I didn’t think I was doing the right thing by ignoring him again, I really didn’t. I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have all the answers. I cared about Ocean, and in my own, confusing way, I was trying to protect him. I was trying to protect the both of us. I wanted to go back to being acquaintances; I wanted us to be kind to each other and call it a day.
We were sixteen, I thought.
This would pass.
Ocean would go to prom with a nice girl with an easily pronounced name and I would move on, literally, when my dad inevitably got a higher-paying job elsewhere and would announce, proudly, that we’d be moving to an even better city, a better neighborhood, a better future.
It would be fine. Or something akin to fine.
The only trouble with my plan, of course, was that Ocean did not agree with it.
I showed up to Mr. Jordan’s class on Monday, but I almost certainly failed that particular session because I said nothing, all period, and for two reasons:
1. I was still getting over the inexplicable heat in my head, and
2. I was trying not to draw attention to myself.
I didn’t look at Ocean in class. I didn’t look at anyone. I pretended not to pay attention because I hoped that Ocean would take the hint and stop talking to me.
It was a stupid plan.
I’d only just escaped the classroom, and I was darting down a deserted corridor when he found me. He caught my arm and I turned around. He looked nervous. A little pale. I wondered what I looked like to him.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” I said.
He still hadn’t let go of me; his fingers were wrapped around my forearm like a loose bracelet. I stared at his hand. I didn’t actually want him to let go, but when he saw me staring he startled. Dropped my arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For whatever I did,” he said. “I did something wrong, didn’t I? I messed something up.”
My heart sank. Flatlined. He was so nice. He was so nice and he was making this so hard.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “I promise.”
“No?” But he still looked nervous.
I shook my head. “I really have to go to class, okay?” I turned to go, and he said my name like a question. I looked back.
He stepped closer. “Can we talk? At lunch?”
I studied his eyes, the pain he was trying to hide, and I realized then that things had gone too far. I’d let things get too far and now I couldn’t just ignore him and hope he would go away. I couldn’t be that cruel. No, I’d actually have to tell him—in clear, focused sentences—what was about to happen. That we needed to stop this, whatever it was.
So I said okay.
I told him where my tree was. I told him to meet me there.
The thing I had no way of anticipating, of course, was that someone else would already be waiting for me.
Yusef was leaning against my tree.
Yusef.
Wow, I’d nearly forgotten about Yusef.
I still thought he was a really good-looking guy, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered about him once or twice in the last couple of weeks, but, for the most part, he’d slipped my mind. I had no reason to keep thinking about him, because I so rarely saw him around school.
And I had no idea what he was doing here.
I wanted him to leave, but Ocean hadn’t yet arrived and I was already nervous enough about the conversation we were about to have; I didn’t want to have to deal with asking Yusef to go somewhere else, too. Plus, it didn’t seem fair for me to lay claim to public property. So I pulled out my phone, made a sharp left, and started texting Ocean to meet me elsewhere.
Yusef called my name.
I looked back, surprised, the unfinished text message still unsent. “Yeah?”
“Where are you going?” He walked over. He was smiling.
Maybe on a different day, at a different time, I would’ve been interested in his smile. Today, I was far too distracted.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m looking for someone.”
“Oh,” he said, and followed my gaze.
I was squinting out toward the quad, where most of the student body gathered for lunch every day. The quad was, as a result, a place I nearly always avoided, so I didn’t really know what I was searching for as I looked around. But Yusef was still talking, and I was suddenly annoyed, which wasn’t fair. Yusef couldn’t have known the deep preoccupation of my mind. Nothing he’d said to me was offensive—it wasn’t even unwelcome—it was just bad timing.
“I wanted to come back and check on my tree,” he was saying. “I was hoping you’d be here.”
“That’s nice,” I said, still frowning into the distance.
Yusef tilted his head into my line of sight. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No,” I said, “I just—”
“Hey.”
I spun around. My sudden relief was replaced, in an instant, by apprehension. Ocean had arrived, but he looked confused. He was staring at Yusef, who was standing too close to me.
I put five feet between us.
“Hey,” I said, and tried to smile. Ocean turned in my direction, but he still seemed uncertain.
“This is who you were looking for?” Yusef again. He sounded surprised.
It took a concerted effort to keep from telling Yusef to go away, that this was obviously a bad time for small talk, that he clearly had no idea how to read social cues—
“Hey man, what’s going on,” Yusef said, the question almost like a statement, and reached forward to shake Ocean’s hand. Except he didn’t shake it, exactly. He did that thing that guys do sometimes, when they pull each other in and do a kind of hug-slap. “You know Shirin?” he said. “Small world.”
