“Hey, Rafi—you coming with us to Spider House?”
I pull a face, not wanting to see more students after my classes today.
“Oh, c’mon. Bruce is going early to grab a corner booth. We’ll be tucked away in the back. No students, I promise.”
Parker, associate professor of Tagalog at UT Austin, is my favorite coworker, if only because she knows when I need a little extra push to be social.
“Okay, fine, you’ve worn me down. But if I see anyone from any of my classes, I’m hiding behind you.”
Parker looks down at her five-foot-nothing, tiny Filipina frame—which is exactly half an inch shorter than mine—and laughs, patting me on my shoulder.
“You’re funny, Rafi.”
Yeah, I used to be.
You can be funny again, my love.
I miss the sound of Asadi’s voice, his Arabic a lyrical sotto I sometimes hear when I’m casting about, trying to figure out what to do with my life.
An hour later, I find myself shoved into the tight bend of a corner booth, trying to decide if I can hold it, if I should make people move, or if I should just belly crawl under the table to get to the bathroom.
“So, Rafi, what was your job before you joined UT?”
Parker knows the answer to this, but she’s trying to draw me out of my shell, a reasonable goal since I’ve only opened my mouth to order a cider and to agree to whatever on the pizza.
“I was in the Air Force. Worked as a language analyst. Basically, an Arabic interpreter.”
That nets a series of oohs and aahs around the table, which surprises me. To my ears, it sounds like the least impressive job in the Armed Forces, even though I was frequently close to the action. It’s nice to see it at least means something in civilian language.
“So,” Bruce asks, “you moved here for the job at UT?”
That’s a thorny question with a complicated answer. Honestly, my reasons for staying in Austin are nebulous, even to me. My brother-in-law, Omar, extended an invitation to stay with him after Asadi’s death, so I came. Omar and I have never discussed our odd living arrangement; I wonder sometimes if we just coexist as two spheres of grief trapped in each other’s orbit.
“Uh, kinda. I have some family who lives here, so I thought it’d be a good place to check out.”
My cousin, the only other member of my family who talks to me, invited me to live with her and her husband in Abu Dhabi, but I grew up in Texas. I doubt I’d feel any less alone there.
As it happens, I may have stumbled into something sort of special with the University of Texas community, and I’m starting to think of this motley group of teachers as friends. I’m the youngest by a few years, but they’ve been kind to me, and I’ve been happy teaching Arabic at UT for the last three months.
My brother-in-law objected to my taking the job, but that had to do with the fact that Asadi had left behind a sizable trust fund for us. Omar thought I should wait to get my feet under me before wading out into the world again. At some point, I realized I might not be able to get my feet under me until I have a purpose. So, here I am.
I suspect Everett called in a favor to his buddy Jake, whose famous boyfriend has some pull with UT. He denies it, but the slight smile when I told him about the job makes me think he’s not entirely telling me the truth. To be honest, I’m not sure if I could have made it through these last several months without him.
“Rafi?”
Speak of the devil. “Everett? What are you doing here?” I ask, smiling as I scramble under the table. Seeing him makes me feel lighter, and the angst of socialization disintegrates in his warm, calm presence. I reach up and kiss his jaw, like I always do, then wrap around his side with a hug, rubbing his belly. “Seriously, how fair is it I can feel your abs under your shirt?”
At this point, he’d usually wrap his heavily tattooed arm around me and make some quip about me being pocket-sized, so the quick squeeze-and-release is confusing. He shifts out of the way, making room for a gorgeous blond. “Er, I’m on a date with Darren.”
Darren, who is probably half a foot shorter than Everett, looks like an Instagram influencer with his dewy, freshly shaved face, sharp leather lace-ups, skinny jeans, belly shirt, and rose-embroidered blazer. By comparison, I haven’t shaved in at least two weeks, I’m wearing dad jeans with two-inch cuffs because they’re so long on me, an ill-fitting UT polo tucked into my jeans halfway down my thighs, and my sensible Adidas. I’m also about two months overdue for a haircut.
Everett shifts uncomfortably, probably because I’m looking at Darren like he’s an alien. Or maybe because I’ve still got my hand on his abs. I pull back from our embrace, realizing that in the six months since we’ve become close friends, I’ve never seen him with another guy. It’s super weird, and I wonder briefly if Darren would be okay with the fact that Everett is my Monday night snuggle buddy.
Side note, yeah, it sounds a little shady, but I’m still in mourning and it helps to have someone who will hug me without trying to get in my pants. My brother-in-law, Omar, isn’t exactly what you’d call the touchy-feely type, and since that first night in Everett’s car, saying things I’d never told another living soul, Everett’s been a good friend to me. There’s a part of him that feels a little soul mate-y, you know? The way that good friends are soul mates.
I wave awkwardly with both hands and do the elbow-bump thing. “Hi, Darren!”
Bring it down a level, habibi.
