Love Edy (32 page)

From across the room Edy caught Hassan
watching her. He followed her with his gaze as she continued
preparing her plate. Fruit. A bit of toast. Jam. Edy took a
seat.

“Plate’s a little thin,” her mother said.
“Trying to lose weight, I take it. Not that I blame you.”

Edy gripped her fork, poised to spear the
smoked salmon. A thousand thoughts went through her mind, of being
too thin, too fat, too broad in the hips for classical ballet. She
strained against a false image.

Edy wondered if her mother had never felt
it. The gnawing hole of imperfection. The aching doubt. It seemed
both possible and impossible.

“Edy’s beautiful already,” Hassan said.
“Perfect.”

When her mother took him in with a raised
brow, Hassan met her with an even stare.

“Is that so?” she said.

“It is.” He sat up straighter.

Edy looked from one to the other. What was
happening? And why?

“Yeah” Mason said. “Everyone says that.” He
looked around for affirmation. “Edy’s perfect. Gorgeous. A real
stand-out. Right boys?”

“No doubt,” Matt chimed in.

The table turned to Lawrence.

“Well?” her mother said.

“She’s a’ight.” Lawrence shoved a cluster of
berries in his mouth. His eyes studied the stripes of the
tablecloth, the swirls of a wooden floor, the particles of air,
perhaps.

“Careful, Lawrence,” her mother said. “Much
more and she’ll swoon.”

Edy snorted on a laugh. It caught just
there, between her nose and her throat, thrashing and desperate for
relief. She shook with the force of the laugh, tears welling with
the effort. It burst like water from a detonated dam, spewing until
she trickled to nothing.

When it abated, even her mother smiled.

“I had a fascinating conversation with Rani
the other day,” she said, upturn of her mouth steady despite the
movement. “And it was all about how much you each have grown. How
you’re all shaping into such handsome men. And how Edy, pretty as
she’s become, how Edy must incite such jealousy from the girls with
the way each of you hover.”

Their grins melted. Like icing on a too-hot
cake, they thinned and slipped away, until only Edy’s mother
remained amused. “I wonder, sometimes. Which of you it’ll be.” Her
gaze skated like a stone skipping pond water from one boy to
another to another. “So many years together,” she said. “Of shared
smiles. Secret moments. Memories.
Exhales.
And now this. My
daughter, the unexpected beauty. I wonder. Who will it happen to?
The moment of realization, of dawning understanding, that the
fervor driving your loyalty, your need to protect her has nothing
to do with the past and everything with the future you want?”

She tsk-tsked, mirth like a festival in
bottomless brown eyes, full of lights and color and joy as her gaze
danced from one to the next. Mason. Matthew. Lawrence. Hassan.
Hassan, a little too long.

“I could force it from you,” her mother
said, eyes like two gaping maws of laughter as she pushed away from
the table. “But I like a good show. So, we wait. For now.”

Her mother nodded toward the invisible
staffer in the corner, the one who took notes at family meetings,
poured cereal, and wiped her behind, apparently. Together, the two
disappeared and the table exploded.

Mason yelling about Hassan’s recklessness,
about attempting to provoke Edy’s mother, Lawrence yelling about
the stupidity of having a party in her room, Matt yelling about
their endless attempts to protect them and their relationship,
while Hassan warned them to stay out of his business.

Edy slipped up to her room, unnoticed, and
locked away the shouts. She hadn’t known that her mother thought
her beautiful.

She hadn’t known that she cared either
way.

Twenty-Two

Edy sat at the “it” table for lunch. Ushered
over with a wave from Alyssa, she sat wedged between the two girls.
None of their boys had arrived yet. As she settled in with a
leftover bowl of lukewarm curry, the two peppered her for details
about the party. Was it true that they hung up balloons? Streamers?
True that her mother walked in on them half naked? They guffawed at
Edy’s weak nods, faces contorting with the pain of reckless
laughter.

The news spread up and down their table like
a wave, scissoring back again when the boys arrived.

“All of you stripped down? In Edy’s room?”
Sandra Jacobs said from the other end. Scandalized laughter
rippled.