Ocean allowed the gesture, accepting Yusef’s friendly bro-hug involuntarily, and I was guessing only because he was a nice, polite person. His eyes, however, looked almost angry. Ocean didn’t say a word to Yusef. Didn’t offer an answer or an explanation.
“Hey, um,” I said, “I need to talk to my friend alone, okay? We’re going to go somewh—”
“Oh, okay,” Yusef said. “I’ll be quick, then. I just wanted to know if you’ll be fasting next week. My family always throws a massive iftar on the first night and you and your brother—and your parents, if they’re up for it—are welcome to come.”
What the hell?
“How did you know I have a brother?”
Yusef frowned. “Navid is in most of my classes. I put two and two together after the last time we talked. He didn’t tell you?”
“Okay, um”—I glanced at Ocean, who looked suddenly like he’d been punched in the gut—“yeah, I’ll have Navid get in touch with you. I have to go.”
I only vaguely remembered saying a proper goodbye after that. Mostly I remembered the look on Ocean’s face as we walked away.
He looked betrayed.
I told Ocean I didn’t know where to go, that I wanted to speak with him somewhere quiet and private but the library was the only place I could think of and you’re not allowed to talk in there, not really, and he said, “My car is in the parking lot.”
That was all he said. I followed him to his car in silence, and it wasn’t until we were sitting inside, doors closed on our own little world, that he looked at me and said, “Are you”—he sighed and turned suddenly away, studied the floor—“are you dating that guy? Yusef?”
“What? No.”
He looked up.
“No. I’m not dating anyone.”
“Oh.” His shoulders slumped. We were sitting in the back seat of his car, facing each other, and he leaned against the door behind him, rested his head against the window. He looked worn-out. He ran a hand down the length of his face, and finally, finally, he said, “What happened? What happened between now and the last time we talked?”
“I think maybe I had too much time to think about it.”
He looked heartbroken. There was no other way to put it. And he sounded heartbroken when he said, “You don’t want to be with me.”
Ocean was so straightforward. Everything about him felt honest and decent and I really admired him for it. But right now his honesty was making this conversation harder than it needed to be.
I’d had a plan.
I’d had it all worked out in my head; I’d hoped to tell a story, paint a picture, illustrate very, very clearly why this whole thing was doomed, and why we should avoid hurtling toward the inevitable and painful dissolution of whatever it was we were building here.
But all my carefully thought-out reasons felt suddenly small. Stupid. Impossible to articulate. Looking into his eyes had flipped tables in my head; my thoughts were now tangled and disorganized and I didn’t know how else to do this but to throw my feelings at him in no particular order.
Still, I was taking too long. I was silent for too long.
I was fumbling.
Ocean sat up, sat forward. He leaned in and I felt my chest tighten. I could suddenly smell him—his particular, familiar scent—everywhere. I was sitting in his car, I realized, and it had only just occurred to me to look around, to get a sense of where we were, who he was. I wanted to catalog the moment, capture it in words and pictures. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to remember him.
I’d never wanted to remember anyone before.
“Hey,” he said, but he said it softly. I don’t know what he saw in my face, what he’d caught in my eyes or in my expression but he seemed suddenly different. Like maybe he’d realized that I’d fallen, hard, and that this wasn’t easy for me, that I didn’t actually want to walk away.
I met his eyes.
He touched my cheek, his fingers grazing my skin, and I gasped. Leaned back. It was unexpected. I overreacted. I was suddenly breathing too hard, my head full of fire again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said. “Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because it won’t work.” I was flustered. I sounded stupid. “It just won’t work.”
“Isn’t that up to us?” he said. “Don’t we have control over whether or not this works?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. You don’t get it. And it’s not your fault that you don’t get it,” I said, “but you just don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t see it. You can’t see how different your life would be—how being with me, spending time with someone like me—” I stopped. Struggled for words. “It would be hard for you,” I said, “with your friends, your family—”
“Why are you so sure that I care what other people think?”
“You’re going to care,” I said.
“No I won’t. I already don’t.”
“You say that now,” I said, shaking my head. “But you don’t know. You’re going to care, Ocean. You’re going to care.”
“Why can’t you let me decide what I’m going to care about?”
I was still shaking my head. I couldn’t look at him.
“Listen to me,” he said, and he took my hands, and I didn’t realize until that exact moment that my own hands were shaking. He squeezed my fingers. Tugged me closer. My heart felt wild.
