The sun was streaking across the sky, painting his face in ethereal ribbons of color, blurring the edges of everything. I felt like we were disappearing.
I couldn’t help it when I whispered, “You look like a Renoir painting right now.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I—”
“Shadi—”
“Please,” I said, cutting him off. My voice was breaking. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“I’m not making you do anything.”
“You are. You’re making me choose between you and Zahra, and I can’t. You know I can’t. It’s not a fair fight.”
Ali shook his head. “Why would you have to choose? This has nothing to do with my sister.”
“It has everything to do with your sister,” I said desperately. “She’s my best friend. This—us—it would ruin my relationship with her. It would ruinyourrelationship with her.”
“What? How? What would we be doing wrong?”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s complicated—she—”
“God,” he cried, turning away. “I fucking hate my sister.”
I felt the fight leave me then. Felt the emotion drain from my body. “Ali. This is the problem. This is the whole problem.”
He spun back around. “For the love of God, Shadi, just tell me whatyouwant. Do you want me? Do you want to be with me? Because if you do, that’s all that matters. We can figure out everything else.”
“We can’t,” I said. “It’s not that simple.”
He was shaking his head. “It is that simple. I need it to be that simple. Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t see you every day and just pretend this isn’t killing me.”
“You have to.”
He went suddenly still. I watched it happen, watched him stiffen, then straighten, in real time. And then, two words, so raw they might’ve been ripped out of his chest:
“I can’t.”
I thought I might actually lose my head then, thought I might start crying, or worse, kiss him, and instead I racked my mind for an answer, for a solution to this madness, and seized upon the first stupid thought that entered my head. I spoke recklessly, hastily, before I’d even had a chance to think it through.
“Then maybe—maybe it would be better if we didn’t seeeach other. Maybe we just shouldn’t be in each other’s lives anymore.”
Ali recoiled, stepping back as if he’d been struck. He waited for what seemed an eternity for me to speak, to take it back, but my lips had gone numb, my mind too stupid to navigate this labyrinth of emotion. I did not know what I’d just done.
Finally—without a word—Ali walked away. Disappeared into the dying sunset.
I realized, as I cried myself to sleep that night, that I might’ve hurt him less had I simply driven a stake through his heart.
December
2003
Seventeen
I kicked off the covers, dragged myself out of bed.
I couldn’t sleep, likely wouldn’t sleep with this pounding, tangled mess of a head, heart. I wrapped myself in my blanket, quietly opened my bedroom door, and padded downstairs. All the bedrooms were on the same floor, which left the living room fair game at night.