No one answered. And while Edy knew that
neither Alyssa nor Jessica thought much of the boys coming to her
room, she knew what the others would make of it. Would they whisper
it in corridors? Strip it down to its seediest meaning before
stringing it up on a flagpole for all to see? Parade her through
the streets of Rome, the Cleopatra of South End?

“Only me,” Hassan said. “Hoping to get lucky
and failed.” He shrugged.

And there it was. The silence was something
like tendrils of smoke, curling from every pore of Sandra Jacobs,
venom as toxic as carbon monoxide

“So, why try?” Sandra spat. “Why grovel
behind some homely girl artificially inflated by the company she
keeps? Why chase her? Watch her the way you do? You look stupid and
everyone says it behind your back. That of all the girls you could
have, you pick the plainest, dullest—”

She couldn’t see the way he clutched his
spork, all five fingers invested in the act. Nor could she see the
set of his mouth, set with a line so deep and sealed it could have
been tarred.

“Hassan, don’t—” Edy reached for him,
missing entirely as he leapt from his seat. In two steps he was at
Sandra’s side. He dropped into the seat behind her, attached to
another table.

No one could hear what he said to her. They
could only go off the sudden blanching of her skin and the pained
pinch of her face. When he withdrew, Hassan met her gaze straight
on. “Do we understand each other?”

Sandra nodded once, sharp, and
swallowed.

Hassan rose. But instead of returning to the
chicken tacos on his plate and back to his friends, he made for the
door, picking up speed until he punched it on the way out.

Edy flew after him, down a narrow walkway
lined with gaping eyes, under the stare of florescent lights and
disapproving adult frowns. A burst through double doors later and
she was colliding with his backside like a bike on the tail end of
an interstate pile-up.

“What did you tell her?” Edy demanded, taken
aback by the desperation in her voice, scalded by the heat of her
fears. “That you still had feelings for her? That you’re torn? That
your summer with her was—was—”

Her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. She knew
Sandra had been one of the girls he’d had that summer. Would have
guessed it if she and her friends hadn’t made a point of announcing
it anytime they were within a mile of each other. But until that
moment, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider what it meant: that
he’d wrapped arms around her, pressed lips to her, given her the
heat and strength of his body, shared himself with her in ways he
wouldn’t with Edy, even if she had wanted him to.

She turned away from him, eyes flooding.

“Edy . . .”

Her name could have been a sigh, an
afterthought; a natural course of his breathing, in and out, in and
out, so natural was the sound on his lips.

Still, he’d given others more. Maybe even
promised them more.

“Edy,” he repeated. “Look at me. I can’t . .
.”

She turned to see him rake a hand through
his hair, grip a fistful, and throw his head back.

“I don’t want to do this now. Not like this.
I want to—” Hassan hesitated.

And then she knew. Knew that whatever he’d
said to Sandra would be a source of tremendous pain, a throbbing
ache impossible to heal or mask or alleviate or bear. Impossible to
ignore.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me right
now.”

His lips parted. “I said I loved you. That I
absolutely always have. And that if she opened her eyes, she could
see that.”

Edy gasped. But she admonished her heart,
chided it for leaping with the sudden, unexpected words. Of course
he loved her. Mason loved her. Matt loved her. Even Lawrence did.
She loved them, too.

“Not like that,” Hassan said, breathless.
“Not like that for a long time.”

Her throat clogged. Disbelief, still, after
all that had happened.

He kissed her, gentle as a feather’s stroke
before sealing it with a fire’s brand. She was weightless with him
and floating. He backed her to the lockers and pinned, searing her
mouth with a groan.

Edy’s heart thumped-thumped between her ears
as his hand cascaded, first high on her ribs, then low on her
waist, until hunger had him squeezing her backside. She pushed into
him, marrying their limbs in a tangle of heat shattered as the
warning bell rang.

Hassan pulled away with a sigh.

Edy pulled him again. “I love you too,” she
said softly, shyly.

The hall clogged with students. Guys wolf
whistled at them. Girls gaped.

Hassan wrapped his arms around her and they
pressed forehead to forehead. “Tell me we can figure this out.”

They could. They had to. In the end, growing
up worked in their favor. That was their trump card and it meant
they could love and marry whoever, no matter the fallout behind
it.

