53 Letters For My Lover (36 page)

“Hi. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. I’m David,” he says.

“Shayda,” I reply.

It’s been four months, and my face is skinnier now from the surgery and chemo.

Don’t make the connection. Don’t make the connection.

“You look familiar. Have we met before?” he says.

“Troy! How nice to see you.” Hafez’s voice makes me snatch my hand away from Troy.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Hafez looks around the table. “But I’d like to have my wife back now.”

“Of course,” laughs Henry. “I’ve been taking up all her time.”

“It was lovely meeting you, Shayda,” says Grace.

I say my goodbyes while Hafez catches up with Troy. If I could put seven oceans between the two of them, I would, but I wait, withering under David’s scrutiny, until Hafez escorts me back to our table.

“Almost time for the countdown.” Marjaneh points to the clock.

The music picks up and couples crowd to the dance floor. I take a deep breath, wishing Troy hadn’t come, my initial delight smothered by the weight of the masks we have to wear. David’s presence reminds me of the fake and phony that I am.

“They make quite the couple,” says Hafez.

“Who?”

He tilts his head to the dance floor.

A jolt of bitter jealousy rushes through me when I see Troy with Gabriella. The thought of watching him ring in the new year with her is unbearable.

“Come on, guys. What are you waiting for?” Jayne and Matt pull us from the chairs.

“I need a few minutes,” I say. “Hafez, why don’t you go with Marjaneh and Susan? I’ll join you in a bit.”

“You sure?” he asks. “You want me to get you something?”

“No. I just need to use the ladies room.”

I walk past the dance floor, trying to look as if it doesn’t matter that Gabriella has her arms around Troy, that she’s smiling at him with her perfect lips, flipping back her perfect hair. Her perfect breasts are pressed provocatively against him.

The restroom envelopes me in dark walls and soft lighting. I take a deep breath, thankful for the empty stalls. Everyone is counting down the minutes to midnight.

A half-choke escapes me.

Pull yourself together. Crying and smoky eyes don’t go together.

I look in the mirror, feeling washed out, faded, like I’m going to disappear. I turn my purse upside down on the counter. Mints, phone, keys, pen. A chic silver lipstick. My fingers close around it. Crushed Roses. Yes, that’s what I need. War paint.

The door opens, but I pay no attention as I swipe the rich crimson color over my lips. There. I put everything back in the purse and take a final look. That’s when our eyes meet. In the mirror.

My heart ceases and then picks up like a runaway train.

He followed me.

I swing around, wanting to scratch his eyes out. For showing up. For dancing with Gabriella. For turning me inside out.

I reach for the door, but he stops me, his eyes intent on my lips. He always liked this shade. I see the raw hunger in his gaze, the torment of separation, the yearning for relief. He hooks his arm around my waist, pulling me up against his chest, but I push him away. We stare at each other, neither one willing to back down.

I unbuckle his belt.

Is this what you want, Troy?

I kneel and unzip him.

The countdown begins. 10...9...8...7...

I put him in my mouth—his briefs, his aching, straining flesh, all of it, in one hungry swoop

...6...5...4...

I look at him, my mouth full of clothed cock.

Do you like that? Mmmmm. Can you hear the humming in the back of my throat?

...3...2...1...

Good.

I want it to resonate all the way through to your soul.

Outside, the world explodes with colorful streamers and confetti.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I straighten until my lips are a hair’s breadth away from his. The band starts playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as our mouths meet in a crushing kiss.

Then I open the door and walk out, leaving him in the restroom. With a big red ‘O’ around his briefs. Marked, dazed and thinking of no other woman but me. Perfect breasts or not.

January 3, 2001

“You need a good
spanking,” says Troy.

“You deserved it.” I lean back against the headboard. “You knew you’d be paired off with Gabriella. You knew all I could do was watch. And still you came. Without giving me a heads up.”

“All I could think about was seeing you again.” He shifts the pillow on my lap so he can look up at me. “You looked so beautiful in that dress, Shayda. Like a rose in a sea of black. My parents loved you.”

“They loved my speech. I’m not the one they have in mind for you, and I can’t say I blame them.” My fingers play with his hair. He has two whorls on the top of his head. His hair grows in circular patterns around them—one going clockwise, the other anticlockwise. “How long are they staying?”

“A couple of weeks.” He nuzzles my tummy. “We’ll have to meet here until they’re gone.”

“I don’t mind.” I look around the hotel room. It hasn’t changed much. “This is where it all began.”

“Hardly,” he replies. “It started long before this, when stars were mere particles in swirling clouds of dust. And every event since has conspired to bring us together.”

“You should go away more. It brings out the poet in you. Give me moreth!” I smile.

He tugs my hair, pulling my face down for a kiss.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. “And you know what else I missed?” He gets up. “I missed the chance to dance with you. It took me a while to...uh...recover, after you left me in that restroom. By the time I got back, you were nowhere to be seen.”

“The kids were home alone.”

“You ran away, Beetroot. Admit it.”

“Fine. If you admit that you wouldn’t have asked me to dance, even if I’d stayed.”

“You’re right. It would have been too obvious. I can’t hide the way I feel when you’re in my arms. But...” He turns on the radio. “You still owe me a dance.”

It feels so familiar, so right, the circle of his arms, his chin brushing the top of my head, our feet moving to an easy rhythm.

“I like this,” I say, when a slow, moving ballad comes on.

“It’s a band called Bread. ‘Baby I’m-a Want You’.”

“We’re dancing to a band called ‘Bread’?”

“Shhh. Just listen.”

I let my hands slide down his back, following the hollow of his spine. My lips brush his collar bone.

“Kiss my neck and I’m throwing you on the bed,” he growls.

