older brother. He and his sister, Zahra, were the two people I did not want to think about. My memories of them both were so saturated in emotion I could hardly breathe around the thoughts, and barreling face-first into my past wasn’t helping matters in my chest. Even now, I was barely holding it together, so assaulted were my senses by the mere sight of him.
It was almost cruel.
Ali was, among other things, the kind of handsome that transcended the insular social circles frequented by most members of Middle Eastern communities. He was the kind of good-looking that made white people forget he was terrorist-adjacent. He was the kind of brown guy who charmed PTA moms, dazzled otherwise racist teachers, inspired people to learn a thing or two about Ramadan.
I’d once hated Ali. Hated him for so effortlessly straddling the line between two worlds. Hated that he seemed to pay no price for his happiness. But then, for a very long time, I didn’t.
Didn’t hate him at all.
I sighed. My tired body needed to lean against something or else start moving and never stop, but I could presently do neither. Instead, I sat back down, folding myself onto the concrete with all the grace of a newborn calf. I picked up the forgotten lighter off the ground, ran my thumb over the top. Ali had gone solid in the last thirty seconds. Silent.
So I spoke. “Do you go to school here now?”
He was quiet a moment longer before he exhaled, seemed to come back to himself. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”
Ali was a year older than me, and I’d thought for sure he’d go out of state for college. Zahra rarely fed me details on her brother’s life, and I’d never dared to ask; I just assumed. The Ali I’d known had been effortlessly smart and had big plans for his future. Then again, I knew how quickly things could change. My own life was unrecognizable from what it was a year ago. I knew this, and yet I couldn’t seem to help it when I said—
“I thought you got into Yale?”
Ali turned. Surprise brightened his eyes for only a second before they faded back to black. He looked away again and the harsh lamplight rewarded him, casting his features in stark, beautiful lines. He swallowed, the slight, near-imperceptible movement sending a bolt of feeling through my chest.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
“Then why are y—”
“Listen, I don’t really want to talk about last year, okay?”
“Oh.” My heart was suddenly racing. “Okay.”
He took a deep breath, exhaled a degree of tension. “When did you start smoking?”
I put down the lighter. “I don’t really want to talk about last year, either.”
He looked at me then, looked for so long I thought it might kill me. Quietly, he said, “What are you doing here?”
“I take a class here.”
“I know that. I meant what are you doing here”—he nodded at the ground—“soaking wet and smoking cigarettes?”
“Wait, how do you know I take a class here?”
Ali looked away, ran a hand through his hair. “Shadi, come on.”
My mind went blank. I felt suddenly stupid. “What?”
He turned to face me.
He met my eyes with brazen defiance, almost daring me to look away. I felt the heat of that look in my blood. Felt it in my cheeks, the pit of my stomach.
“I asked,” he said.
It was both a confession and a condemnation; I felt
