Ali was staring at a stop sign when he said, “Shadi, I can’t do this anymore.”
Impossibly, my heart found a way to beat faster.
“But we’re not doing anything,” I said.
He met my eyes. “I know.”
I wanted to sit down. Lie down. My mind wasn’t entirely certain what was happening, but my body—my faint, feverish body—had no doubt. Even my skin seemed to know. Every inch of me was taut with fear, with feeling. I had the strangest desire to find a shovel, to bury myself under the weight of it all.
Ali looked away then, made a sound, something like a laugh. Three times he opened his mouth to speak, and each time he came up short. Finally, he said—
“Please. Say something.”
I was staring at him. I couldn’t stop staring at him. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I was horrified to hear my voice shake when I said, “Because I’m scared.”
He took a step closer. “Why are you scared?”
I whispered his name and it was practically a plea, a bid for mercy.
He said: “I keep waiting, Shadi. I keep waiting for this feeling to go away, but it’s just getting worse. Sometimes I feellike it’s actually killing me.”
He laughed. I couldn’t breathe.
“Isn’t that strange?” he said. I saw the tremble in his hands before he pushed them through his hair. “I thought this sort of thing was supposed to make people happy.”
Something unlocked my tongue then. Unlocked my bones.
“What sort of thing?”
He turned to face me, his arms dropping to his sides. “You know, I don’t even think I know exactly when I fell in love with you. It was years ago.”
I thought, for a moment, that my feet might be sinking into the earth. I looked down, looked back up, heard my heart beating. I took an unconscious step backward and nearly stumbled over the base of a nearby tree, its overgrown roots.
“Shadi, I love you,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve always loved you—”
“Ali, please.” My eyes were filling with tears. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Please. Please. I can’t do this.”
He was silent for so long it almost scared me. I watched him swallow. I saw him struggle to collect himself, his thoughts—and then, quietly—
“You can’t do what?”
“I can’t do this to her. To Zahra.”
Something flickered in his eyes then. Surprise. Confusion. “You can’t do what to Zahra?”
“This,this—”
“What’sthis, Shadi?” He closed the remaining distancebetween us and suddenly he was right in front of me, suddenly I couldn’t think straight.
My heart seemed to be screaming, pounding fists against my chest. I wanted desperately to touch him, to tell him the truth, to admit that I fell asleep most nights thinking about him, that I found his face in nearly all my favorite memories.
But I didn’t.
Couldn’t.
