Friday Morning
Jia woke up to her phone ringing. She groped for it on the pillow next to her head, then sat straight up. Ayesha! Finally. “I’ve called you a million times. What have you been doing?” Jia hissed, as soon as her twin’s face popped up on her phone.
“What have you been doing?” Ayesha yelped. “I go camping for a couple weeks and come back to all hell having broken loose.”
“Maybe that’ll teach you not to go camping.” She and her twin had always been glued at the hip, but when Jia had quit med school, their paths had diverged. It was weird to see Ayesha in their old shared bedroom alone, but also a relief that she herself wasn’t in that bedroom.
“Um, trust me, I’m never going camping again for other reasons.” Ayesha scratched at an obvious mosquito bite on her cheek. She was dressed sedately, in monochromatic colors, a gray long-sleeved dress and a gray cotton scarf wrapped around her hair. Ayesha preferred things she could mix and match easily. She was too focused on other priorities, like her career, to care about clothes.
Jia was aware that Ayesha was about as close to a perfect Pakistani American daughter as could be, but she’d never felt any envy or anger at her twin for that. If anything, she’d tried to emulate her, as her parents had always told her to do. Unfortunately, that had always led to her eventually growing bored. A bored Jia wasn’t a good thing. It ledto her starting a tiny empire in her bedroom, for example. “You didn’t enjoy it like you thought you would?”
“Worst rebellion against our parents ever. They were right, they didn’t cross the ocean so their daughters could go sleep outside.”
Jia’s lips curled up. “I can teach you better ways to rebel.”
“So I see.” Ayesha hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Mom’s out here claiming that you’re practically engaged to Dev. When did you even meet him?”
“Ugh.” Jia scrubbed her face. That’s right. Ayesha didn’t know about the debacle of meeting Dev. “It’s a long story.”
“Stop touching your face,” Ayesha chided, ever the young doctor.
“Right, sorry.” She wanted to wail her news out to her sister. Ayesha had been the one person who had known everything: not just who Jia was talking to, but also how much she’d started to swoon over him.
Time is—
Nope, nope, she wasn’t going to dwell on a single one of those fake scripted words. Dev’s real words were way better. “First, make sure the hallway is clear.” She wouldn’t put it past Zara to be hovering out there.
Ayesha rolled her eyes, but did as she asked.
“Okay, so...” Jia quickly recapped the whole situation for her sister, while Ayesha’s mouth opened more and more.
“Whhaaaaaat is happening?” Ayesha squealed when Jia went silent. “So Dev’scousincatfished you?”
“Yes.” She didn’t mention the brother. No need to complicate this more.
“Did he give a reason?”
“No.”
“So.” Ayesha stopped, then shook her head. “What’s up with all these photos of you and Dev snuggling? Why is Mom planning your engagement party?”
“There was one photo, and Mom... she and Noor and Zara confronted me, all at once. I got overwhelmed, and well... I let them believe that I was dating him. It seemed to make them happy.” And she so rarely made her family happy.
Ayesha made an annoyed sound. “Jia, this inability to look at long-term repercussions is a real problem.”
“I know. I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Dev agreed to play my boyfriend while Mom and Daddy are out here.”
Ayesha’s lips parted. “When they’reoutthere?”
“Oh, they didn’t tell you that? Yes, they’re coming.”
“They didn’t tell me that, but that explains why Mom told me to give her my schedule.”
Jia sat up in bed, happiness soaring through her. “Oh yay. You’re coming for sure? That’s wonderful.”
