It was that weak smile that haunted him, and all the possibilities it conveyed. What was happening? What was she going through? Why hadn’t she reached out to him?
What was she going through? Because she was going through something—he could feel that much. They hadn’t spoken in days because of his and her maddening lives, but if she could speak to him without actually speaking what would she be saying?
Was she happy, at least?
He’d heard things about the dance team. Odd things. Weird whispers about dens and helpmates and walking the walk. Hassan had problems of his own though, what with clear tape constantly placed all over his locker so he’d look like a jackass, or his third Jansport backpack now stolen and switched out for a Dora the Explorer one (the other two had been Pikachu and a Disney Princesses tote). Plus, there were the half dozen times he’d already worn Gatorade, got Gatorade for the veterans, or had his cell phone ransacked so a bunch of numbers were rearranged. These were pranks though and his teammates’ way of ensuring he understood his place. He was a rookie, and likely to catch a little more hell than the rest, given that he’d come with so much fanfare.
Hassan and Edy were able to text, but truly, by the time he finished with his daily schedule, showered, and returned to his room it was almost always close to curfew time and the ache in his muscles fought with fatigue for which would get the most attention.
Even their messages were clipped. Brisk hellos. A few I love yous. More often than not, night after night consisted of the same loop-the-loops where he mentioned a long day and she mentioned a long day before the two promised to talk tomorrow.
But talking wasn’t what they did. Texting was what they did. He felt crazy for being irritated by it, but otherwise couldn’t shake the feeling that something, somehow was happening to the two of them without his permission.
And how the hell was she? For the first time, he didn’t know.
Hassan and Edy had exchanged schedules and discovered they had the same freshman English class together. It gave him the idea to hustle there early, hauling ass from Accounting over at the Business Complex through campus and over where his GPS said English classes were being held. He earned a handful of hoots and cheers as others recognized him on his sprint, but Edy was his only thought.
He made it to class before her and stood outside the door like he used to in high school. Despite the crowd, he saw Edy, with her head down and ponytail up, rushing through the swarm as if she was about to be late. She had another girl with her that helped run interference, a willowy, undersized girl who blocked so cleanly they could have made a spot for her on his team. They were at the door in no time. Edy looked at him, silently pleading in some way he couldn’t decipher, and went past without a word.
Hassan blinked, pretty sure that hadn’t happened.
But when he turned, there was Edy taking a seat towards the back of the auditorium, then making slow work of unpacking her belongings as the girl who’d come with her shot off into the hall.
Hassan’s eyes narrowed to nothing. He inhaled. He exhaled. Still, the image stirred more fury than he could control. His gaze snapped to her. He watched, but almost immediately decided that he couldn’t play her game. He didn’t do ignoring people. He didn’t do watching and waiting. He marched over and grabbed the problem by the collar.
Hassan dropped into the seat next to her.
“That… did not just happen, right? You didn’t just pretend not to know me,” he said.
Edy looked at him with unmistakable alarm in her eyes. Whatever organizing she’d been doing of her books and supplies came to a halt as Hassan finally, finally had her undivided attention.
“No,” she said weakly, her voice a broken whisper.
“Then what?” he demanded, a little louder than he’d meant to. “Was your greeting so low, I missed it? Were you saving it for the class? Or was that something else no one can see?”
Her face crumpled and her shoulders came up in that way that meant she was embarrassed, incredibly so, but the idea of anyone being able to make her pretend not to know him did horrible things to him. Things he had to back away from.
“Just tell me what that was,” he said quietly.
Edy studied him for another quiet moment, pretty eyes sweeping his face in vulnerability, shoulders drifting down little by little.
She was still his Cake and he still wanted to help. He knew offering her money outright would get him told off, even if she needed it. He’d come prepared to do battle with her pride, but then she’d pretended not to know him and he’d lost it.
A few of the people ushering in glanced their way, some in their seats outright turned to watch.
“You have a fucking nose problem, brother. Let me fix it for you,” Hassan said.
Edy’s hand dropped onto his arm and it felt like a burst of warm water. He wanted to drown in it.
“Don’t,” she said softly.
Not this shit again. “Why are you whispering?” he said.
Edy glanced around, as if the walls had ears and tongues to wag.
“I can’t talk to you,” she said. “I can’t talk to any guy. You know this. I just got in trouble for talking to a guy. I can’t…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“That’s bullshit,” Hassan said. But just as soon as he’d uttered it, he remembered his own circumstances and how he’d become the water boy for the vets. He looked around, as if he were suddenly in on this madness. “For how long?”
She shrugged. Then switched over to Punjabi. “Until I get out of the den.”
“The den?” Hassan echoed.
“It’s where we sleep at night,” Edy said.
Hold on. What?
“Cake,” Hassan said. But then he wasn’t sure which way to go. Part of him forever needed to protect her and wanted to drag her from this place. They could start all over somewhere else, doing football and dance. But then he looked at her, really looked at her. This was the girl who had saved him from getting shot. She’d grown up with four football players, and jostled rough and tumble through the years. She’d stared down a gunman and saved his life, instead of vice versa. She’d told their parents who they were and what their intentions were towards each other. This girl could take whatever the den was, plus more. This girl was truly fierce and he owed it to her to treat her as such.
