Darius the Great Deserves Better

by Adib Khorram

  “Okay.”

  Mom gave me a sad smile. “See you tonight.”

  I swallowed away the lump in my throat.

  I hated seeing my parents so tired.

  “Yeah.”

  I showered and packed my soccer bag, and tucked my curl cream in too. I’d be seeing Landon after practice and wanted to look nice. I knocked on Dad’s door, but he hollered he was up and getting ready.

  And then, since I hadn’t heard from Sohrab in three days, I sat down and tried him again.

  This time he answered right away.

  “Eh! Hello Darioush.”

  “Hey! Chetori toh?”

  I didn’t speak much Farsi, but what few words I could say—heavy with my American accent—I felt okay practicing with Sohrab, who never criticized my pronunciation.

  Sohrab let out a dramatic sigh. “Darioush. Have I ever told you about my Ameh Mona?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She lives in Manshad. You know Manshad?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s across the mountains from Yazd. It’s very beautiful. But it’s a long drive.” Sohrab glanced behind him and hollered something to his mom.

  “Maman says hi.”

  “Oh. Tell her hi too?”

  Sohrab shouted back at his mom.

  “Anyway. Ameh Mona broke her leg.”

  “What happened?”

  “She tripped over her cat.”

  “She what?”

  Sohrab shook his head, and then he snorted.

  “She tripped over her cat.” He snorted again. The snort turned into a chuckle.

  And then his eyes crinkled up and he started laughing. He laughed so hard it made me start laughing too, even though tripping over a cat and breaking your leg sounded awful. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.

  But eventually the laughter petered out, and Sohrab said, “We hadn’t seen her in a long time.”

  His image jittered for a second as he looked to the side. I thought he was going to say something, but he just sat there, his jaw twitching. He’d been keeping it more stubbly, like he was trying to grow a beard but couldn’t quite manage it.

  His face looked longer too. Either he’d gotten taller or he’d lost some weight.

  Maybe both.

  Eventually he turned back and said, “How was football?”

  “It was good. We won our first game!”

  I told Sohrab everything: about circling up, about how I used the tackle he showed me, about how the team was starting to feel like actual friends.

  “I’m glad you’re making friends, Darioush.”

  “Me too.” I swallowed. “I was kind of scared.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You were my first real friend. I thought, maybe I didn’t know how to make more. Maybe you were special.” I cleared my throat. “You are special. But I thought . . . I don’t know.”

  Sohrab’s eyes crinkled up again. “Best friends are special, Darioush. But you’re a nice guy. Of course you are making more friends. I’m happy for you.”

  Sohrab always knew what to say.

  “Thanks.”

  Sohrab looked away again, his jaw twitching.

  Sohrab’s jaw twitched when he ground his teeth.

  Sohrab ground his teeth when he was thinking about his dad, who died just before we left Yazd. He had been in prison when he died: Sohrab’s family was Bahá’í, and the Iranian government had a tendency to harass and imprison Bahá’ís.

  It cast a shadow over him, one that came and went.

  I knew him well enough to sit with him until it passed.

  That’s the kind of friends Sohrab and I were.

  Finally he said, “Darioush. How did you know you were depressed?”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t know what to say at first.

  I never thought I’d hear Sohrab ask me that question.

  I don’t know why. Lots of people deal with depression.

  “Well,” I said. “There’s a difference between being depressed and having depression. And for having it, a doctor can diagnose you, but I think it’s usually because you’ve been depressed enough times or over a long period of time.”

  I swallowed.

  “You know how it looks in the mornings in Yazd, when it’s still a little foggy, and you can see things but they’re kind of grayed out and blurry around the edges?”

  Sohrab nodded.

  “That’s what it felt like for me. When it was bad. It was like I could make out the shape of life but I could never quite see it. It’s different for different people, though. My dad told me when he was depressed, he was just tired all the time. And he never wanted to do anything.” I swallowed again. “Do you think you might be depressed? Or have depression?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Sometimes I feel like that. The fog.”

  “Can you see a doctor about it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What about your mom? Can you talk to her at least?”

  “Maybe.” He sighed.

  Sohrab was one of the happiest people I knew, but even he had his sadnesses.

  To be honest, it felt like I’d been seeing them more and more lately. That, and his angers.

  Sohrab had a lot of anger inside him, anger he didn’t always know how to talk about, unless I could pry it out of him.

  I hated how far away my best friend was.

  “You know you can talk to me, right? Ghorbanat beram.”

  “I know, Darioush. Always.”

  BLACK SHIRT AESTHETIC

  Landon was waiting for me at the bike rack outside Rose City Teas when I pulled up.

  He had this big smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  He pulled me into a hug. I rested my chin in his hair, which smelled like almonds and orange blossoms and boy. He looked up and kissed me, first on my cheek and then on my lips.