“Listen to me,” he said again. “I don’t care what other people think. I don’t care, okay?”
“You do,” I said quietly. “You think you don’t, but you do.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because,” I said, “because I always say that. I always say that I don’t care what other people think. I say it doesn’t bother me, that I don’t give a shit about the opinions of assholes but it’s not true,” I said, and my eyes stung as I said it. “It’s not true, because it hurts every time, and that means I still care. It means I’m still not strong enough because every time someone says something rude, something racist—every time some mentally ill homeless person goes on a terrifying rampage when they see me crossing the street—it hurts. It never stops hurting. It only gets easier to recover.
“And you don’t know what that’s like,” I said. “You don’t know what my life is like and you don’t know what it’d be like to become a part of it. To tell the universe you’re on my side. I don’t think you understand that you’d be making yourself a target. You’d be risking the happy, comfortable world you live in—”
“I don’t live in a happy, comfortable world,” he said suddenly, and his eyes were bright, intense when he said it. “And if the life I’ve got is supposed to be some example of happiness then the world is even more messed-up than I thought it was. Because I’m not happy, and I don’t want to be like my parents. I don’t want to be like everyone else I know. I want to choose how to live my own life, okay? I want to choose who to be with.”
I could only stare at him, my heart beating hard in my chest.
“Maybe you care about what other people think,” he said, and his voice was softer now. “And that’s fine. But I really, truly, don’t.”
“Ocean,” I whispered. “Please.”
He was still holding my hands and he felt safe and real and I didn’t know how to tell him that I hadn’t changed my mind, not even a little bit, and that the more he spoke the more I felt my heart implode.
“Please don’t do this,” he said. “Please don’t walk away from me because you’re worried about the opinions of racists and assholes. Walk away from me because you hate me,” he said. “Tell me you think I’m stupid and ugly and I swear this would hurt less.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I think you’re wonderful.”
He sighed. He wasn’t looking at me when he said, “That’s not helping.”
“I also think you have really beautiful eyes.”
He looked up, surprised. “You do?”
I nodded.
And he laughed, softly. He took my hands and pressed them against his chest and he felt strong. I could feel his heart racing under my palms. I could feel the outline of his body under his shirt and it made me a little dizzy.
“Hey,” he said.
I met his eyes.
“You don’t have anything offensive you’d like to say to me? Maybe make me hate you a little bit?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Ocean. I really am. For everything.”
“I just don’t understand how you can be so sure,” he said, and his eyes were sad again. “How can you be so sure that this won’t work that you won’t even give it a chance?”
“Because I already know,” I said. “I already know what’s going to happen.”
He said, “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Yes,” I said, “I do. I already know how this story goes.”
“No. You think you do. But you have no idea what’s about to happen.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, I—”
And he kissed me.
It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d read about. It wasn’t quick; it wasn’t soft and simple. He kissed me and I felt actual euphoria, like all my senses had merged and I was reduced to breaths and heartbeats and repeating integers. It was nothing like I thought it would be. It was better, it was infinitely better, in fact it may have been the best thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never done this before but somehow I didn’t need a manual. I collapsed into it, into him, and he parted my lips and I loved it, I loved how he felt, how he tasted sweet and warm and I felt delirious, I was pressed against the passenger door and my hands were in his hair and I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was thinking about nothing, nothing but this, but the impossibility of this when he broke away, gasping for air. He pressed his forehead against mine and he said Oh, he said, Wow, and I thought it was over and he kissed me again. And again. And again.
I heard the bell ring, somewhere. I heard it like I was hearing sound for the first time.
And then, suddenly, my mind was returned to me.
It was like a sonic boom.
I sat up too fast. My eyes were wild. I was nearly hyperventilating. “Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God, Ocean—”
He kissed me again.
I drowned.
When we broke apart we were both breathing hard, but he was staring at me and he said Holy shit, but softly, like he was speaking only to himself, and I said, “I have to go, I have to go” and he just looked at me, his mind not yet fully awake and I grabbed my backpack and his eyes widened, suddenly alert, and he said—
“Don’t go.”
“I have to go,” I said. “The bell rang. I have to go to class.”
This was obviously a lie, I didn’t give a shit about class, I was just a coward, trying to run away, and I grabbed the handle, pushed the door open, and he said, “No, wait—”
And I said “Maybe we should just be friends, okay?” and I jumped out of the car before he could kiss me again.
I looked back, just once, and saw him staring at me through the window as I walked away.
He looked stunned.
And I knew I’d just made everything so much worse.