But then he remembered something. “You just got in trouble for speaking to another guy… But you can’t talk to me?”
She shot him a single desperate look. When she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
A squat, slump-shouldered man with a shining bald spot at the center of his head entered the classroom and rushed to the front as if someone was chasing him. He proceeded to rattle off a long list of things and people he didn’t care about: the Kardashians, summer vacations, weather, pets, pop music, incendiary devices, or feelings, apparently. Writing about any of them would earn them an ‘F’ on their paper.
“Incendiary devices?” muttered one guy to the left of Edy.
Hassan pulled a sheet of paper from his notebook and a pen, making a great effort to stay calm. Whoever the guy was, he wasn’t important. He decided to focus on what was.
WHEN CAN I SEE YOU? he wrote and handed it to her.
She hesitated. Stared at the sheet. For one wild moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. AFTER A GAME, MAYBE TWO.
Okay. Okay, fine. He was busy, too. Real busy. Classes, practice, school work, more school work. He had plenty to focus on right now. He’d miss her, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t have a ridiculous amount of options for keeping busy.
He began to draw mindlessly on the paper. After a moment, he realized it was a sketch of that goddamned Pikachu he was creating. He took out another sheet of paper, ignoring her questioning stare, and started up another conversation.
ARE YOU OKAY? DO YOU NEED CASH OR ANYTHING?
She stared at his question so long he sighed. Before she handed over her response, he knew what it would be.
/> I’LL BE FINE.
Hassan wanted to argue with her. But he knew he wouldn’t win with a few scribbles on the paper as both of them pretended to listen in on the never-ending assortment of rules for their class.
He had another thought, and so pivoted to that.
IS THERE A WAY TO CHEAT? SO THEY WON’T KNOW THAT YOU’RE WITH ME? he wrote and slipped her the note.
Yeah, so he really did want to see her, so what? He missed her closeness, but he missed her friendship, too. That was as much her fault as his, he supposed. His practices had dropped from two-a-day to one with the approaching of school, but now he had mandatory study sessions, team meetings, position meetings, and intermittent changes to the playbook that required studying. On the off-chance that Hassan found a moment of freedom, he spent it with his teammates or in the gym shoring up on deficiencies, studying NFL running backs, or improving overall. He didn’t care what compliments he got. Good was never enough.
On their first day of practice, their coach had surprised Hassan by giving Paul an open chance to compete for his position. Hassan took that as a showing of uncertainty in what he could do, as a call for him to prove himself. By the end of the first day’s practice, the team had begun calling Paul ‘Slowpoke.’ Hassan felt confident he’d start. Judging by the anger and anguish coming from Paul’s direction, the other running back felt sure, too.
He knew that hanging with Edy before he’d ever even set foot in Death Valley would earn him shit from the guys. ‘He hadn’t earned the privilege of girls,’ was what team wide receiver, Xavier Wright said. He usually didn’t make much fuss over Hassan though, as tormenting Lawrence was his main course.
Hassan was willing to put up with Xavier and Cash and Freight and whoever else they threw at him if it earned him some time with his girl. Wasn’t that the point of being there in Baton Rouge? Surely she felt the same.
“Edy,” Hassan said and hated the uncertainty in his voice.
“Yes,” she answered quietly in Punjabi.
Hassan sighed. “Just… text me when you can.”
She nodded quickly, as if glad to be rid of him.
Most of the week passed without a word about when they could meet. Hassan’s pride wouldn’t allow him to bring it up again, but every minute, every second he allowed his mind to roam, an irritation settled in that he neither wanted nor could displace.
Edy had things to do. Fine. He was on the top collegiate football team in the nation. Who had more things to do than him? Truly, he didn’t have time to see her anyway. If she wanted to see him, he’d be busy. And he certainly wouldn’t break curfew for her like he had been thinking.
No, he certainly wouldn’t do that.
Edy texted him at two o’clock Thursday morning and asked if he was awake and could meet her. He hadn’t been awake before her text, but swallowed at the sight of it, already knowing he would break curfew for her. He would do this stupid thing right before his very first goddamned game and what a game it was. Virginia Tech. Edy. Virginia Tech.
His pulse skittered as he stared at his cell phone. When he crept from his bed, it was with an eye on Lawrence, knowing he woke at the slightest provocation. He didn’t disappoint when the mattress squeaked.
“Where are you going?” he asked when he saw Hassan throw on a pair of black gym shorts, silently cursing that his Mustang hadn’t arrived from Boston yet. What was taking his parents so long?
“Downstairs to get a soda.”
“You need to change for that?” Lawrence said.
Hassan exhaled. It wasn’t that he expected to trick his best friend and slip out undetected. It was that he expected to at least try.
“Give me a break, Lawrence, okay? Edy just wrote me and—”
He was up in an instant. “No. Hell no.”
“I haven’t spent time with her in weeks—”
“Sawn, we’re playing Virginia Tech on Saturday. Have you lost your mind?”