“We can figure this out,” Edy said.
“Together.”

~~~

Since they’d been old enough to ride the
subway alone, Hassan and Edy had taken to walking the streets of
downtown Boston during the holiday season. The mere mention of
shopping on Black Friday was enough to make her squeal, but as was
the case with all Edy-plus-Hassan traditions, she suspected he
enjoyed it more than he let on.

Christmas time between the Phelps family and
the Pradhans wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. They were
Hindu, yes, but as Hindus they believed that God had many names and
that all faiths offered truths man should seek. Not only were they
not offended by Christmas, but they embraced it, recognizing Jesus
as a Prema-Avatar or divine embodiment of love. Nonetheless, theirs
was the house that remained dark at the helm of the season, so they
embraced the spirit of Christmas without all its trappings—sort
of.

Edy made homemade cocoa in a too-bright,
starkly gleaming, and freshly remodeled kitchen as she waited for
Hassan to arrive. It was the day after Thanksgiving, their day for
festivities downtown. What began as a reckless search for presents
following Hassan’s propensity for procrastination each year
eventually became an accepted part of their seasonal plans. On that
day, they would purchase gifts for each other apart before shopping
for the others together.

When Hassan stepped into the Phelps’
kitchen, he wore a black, fitted thermal and blue jeans, which
peeked out from an open parka. Even still, Edy saw hints of raw
power beneath, contours curving and unyielding in their hardness.
She went to him, slipping arms around a dime-sized waist and
gliding hands up a broadening back. He was soap. And heat. And
everything that was right. She wasn’t sure if she could let him go.
Maybe shopping could wait.

He pressed lips to her forehead, stole a
glimpse at the door, and pressed his lips to hers. He could part
her there without trying, with only a hint that parting her was
what he wanted. She returned his gentle kiss with a flood of heat,
intense and perfect and
right
.

He pulled away with a sigh.

“Parents?” he said.

“Mom’s traveling. Dad’s shopping.”

He returned to their kiss with two hands at
her waist, mouth steady, deliberate, thorough its search.

The house escaped her. Breathing escaped
her. She was lips and hips he insisted on touching, and oh my, he
was too much. Too much of the right thing, of all things, of one
thing she rocked hard against him, eager and breathless to
have.

He disappeared.

He stood a million miles away from her with
his back pressed to the kitchen counter, chest rising and
falling.

“What?” Edy said, though she knew.

His gaze slipped over her, memorizing.

“Nothing,” he said and went for the
cocoa.

Edy couldn’t shake the notion that he’d
scrambled from her every time kissing got intense and that he
scrambled from her now. She wished she had no idea why, but the
truth was he was still one of her boys.

“You always make the cocoa so bitter,” he
said with a wince.

“And you don’t make it at all.”

She heaped a few weighty spoons of sugar
into his cup and turned to fix her own. With her back turned, she
knew he’d heap in a few more.

He slurped loudly.

“What do I get your mom?” he asked.

“The election. Can you fix it for her?” She
took a seat at the nook. Hassan pulled up nearby.

Edy lowered her gaze to the table’s floral
arrangement. Nestled into a grooved bamboo vase, the bouquet was an
odd assortment of green roses, lotus pods, Kermit mums, and
dandelion clocks, none of which she would have known without Rani’s
green thumb.

Hassan plucked a dandelion from the lot and
leaned forward, dog tags dangling from his neck. He blew a gust of
flower into Edy’s face, white clocks shooting and swirling till she
snorted and sputtered from the inhalation.

“Hassan!” she cried, batting in vain.

He watched; face solemn, as if bearing
witness to the loss of her sanity. When she stilled, allowing
herself but a final giggle, he held out a hand to her.

“Hurry,” he said. “I want time enough to
take you ice skating.”

They spent the day in the stores that dotted
Downtown Crossing, shopping, peering in at department store window
displays, buying gifts, and, unbelievably, talking with the handful
of strangers that recognized Hassan. Afterward, with their bags in
the back of his Mustang and a parking ticket that would have given
Ali an embolism, they took to the ice on Frog Pond, skating arm in
arm until sunset.