Caught Between (5 page)

6.

"
Can you believe
I found an almost entirely intact figurine?"

It was break time under the sweltering heat, and
Marya was polishing off her second meat pastry. Amy wouldn't shut up about her figurine. Marya admitted she was jealous -- two weeks into the excavation and Amy's team had found something important, while Marya and Luke were finding nothing but rocks.
Big
rocks. Rocks that needed to be smashed so that she and Luke could continue to dig.

On the upside,
Marya got to watch Luke heave a sledgehammer several times a day. On the downside, Luke had rejected her. And it still hurt.

It's not like he's running off with Liz. He wants to be alone. Don't be such a baby about it.

Still, her heart wouldn't see reason. If he'd wanted to be around her, he'd be around her. It was that simple. And it killed her that his attention mattered to her, that she
wanted
him to pay attention to her.

"...
believes that it represents the god Hadad, who was often depicted as a four-legged animal," Amy was saying excitedly.

"A bull,"
Marya said. "I know. It's super exciting." Normally, Marya
would
find it super exciting.

"And
I
was the one who found it," Amy stressed. "Me. It was under
my
pick, not Shannon's. Don't let her tell you otherwise."

"Okay,"
Marya said with a sigh. "Hey Amy, can I ask you something and will you promise to keep your voice down and not be obvious about it?"

Amy's eyes lit up. "Of course."

Marya leaned into her, barely whispering. "Is something going on between Luke and Liz?"

Amy blinked. "Um, well, the rumor is that they're... you know."

Marya felt her blood boil. "No, I
don't
know. Explain."

"They've been coming here for a couple summers now, so they've known each other a while," Amy whispered. "The rumor is that they get together over the summer, like summer flings or something. But then she goes back to Toronto and he goes back to New York."

"Okay. I get it." Marya couldn't stop the plunging feeling of her heart.

"There's a story about them from their first summer," Amy co
ntinued, smiling devilishly. "They were, you know, making out in the lab, and Felicity walked in on them. Margot was totally scandalized and made up those rules about no guys in the girls hostel and vice versa."

"Back to work!"
Ducharme ordered, clapping her hands. "Break time is over."

Marya
never thought she'd be so happy to hear those three words. As she made her way back up the tell, she thought she might vomit. She couldn't shake the image of Luke and Liz "making out" in the lab.

Luke hopped into the pit and smiled and at her. "All energized and pumped to dig,
Helwe?" He tightening the bandanna around his head and rubbed his palms together. "We've got rocks to pulverize!"

Marya
tugged the brim of her hat lower over her face and didn't answer. She resisted the urge to flick him off.

As the blistering sun peaked in the sky, the team began to store the equipment and load the artifacts onto the bus.
Marya noticed that Yusef and the other Bedouin boys had gathered near the bus, and Dr. Ducharme suddenly turned and said, "Attention, everyone, before you get on the bus."

Marya
raised her eyebrows at Yusef, who grinned back audaciously. She'd developed a rapport with the feisty Bedouin. He often got on her nerves, but had a good heart and meant well. She could tell he was up to something now. "The Bedouin have given us a gift," Ducharme announced, holding up a large, ripe watermelon. "We will cut into slices and pass it around, and every one of you must take a slice so as not to offend them."

Yusef
glared at Ducharme in confusion as she cut into the fruit, revealing its juicy red flesh. Marya took a slice and stifled a smile. Ducharme was treating Yusef like a National Geographic special, and he was getting annoyed. He muttered, "The watermelon wasn't for you. It was for Marya, you whore."

Marya
covered her mouth and looked away to keep from laughing. Behind her, Luke sounded like he was choking. Marya glared at him as he coughed. "Watermelon went down the wrong pipe," he rasped, his face red and eyes watery.

Amy's incessant talk about the figurine the whole ride back didn't bother
Marya this time -- she wasn't listening. Rather, she was puzzling over why Luke would pretend not to understand Arabic.

He'd understood
Yusef, she was sure of it.

She stared at Amy, her eyes glazed over. Maybe he wanted to avoid the extra work that came with translating. But that didn't seem like him -- he obviously enjoyed what he did and worked hard enough to earn
Ducharme's favor. So why would he deny knowing the language? Knowing Arabic could only work to his advantage in this field.

Unless he had something to hide.

Liz giggled girlishly from the back of the bus. Marya wanted to look back at them but resisted. Was he manufacturing mystery? Maybe he liked the attention. Maybe there was nothing to any of it, and she was just being a silly girl with an obsessive crush. She needed to snap out of her Luke-induced haze and focus on the real reason she was here -- to become an archaeologist.

She managed to stay focused on work throughout the rest of the afternoon. As the group wrapped up for the evening,
Marya wondered if joining the others for shisha on the patio was a good idea. Maybe she should skip it tonight as part of her "Luke detox" program. She stood in the foyer of the ACMER building, biting her lip and considering, when Felicity pulled her from her thoughts.

"
Marya, you have company," Felicity said with a disapproving sigh. Marya smelled Ash before she saw him standing at the door, his hands in his pockets.
Cedar wood and lemon.
He grinned at her, his cheeks dimpling adorably.

"Hello, love," he said. "I thought I'd drop by. Is it a bad time?"

She beamed and rushed to him. Before she'd completely thought it through, she'd thrown her arms around him. "Ash! It's so good to see you."

He chuckled softly in her ear. "Wow, you
are
happy to see me. A better reception than I could have hoped for." He ran his hands down her back gently. The gesture was strangely intimate, and Marya snapped back to reality. She pulled away, her face hot.

"I'm sorry, I..." she smiled sheepishly. "It's been a rough couple weeks."