  “I missed you. Sorry I couldn’t make it to your game.”

  “It’s okay. I missed you too.”

  Landon wrapped his hands around my neck and kissed me again. I put my hands on his waist and kissed him back.

  It felt like a scene out of a movie, kissing each other under the awning while rain soaked the streets. Until someone cleared their throat.

  Mr. Edwards was standing in the doorway.

  The back of my neck prickled.

  “Um.” I cleared my throat and stepped away from Landon, pulling the hem of my hoodie down as I did. “I better get changed.”

  “Come to the tasting room when you’re ready.”

  At my old job, at Tea Haven, we had to wear black button-up shirts and bright blue aprons. Rose City kept the Black Shirt Aesthetic, but it was a V-neck T-shirt with the Rose City Teas logo (a teacup with a rose blooming out of the top) silk-screened on the back, and little teapots on the sleeves. We also had to wear dark-wash jeans.

  I liked the way that dark-wash jeans looked on me. Especially my butt, which, like I said, had seen some benefit from all the squats I’d been doing.

  Landon liked how I looked in them too. (Again, especially my butt.)

  I laced up my Sambas, checked my hair in the mirror, straightened out my magnetic name tag, and went to check in.

  “Come on, Darius. We’ve got something special today,” Mr. Edwards said as he poured water into a set of gaiwans. Landon was already seated at the tasting table with his notebook open. I sat down next to him and got my own notebook out.

  Landon pressed his knee against mine. I grabbed his left hand and rubbed circles into it with my thumb.

  I must’ve had a goofy grin, because Mr. Edwards caught my eye and winked at me.

  Mr. Edwards seemed super happy that I was dating
his son, so happy it made me feel kind of weird.

  I mean, Mom and Dad liked Landon, but they never winked at him.

  And they weren’t Landon’s boss either.

  It was weird.

  Mr. Edwards cleared his throat. “This is Long Jing.” He grabbed the first gaiwan—a white porcelain bowl with a lid and saucer beneath it—tilted the lid a hair with his thumb, and poured the tea into the tasting cup, capturing the leaves in the gaiwan. “Also known as . . . ?”

  My mind blanked.

  I loved tastings, but they made me nervous too. I felt like I was in class, and Mr. Edwards was a teacher I really didn’t want to disappoint.

  “Dragonwell,” Landon said.

  “Right. This was harvested before the Qingming Festival.”

  I made a note to look up what that was, because Mr. Edwards kept going. He talked about leaf shape, and pan roasting, and pricing, and biodynamic growing.

  I wrote as fast as I could.

  Finally, we got to the best part: We got to actually taste the tea.

  It was buttery and sweet and just a tiny bit nutty.

  “Oh, wow,” I said. I went for another spoonful.

  Landon slurped next to me. “Hmm. Eggplant?”

  Mr. Edwards nodded.

  “Bok choi?”

  He nodded again.

  I slurped another taste. I didn’t get either of those. And as a Persian, I was keenly attuned to the taste of eggplant, which we called bademjoon in Farsi, and to which I was categorically opposed.

  Mr. Edwards looked at me.

  “Um. Chestnut?”

  “Hm.” He slurped, swirled the tea on his palate, and swallowed. “Interesting.”

  He poured out the next gaiwan.

  I swallowed and kept making notes.

  After we cleaned up the tasting room, Mr. Edwards said, “Mind manning the register? Landon can do some stocking.”

  “Sure.”

  Interns weren’t technically supposed to man the register, but sometimes we had to fill in if it got super busy. Usually we helped with stocking, and serving, and cleanup, and stuff like that.

  The register was one of those tablet setups on an angled swivel mount, which felt very Starfleet to me, and almost made up for how boring it was.

  Almost.

  I rang up a Business Casual Couple buying a sampler of Chinese green teas and a gaiwan to steep them in; and a hipster with a beard and beanie making the transition from coffee to tea for “health reasons.” Mr. Edwards grabbed a tin of Second Flush Darjeeling from the shelf and had me mark it off inventory.

  Every so often, Landon came out from the back with his little pushcart of tins to restock the shelves. He smiled when he came by, and brushed my arm, or gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  One time, he even smacked me on the butt.

  “Hey!” I said, but he just smirked and kept walking, like he hadn’t done anything.

  “Excuse me,” a customer said. They wore a pink sweater with black galaxy-print leggings, which I thought was a pretty cool look. “Do you have any more Bai Hao?”

  Bai Hao was one of our best-selling oolongs. It was grown in Taiwan, and every year these little bugs came and chewed on the leaves, until the leaves activated a natural chemical defense that drove them away. That chemical changed the flavor of the tea, made it fruity and floral and awesome.

  I glanced at the shelf, but Landon still hadn’t gotten to it yet.

  “We have some in the back. I can go grab it.”