“Neanderthal.” I say. “I should have known. You knocked me down the first time we met.”

“You make it sound like you need insurance against me.”

“I do. You’re dangerous. And you leave bruises. And your words disrobe me, and your kisses destroy me.”

“Works both ways.” He massages my waist. “Unbutton my shirt.”

“What?”

He takes my hands and puts them on his chest. “Undress me.”

I start working my way down slowly, one button at a time.

“What’s this?” I ask. “Did you get another tattoo?”

“Keep going.”

When I reach the hem, I push the shirt off his shoulders and gasp.

Running horizontally across his entire chest is a tattoo of sharped, spiked barbed wire, much like the one around his biceps, except with his arms down, it looks like one solid line splicing through.

“I thought you shouldn’t be the only one with interesting battle scars,” he says, shrugging off his shirt.

I run my fingers over the tattoo. He did this for me. To honor the zig-zag gashes where my breasts used to be.

“Your chest! Why would you do this? It’s not safe. Getting tattoos abroad.” I need words. Something, anything to hold back the dam of emotions surging through me. “You’re completely reckless, Troy! I don’t—”

He shuts me up with a knee-buckling kiss.

“I love you, Shayda,” he says. “I miss you everywhere I go. I want to see you turn your nose up at chapulines in Mexico. I want to walk Temple Street Market with you when I’m in Hong Kong. I want to share every sunrise and every sunset and every second in between with you. I want your laughter and your breath and your blood and your bones. You’re the one thing that centres my soul. I may circle the whole world, but you’ll always be home, Beetroot.”

I feel his heart racing under my fingers.

“Marry me, Shayda,” he says. “I couldn’t bear to see that look on your face again, that complete self-loathing when David showed up.”

Unplanned, unrehearsed, his speech catches us both by surprise.

Say yes!
The barbed wire tells me.

Don’t give up on us,
says Hafez.
Not when we’re so close.

You should find yourself a boyfriend,
says Maamaan.

It’s not nice to lose your family,
says Zain.

It’s like you’re going to prom,
says Natasha.

I’ve always wanted kids,
says Troy.
Always.

You know what happened to Zarrin,
says Baba.

I close my eyes.

It’s sunny, but I’m in bed and my bones are cold.

Grace and Henry come in, wearing hospital masks. They give me a bouquet of roses, thorns and all.
“You should have let him go, dear.”

“How could you keep it from me?”
asks Jayne.

I look out the window. Maamaan, Baba and Hossein are collecting fallen apples under the tree.

Natasha and Zain hold up a handmade card. Four stick figures with giant heads, torn in half.

Hafez cuts himself.
“Make sure Ma sees this, okay?”

They all stand around my bed, waiting.

Gabriella waits by the door. The blue-eyed baby in her arms starts to fade.

I take Troy’s hand.

Everyone disappears.

The Angel of Death walks in.

He wrangles me away from Troy.

No.

No more.

No more of living in the shadows.

If we base our decisions on all the things we’re afraid of, we would be paralyzed with fear.

I wrench myself away from the cold, deathly grip of despair, from all the worst-case scenarios, from guilt, from shame, from all the heavy chains that have shackled my soul. It’s time, time for me to make the journey of a thousand miles, time for me to take a leap of faith. I stand at the edge of an abyss and hesitate.

Fly, dammit, fly,
says Troy.

I smile and spread my wings, gliding, soaring, rising over a golden valley where lemon groves lie cradled in the warmest, softest earth.

Yes. I am home again. Because I choose love. I choose faith. And hope. And happiness. And dancing dust motes in the sunlight.

“Yes!” I open my eyes. “Yes, Troy.”

“Yes?” he blinks. “Yes?” He lets out a big whoop and crushes me. He totally, completely crushes me.

We start laughing—dizzy, giddy laughing.

“I don’t have the bloody ring,” he says.

“I don’t care.” Like any of that matters.

“Shayda Hijazi...no, no. Shit, I don’t know your maiden name.”

It’s so absurd, we laugh some more.

“Kazemi,” I reply. “It’s Shayda Kazemi.”

“Kazemi. Hijazi. Whatever the fuck it is.” He takes off the rosary around his neck and wraps it around my wrist. “Shayda-soon-to-be-Heathgate, if I could handcuff you to me for the rest of our lives, I would. But this will have to do for now. You are mine, bound to me, tied to me, from this day on. And don’t you forget it.”

I feel his rosary around my wrist, warmed by his skin, and I think of how far we’ve come.

The almost-touching of our toes in this room.

Lather on his face.

Red nail polish.

A hammock by the lake.

The clip-clop of a Scottish Clydesdale.

His nose between my chopsticks.

All these things, all these things, break open, like a bag of marbles, rolling and rattling down the corridors of my heart, a river of shiny, bright lanterns, illuminating the way.

“It’s true,” I say.

“What is?”

“What your grandmother said.”

It’ll bring you light in the dark.
It wasn’t the rosary she’d meant. It was love, pure and simple.

“It keeps the monsters at bay.” I smile. “I wish I had something for you.”

“Oh, but you do.”

“What? What can I give to you when you’ve already bound and tied yourself to me for life.” I trace the beautiful tattoo around his chest.

“Put on your red lipstick, Shayda. You make a hell of an ‘O’ with that. I’ll take that ring of eternity any day over gold and silver.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And finish the job this time, woman.”

I step out of
the revolving doors, my insides spinning. The wind feels icy as it hits my lungs, but I breathe deep. I feel like I’ve finally shed all the dark, dull layers that have weighed me down.

I call Hafez. It’s time to have the talk we postponed.

His phone goes straight to voice mail.

I hang up and start walking towards the car, knowing whatever happens, we’ll work through it together.