He grinned. "I can imagine. Would you like to come out with me tonight?"

Marya
said "yes" before he finished his sentence. "Let me just grab my bag."

She rushed to her room and strapped on her purse. As she walked out, she nearly bumped right into Shannon. "Shannon, will you tell Amy that I've gone out for a bit and not to wait up for me?"

Shannon frowned. "Sure. Where are you going?"

"Out,"
Marya replied as she headed out the door. She was very aware of the curious stares of her hostel mates as she and Ash walked down the hill together to his car, their arms touching.
Let them talk.
She smiled to herself as she slid into Ash's BMW.

"Where are we going?" she asked, clicking on her seatbelt.

Ash didn't bother to put his on. He turned the stereo up and winked at her. "Ready to see some of Amman's night life, Marya?"

They drove into Amman's wealthy west district,
Abdun, where swanky restaurants and nightclubs lined the streets. Ash smiled at Marya's awed expression. "The young generation is restless. We hunger for a Western lifestyle. We are becoming the Middle East's new 'Sin City'."

After parking the car, Ash led
Marya up a set of stairs and into a bar that throbbed with music and lights. Marya's eyes widened as she took in the chic, young clientele -- women in their late teens and early twenties wearing skin-tight jeans, stilettos, and slinky tops; young men like Ash, wearing their money and eyeing the women. And they were all beautiful. Marya self-consciously touched her hair, which had air-dried into a wavy mess. She wore a plain white t-shirt and khaki pants that pooled around her sneakers, and not a drop of makeup.

Ash pulled out a barstool for her. "I'm
way
under-dressed," she said to him. "You should have warned me."

Ash glanced at her clothes and shrugged. "You look beautiful. Natural." He gestured subtly in the direction of the girls, who were shaking their hips to Flo
Rida. "They wear too much makeup. It gets to a point... You wonder what they're hiding."

She took the beer he offered her and smiled. "Thanks. So what have you been doing with yourself since you've been back?"

He grinned. "This, and more of this." He took a swig of beer. "How about you? Tell me what the dig is like."

So
Marya told him everything. The beer loosened her, and she told Ash about Ducharme the Nun, about her hostel mates, about Yusef. Ash laughed heartily at the story of Yusef and the watermelon, at Marya's recounting of the girls' battles for the 5-minute showers. She didn't, of course, tell him about Luke.

"Come," he said, patting her leg. "I want to introduce you to some friends."

He took her into some sort of VIP room, with a red satin couch and low tables. Three young men and two women sat on the couch, drinking and talking. Ash embraced each of them, fake-kissing on both cheeks, European-style, and introduced Marya. "My American girlfriend," he called her, with a smile.

She listened as they spoke in Arabic, catching only half of what they said. But half was enough for her to ask Ash, "Are you guys talking about Syria?"

His mouth fell open in surprise. "You speak Arabic?"

"
Only  a little," she said. Ash and his friends exchanged looks, and one of the girls, a dark-haired beauty in purple eye shadow named Selwa, shrugged.

"Tell her," she said. "If you think she will understand."

Ash looked at his hands for a long while before saying, "Marya, our world is changing quickly. We -- " he swept his hand, indicating his Jordanian friends, "-- are ready for change. We are hungry for it. Jordan may be in a better place than Egypt or Syria, but is still has major problems -- bad economy, corruption, the lack of political freedom. Jordan is not a true constitutional monarchy. It's a sham. We want reform, and we are doing something about it."

Marya
felt her pulse quicken. "What are you doing?"

"In the beginning, we held peaceful demonstrations, organized as university students,"
Selwa said in impeccable, if heavily accented, English. "It was a peaceful call for reform, not a revolution, but the police beat us with their batons." Her pretty face was tight with anger.

"If the monarchy wants revolution," Ash added, looking at
Selwa gravely, "they shall have revolution."

"It hasn't gotten to that point yet," one of the other young men quickly interjected. "We will do what we can in a peaceful manner for as long as we can."

They continued to talk in this vein, switching from English to Arabic. Marya listened quietly, observing the faces of her new friends. Young, rich, idealistic. Their faces glowed with fervor, and they spoke as though they were ready to throw all their wealth away for a chance at democracy.

Marya
wondered if, when push came to shove and people began dying, they would follow through.

By the time Ash drove
Marya back to ACMER, it was approaching midnight. He stopped the car at the gate and looked at her. "Thank you for coming out with me tonight. I hope you had a good time."

"I'm going to hurt tomorrow," she said with a laugh, "but it was totally worth it. Thank you for taking me out. Your friends are amazing.
You
are amazing." She meant it -- she'd seen another side of Ash tonight, and she was impressed. Beneath the designer duds was a passionate young man, perhaps even one of action.

He was looking at her now, and something in his eyes made her squirm. He must have sensed her discomfort, because he averted his gaze. "So, can I come visit you again soon?"

Marya nodded. "I would love that. And next time I'll dress more... appropriately."

"I told you," he said, "you look beautiful. So much so, that I'd like to kiss you." He looked at her and smiled shyly. "That is, if you want me to."

She did. If only to drive Luke from her brain. If only to see if Ash tasted as good as he smelled. "Yeah," she said softly.

Ash leaned across the center console and touched her face with his hand, and she leaned in to meet him. His kiss was whisper soft against her lips, soft and warm. He lingered against her, as if d
ebating whether to do more. She could feel his breath on her mouth, could feel his hesitation. In the end, he backed away and swallowed, exhaling slowly. "I'll walk you up," he said.

He took her hand in his as they climbed the hill in silence. When they reached the door of the hostel, he let go and said, "Night, love. Sleep well."