A little bit. Maybe. Yeah. He just needed to make sure that Edy was okay. He also needed… her steady hand? It was more than nervousness about the upcoming game though. It was about just wanting her near. That was their life. Always.
“Go back to sleep. I won’t involve you,” Hassan said and reached under the bed for a random pair of Jordans.
“Okay. You won’t involve me. Just the whole fucking team.” Lawrence sat up.
Hassan stared at him. He was right and he knew it. “Yet, the text message from Edy…”
Lawrence sighed. “Look, I know you didn’t get to see her much during the summer—”
“At all.”
“At all then.” Lawrence said. “And I know you aren’t always levelheaded, you don’t have much patience, and you’re impulsive as shit. But what good is coming here if you don’t allow yourself to get on the field? Give yourself a chance. Girls can wait. Edy can wait.”
Hassan scowled. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell her no.”
Lawrence rolled his eyes. “For the first time in your life. She might explode from the shock.”
Chapter Thirteen
Edy cast a fretful glance at her roommate. She made sure her iPhone’s vibrate option was on and tucked the device under her pillow. That way, if it went off and she was too sleepy to hear it, the vibrations through her skull might carry some resonance. Maybe.
“He said he couldn’t break curfew,” Edy said. “I know he would have been here if there was any other way, but for him, it wasn’t an option.”
Naomi looked as disappointed as she felt. “Maybe you should tell him that you have no idea when you’ll get another time.”
After all, it was the first night they’d been allowed to sleep in their own rooms. Tamela told them that they’d be permitted personal time in preparation for the game and they should use it wisely. The second they could bolt from the imposing upperclassman’s presence, Edy texted her boyfriend. When she did so, it was with shaking hands, knowing the older girl would be absolutely disappointed. After all, she was the most promising freshman, the most solid on technique, the most insistent on applying exacting artistry. Even Tamela gave her grudging compliments, though they came with a thoughtful frown. Just that night, Edy found out why.
“You really are talented, Boston,” she’d said while they were still crowded into the one bedroom apartment, otherwise known as the den, that they slept in each and every night. “Don’t fuck yourself over with that Pradhan.”
It was as if she’d been wedged in the airplane bathroom with them or rolling in the sheets at the hotel. It was as if she knew about the little worry niggling in the back of Edy’s brain: the little worry that threatened to become a big one.
“You’re as good at dancing as he is at football. You owe yourself to seeing it through,” she’d said. It was something that Rani would have said in Edy’s old life and she choked unexpectedly at the captain’s words.
Seeing it through. What did that mean for Edy? Four years of college and a dance major, followed by endless auditions and the hope of joining a company? What if she could join one now, would she?
Naomi looked at her with wide, doleful, sympathetic eyes. “We should probably just get some sleep,” she said. “Lord knows rest is hard to come by.”
She was right, of course. So, Edy shut off the light, snuggled into bed, and tried to drift away. Exhaustion eeked through her limbs, tangling with a melancholy of ache and homesickness. She saw dance and missed Boston, Dunberry Street, and her family with every breath she took. She missed Hassan and realized that, for the first time, they were disconnected. But they were adjusting, adjusting to whatever it was that Baton Rouge promised, all while hoping whatever that happened to be was enough to make up for what they’d lost.
When the tears came, Edy credited them to exhaustion and loneliness. All summer, their parents had kept her and Hassan apart. A thousand miles away, others conspired to do the same. How long would it last? Worst still, why did the silence of their separation echo so harshly? Frightened to think
of what it meant, Edy squeezed her eyes shut and reviewed Saturday’s halftime show in her mind in the hope sleep would soon claim her, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts off Hassan or off the arranged marriage he tried his damnedest to ignore, but which his parents—mother especially—refused to let him escape. A big part of him just wanted the freedom to make decisions for himself, but another part, she supposed, expected to marry her one day.
Then what? Children? Lots of them? She knew from their childhood talks that he wanted a brood of his own, like the Dysons. What concessions would she have to make to give him that wish? What part of herself and her dreams would she have to give up in order to help him meet his? And while she was busy cutting years off of her dancing career becoming a wife and a mother, what would he sacrifice?
He wasn’t even willing to break curfew for her.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday afternoon, just before the team boarded their bus for the local hotel that would house them until after the game, Coach named his starters with Hassan among them. Paul choked a sob in his throat that no one missed. When Freight tried to clap him on the back in encouragement, he shoved at him and muttered something about being part of the Pradhan entourage.
While the other starting freshmen were beyond elated, Lawrence going so far as to brandish a rare smile, a sullenness settled into Hassan. He couldn’t stop thinking of Paul and that sound he’d made. Of how disappointed he must’ve been, of what this all meant for the other boy’s future in football.
Hassan checked into his room all brooding and silent, but determined not to spoil Lawrence’s debut elation. Under normal circumstances, he would have been running plays through his head endlessly, but now he couldn’t. Hadn’t he heard that the other boy had a baby on the way? Maybe this year could have been a breakout for him if Hassan hadn’t come along. Maybe he would’ve been able to support a family by entering the draft and getting picked up. He couldn’t stop the maybes. It was only when Lawrence told him that he had a call on the bedroom’s phone that the merry-go-round ceased in his head.
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