“Forget I asked,” I interrupted. “It’s an awkward thing to ask considering that I was married to your BFF cousin for twenty-three years. Besides, you’d never be mean enough, or rude enough, to say no.”
“You’re enough,” he said quietly. “More than enough. Any man would be lucky to have you.” He spoke with more depth of feeling and sincerity than I’d ever experienced from him. “It’s just that Ali won the toss.”
“What?”
“Ali won the toss.”
I didn’t understand. “What toss?”
He sighed. “We were both at that wedding when Ali first saw you.” He paused. “I thought you were pretty hot too.”
“Wait.” I blinked. “You were there?”
“I was. But we were cousins, and we couldn’t both go after you. That could’ve created a conflict between us, between our parents.”
“How did I never know about this?” I was stunned. The story of Ali spotting me at a wedding was part of our lore as a couple. Nasser had never been part of that narrative.
“We flipped a coin. Ali won. He got to court you first. If he struck out, I would have my shot.”
“You flipped a coin.” As his words sank in, my vision went fuzzy at the edges. “Unbelievable.”
“I always thought everything worked out for the best,” he said. “You and Ali seemed happy together.”
The air went out of my lungs. “All of our futures, ourlives, determined by a coin toss.” How many years had I lived my married life without context? Without knowing the whole story? Here was yet another thing that Ali had kept from me. What else didn’t I know?
Nasser studied me. “Youwerehappy with my cousin, right?”
“I thought I was.” I stared at him, for the first time really looking at Nasser as a man who might have been my partner. My lover. Not someone from Ali’s world, but a man who might have been central to mine.
“So, you see,” he spoke into the awkward silence, “I have always thought that you were, andare, way more than enough. Ali was a very lucky man.”
Somewhere inside me, a switch turned off. The lever that had always relegated Nasser to the friend zone deactivated. For the first time since meeting him more than two decades ago, I really observed Nasser as a man, a physically attractive man who’d apparently always wanted me, when perhaps my own husband hadn’t. I took in the dark eyes and thick lashes, the wavy hair now liberally speckled with gray.
A new awareness tingled through me. I became acutely aware of my skin hunger—of being deprived of touch, of missing a man’s emotional and corporeal companionship for months. Longing crashed through me. I craved physical contact and comfort.
But not from Nasser—even though he was appealing enough. I wanted it from the one person who could no longer give it to me. Tears stung my eyes, a crushing sensation bearing down on my chest.
I wanted Ali.
I needed my husband.Not the liar who left a secret house to his girlfriend. I craved the man I thought I knew, an extraordinary but normal guy with a tender touch and quiet, reassuring smile—a man Nasser could never measure up to.
Had that version of Ali ever been real?
Awkwardness stirred in the air. No matter what the truth about Ali was, whatever Nasser wanted from me was never going to happen.I needed to be alone, to wrap my head around everything I’d learned today. If that was even possible.Bintiwas still barking. I needed to take her out.
“Thanks for seeing me home,” I said to Nasser. “I know you must have lots of work to do.”
“Gotcha.” Nasser took my abrupt dismissal for what it was. A rejection. A door firmly being shut. “Call if you need anything.”
Chapter Eighteen
Before
I first suspected I was pregnant when full crabs made me nauseous.
That had never happened before. Eating full crabs was a family tradition. We’d get bushels of them from the DC waterfront and eat them on someone’s deck or patio. A trip to Ocean City was incomplete if we didn’t go to our favorite all-you-can-eat crab place.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Ali asked. He hadn’t been big on full crabs back then, in the beginning. Too much work and not enough meat for the effort, he complained. But my husband came to enjoy them almost as much as I did. I marveled at how marriage brought new experiences into both of our lives. How, as a couple, our tastes often became synced, like Ali with the crabs, me with hiking, and my family requesting Ali’s iced tea whenever they came over.
