‘I’m not pretending, Poppy,’ he says, a trace of hurt in his voice.
But I don’t believe him. How could I? He pulled the most savage move a guy could to his girlfriend. And now, months later, he thinks he can just pick up where we left off as if nothing ever happened? As if he didn’t make the U-turn of the century?
I’m transported back to the memory immediately. It was the first Friday afternoon in January and we were making out by the lake halfway between our houses. Despite the semi-secrecyof our relationship, it was safe to be out in such a public place because our parents were still at work for another few hours.
‘What’s on your mind?’ Salman asked when I’d pulled away from our kiss. He gently poked my forehead. ‘It seems busy in there.’
My mind resembled the inside of a beehive at the best of times, my thoughts crashing into one another at the speed of light, but that day it was even worse. The incessant buzzing of the argument I’d overheard between Ma and Salman’s mum the night before on the phone was refusing to quiet.
‘Our parents are fighting, and I’m scared it means we can’t be together any more,’ I blurted out, afraid I’d never say the words otherwise.
He let out a small laugh. ‘Come again?’
I stepped away from the tree I had been leaning against and started to pace. ‘I overheard Ma on the phone. She wasshoutingat Auntie. I didn’t really get what they were fighting about, but afterwards I talked to Ma and she said we wouldn’t be seeing much of you guys any more.’
‘OK, hang on, just take a breath,’ Salman said, reaching to place his hands on my shoulders. I drew back, hating myself for the hurt and fear flickering across his face.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said, his hands falling by his sides. ‘What could they be fighting about?’
‘I don’t know! But .?.?. it really didn’t sound good.’
The image of Ma in her bedroom, tears streaking down her face as Auntie said something to her on the phone, had shocked me. Ma and Auntie had been friends for years, and I had never seen them do anything but laugh together.
‘Well, just because our parents are fighting that doesn’t mean we have to be,’ he said, his eyes searching mine for the girlfriend I was only a moment ago. ‘I’m sure it will blow over soon. In the meantime, we can keep seeing one another, Pops. We can still beus.’
‘No, we can’t,’ I said, feeling like a doctor telling a patient they have a terminal illness. ‘How are we going to beusif our parents can’t stand each other? I heard Ma talking about dividing up future dawats, like they were kids of divorced parents!’
‘They’ll get over it eventually. The Bangladeshi community in Bristol is too small for them not to. Nothing has to change.’
‘We won’t see each other at dawats for who knows how long. Salman, of course things will change.’
‘OK, so we won’t see each other at dawats, that’s fine. We hated pretending not to be a thing at them anyway, so if anything, it’s less stress on us. It just means that when wedosee each other, it’ll be all the more special.’ He stepped closer to me and took my hands. This time, I didn’t pull away. ‘Don’t let something as silly as our parents get in the way of us.’
The more he spoke, the more sense he made. I realised I’d worked myself into a panic after seeing Ma so upset, and had imagined the plans I’d made for our relationship unravelling. But no matter how upset Ma was about whatever had happened with Auntie, it didn’t need to affect me. It wasn’t my business, and at the end of the day we’d been hiding our relationship from them anyway so nothing would really change in that regard.
‘You’re right,’ I said in the end, deciding to follow my heart instead, which had calmed down substantially. Salman was always good at soothing me when I was distressed.
‘It’ll be fine, I promise,’ he’d reassured me, cupping my cheek with his hand, its warmth making me feel safe. ‘Though I guess we’re going to have to wait to tell them about us, huh?’
I bite the inside of my lip in thought. Salman and I had been building up the courage to tell our parents about us; we no longer wanted to hide from them. Since our parents were so close, we hoped they’d be OK with our relationship – despite their no-dating rules.
‘Yeah, probably best we don’t say anything until after they’ve made up.’
But they didn’t. Weeks went by and Auntie didn’t ring. My anxiety about the state of their relationship festered in the back of my mind, along with the fact that the giant secret I had been keeping involved the son of Ma’s now ex-best friend. I tried my hardest to ignore the guilt that followed me around, but failed abysmally. I spent many nights in bed, my phone on silent, looking up at the ceiling, listening to Ma crying next door as I thought of ways I could organise a reconciliation between them. It had felt fine lying to Ma when they were friends but now it felt like a betrayal, knowing just how hurt she was. I didn’t know what had gone on, but knew it must have been bad for the fallout to be this huge.
Even when I was on the phone with Salman, I felt the weight of the secret we were hiding. I often found myself spaced out, flitting in and out of conversations with him and our friends, playing catch-up with my surroundings as I tried not to get hung up on what was happening. For a brief time, I even fell behind at college, unable to concentrate on what my teachers were saying when all I could think about was Ma, who was shrinking into herself, just like she had after Baba died.
Each day that passed, the pit of dread in my stomach grew even larger until everything came crashing down three weeks later.
‘I think we should break up,’ Salman had said when we met by the lake again, standing at the same place we had a few weeks before. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets and he hadn’t reached out for a hug like he normally did.
My mouth slackened with disbelief. Just a few weeks ago he had been a fierce advocate for our relationship continuing – and now he was ending it?
‘Is this because of our parents? Because I thou—’
‘It’s not because of them,’ he interrupted, his tone clipped.
‘Then why?’