  I waved down Alexis, who was running the tasting bar, and asked her to keep an eye on the register for me.

  “Sure thing,” she said.

  * * *

  I found a couple boxes of Bai Hao tins in the stock room, along with Landon, who was leaning against the wall, looking at his phone.

  “Hey,” he said. “Need something?”

  “Some Bai Hao.” I reached up to grab them—they were on the top shelf, where Landon couldn’t reach without the step stool—and stacked a few extras on the pushcart to get stocked later.

  “Cool.” Landon slipped his phone into his pocket and stood up. He wrapped his fingers into my belt loops and pulled himself closer to me. I lifted the boxes of tea overhead so he wouldn’t bump into them. “You work too hard.”

  “I was just helping someone.”

  “You’re always helping someone.” He smiled. “That was the first thing I noticed about you.”

  * * *

  I met Landon my first day at Rose City—Mr. Edwards introduced us while he gave me a tour—but we got to know each other when we worked the Rose City Teas booth at Portland Pride, serving a bright pink iced hibiscus tisane.

  Landon had been to Pride before—he came out as bi when he was in middle school—but it was my first time. I had only come out to my parents like two weeks before.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Landon told me. “We don’t bite.”

  “I’m not. I’m gay,” I said. “It’s just my first time is all.”

  “Oh, really?” He smiled at me.

  Landon Edwards had the kind of smile that could shake a comet from its orbit and send it plummeting toward the sun.

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “Cool. I’m bi.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  We spent the whole day talking—interrupted by my running to get more bags of ice or jugs of water.

  “You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said. “Alexis and I can help too.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  Landon smiled at me again.

  “Well, thanks. At least drink some tea and cool off.”

  That was before my hair was cut, when I had a big halo of curly black hair, which did get pretty warm in the summer.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Landon leaned up to kiss me, and then his hands went from my belt loops to the small of my back. I kissed him with my lips closed, but then he started to add some tongue, and to squeeze my butt, and I leaned away.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’ve gotta go back out there. I can’t . . .”

  “Can’t what?”

  I swallowed and glanced at the open stockroom door. “I can’t have an erection on the job.”

  Landon smirked again—he had the most charming smirk in the world—and let me go. “Sorry. But we haven’t done that in a while.”

  “I know.” I thought back to what Dad and I had talked about. Communicating. I took a deep breath and said, “But I need us to take things a little slow. Okay? You’re my first boyfriend.”

  Landon got this smile on his face. “What?”

  “What what?”

  “You called me your boyfriend.”

  Red Alert.

  “Um. Is that okay?”

  Landon gave me this look.

  Another comet fell toward the inner solar system.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay. Boyfriends.” He bit his lip. “Sometimes I forget this is all new to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We’ll go at your pace. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Landon gave me one last peck on the lips.

  “Later?”

  “Later.”

  * * *

  “Darius. Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  Mr. Edwards’s office was a little nook tucked behind the tasting room, glass-walled and glass-doored but with exposed brick for the other two walls. The brick was covered in maps of tea-growing regions across the world, and photos (including some cute ones of Landon when he was younger), and little sticky notes with to-do lists on them. Mr. Edwards always drew little squares as bullets for his to-do lists, so he could check them off with a flourish.

  “You’ve been here for thre
e months now, so I wanted to check in. Are you still happy?”

  “Yeah! Yes. Definitely. I’m learning a lot.”

  “Good. The team likes you.”

  “I like working with them.”

  “And obviously Landon likes you too.”

  I blushed.

  “I mean . . .”

  Mr. Edwards winked at me. “Well, you’ve become a valuable part of our operation. So I was thinking. How would you like to turn your internship into something more official?”

  “Like what?”

  Mr. Edwards laughed. “Like a job.”

  “I thought I had to be eighteen, though.”

  “You do for some things, like operating the machinery. But you’re already basically working. Way more than an intern is supposed to. You deserve to get paid.”

  I played with the hem of my shirt and studied the white stripes on my Sambas.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I couldn’t help it.

  I smiled.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  I was filling the dishwasher after closing when Landon came and hugged me from behind.

  “Hey,” he said. “Did my dad talk to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You said yes, right? I told him you would.”

  “You did?”

  “He talked to me about it last night.”

  I closed the dishwasher and turned around.

  “I still can’t believe it.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Landon wrapped his hands around my neck. “You’ll be awesome.”

  “Thank you.”

  He kissed me, and I kissed him. He giggled when I nuzzled into his neck, and sighed when I stroked under his chin with the back of my hand.

  “My boyfriend,” he whispered, and I smiled against his mouth.

  Landon stepped toward me, which pushed me up against the dishwasher. It beeped shut, but we ignored it and kept kissing. I angled my hips so I wasn’t pressing against Landon, because I didn’t want him to feel how excited I was. Not after I just told him I wanted us to take things slowly.