“This is so bad for you,” he said, exhaling with an elegance attained only with practice. “You shouldn’t smoke these things.”
He offered me the cigarette without turning his head, and when I whispered, “No, thank you,” he smiled.
He still wasn’t looking at me; he was staring into the darkness. I found his silence fascinating. His appearance, here, confusing.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What areyoudoing here?” he said, and laughed. “I live here.” He gestured, generally, at nothing. “You know. Around here.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
He took another drag on the cigarette. “So,” he said, exhaling a neat line of smoke. “You want to tell me why you’re stalking me?”
“What?” I said sharply. I felt my face heat. “I’m not stalking you.”
“No?” He turned a little in his seat, looked me up and down. He was almost smiling. “Then why do you look like you’re undercover?”
I shook my head. Looked away. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“It’s a stupid story,” I amended.
“Even better.”
“My sister is getting married.”
Ali choked, started coughing violently. He tossed the cigarette to the ground, stamped it out with his foot. Kept coughing. Ali was about to die of asphyxiation, and I was suddenly very close to laughing. I also noticed, for the first time, what he was wearing: cleats and shorts, a blue soccer jersey. It was freezing out, and his arms and legs were bare and he didn’t seem at all bothered by the temperature. The streetlamps bolstered the wan moonlight, sculpting his body in the darkness. I watched him press the heels of his hands to his tearing eyes, watched as the muscles in his arms tightened, released under his skin. When he finally sat back and took a normal, steadying breath, my head felt uncomfortably hot.
“Oh my God,” he said. Another cough. “Is your sisterinsane?”
I was fully smiling now, rare for me. “She’s not getting married this second. But she’s on her way, I guess. Picked out the guy.”
“Picked out the guy? What does that even mean? And what does any of that have to do with you looking like a”—he gestured at me, my face—“getaway driver?”
I laughed. I missed this version of us, the easy conversations we’d once had. Ali and I had always been so comfortable together, and remembering that now—remembering what I’d lost—made my smile feel suddenly brittle. I shook my head to clear it.
“He came khastegari,” I said. “She accepted. And tonight h—”
“Wait, what’skhastegari?”
I frowned, turned to face him. “Since when do you not know how to speak Farsi?”
Ali shrugged. “I always spoke Farsi like a child.”
“Oh.” I was still frowning. “Well, it just means he proposed.”
“But you said she picked him out. Like a peach at the grocery store.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, lots of guys propose,” I said, squinting up at the blinking light of an airplane. “But she picked him.”
“Shadi, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know any guys who propose.”
I laughed again.
He didn’t.
“I’m serious,” he said. “This sounds fake. It sounds like you’re describingThe Bachelorin reverse.”
