Love Edy (21 page)

But it didn’t work. It never did.

By the time Hassan returned home rain fell
in sheets, blinding him, dead set on drowning him. He regretted
pushing for the lake as the sky darkened, yet he remained too
stubborn to veer from his predetermined path. Stubbornness was his
mantra and the difference between a damned good running back and a
guy soon cut from the team. Thankfully, any son of Ali Pradhan
would be both pigheaded and unreasonable, the unquestionable fruit
from the vine of his father. Knowing everything had its perks.

Hair plastered to his scalp as the rain
soaked through to the boxers. With his clothes clinging and
dripping, Hassan retreated to the upstairs bathroom to change. Once
there, everything he wore fell to the floor with a plop.

Shivering, he turned on the shower, cranking
up the heat for relief. When he stepped in, liquid burned his feet,
so he retreated long enough to adjust the temperature. He found a
decent medium, returned, and let the water stream over him in
heated currents, warming and cleansing as he relished the warmth.
Eyes closed, he scrubbed his face and neck and back with thick
foam, and before long, began to croon a sultry, begging R&B
tune he’d heard on the drive up. Something about spending all his
time loving the pretty girl on his mind. He got into it, hitting
notes but mostly missing, scatting and moaning as if in concert.
The bar of soap became his mic, the drops of water his audience.
Only when the shower ran cold did he end his performance and step
out.

He looked around for a towel and saw he
didn’t have one.

Great.

With a swallow, Hassan peered into the hall,
first left toward the bedrooms and then right toward the common
area. It was early, maybe seven, but seven wasn’t early enough to
guarantee that no one would see him. He was on the second floor,
which was a good thing, since he and Edy had it to themselves.
Hassan imagined his father discovering him in the hall, naked as he
swaggered for the bedroom. He’d be torn between reluctance in
attacking his nude son and a pressing need to shake him till Hassan
fell still. No doubt he’d choose the assault.

Safely tucked behind the door, Hassan cupped
hands around his mouth and hissed. “Edy! Edy!”

Maybe she’d be tired. Sleeping in. Eating
breakfast. Cooking breakfast. Anything other than cavorting down
the hall at the wrong freaking moment. But if she was awake, she
could just bring him a towel. And if she wasn’t, he could run. He
had speed. But speed meant nothing if he took off at the wrong
moment.

He called her twice more before she stuck
her head out. She had a cell phone at her ear, first thing in the
morning.

“What is it?” she said.

“I need a towel.”

Her mouth spread into a smile. “Are you
naked
?”

“Who in the world are you on the phone
with?”

“Hold on,” Edy said into the phone. “Of
course, it’s Hassan. Yes, he’s na—just
hold on
.”

“Edy,” Hassan said, pressing back the
irresistible urge to bend something. “Lose the spare and bring me a
towel.”

He said it loud enough for his voice to
carry.

“I’ll call you back, Wyatt.” Edy paused. “I
said I’ll . . . I don’t
know
where my parents are. I —later,
okay?”

She hung up the phone and her mouth spread
wide. Devilment lit her eyes.

“Towel,” he said, stone in his voice.

She disappeared into her bedroom.

Hassan exhaled, cool air catching him wrong.
He shifted from one foot to the other, wondering if he could make a
stab for the linen closet. When Edy reemerged, her lips pursed.

“Sorry for the delay. Had to put the phone
on the charger. Battery’s low.” She went to the linen closet and
pulled out a washcloth. “This good?”

She held it out low, as if offering him a
loincloth.

“Come on, Cake. Steam’s only gonna keep me
warm so long.”

Edy returned to the closet as if rummaging
desperately. Perfectly good towels fell to the floor, large towels,
plush towels, but she rummaged nonetheless.

“Ah. Here you go. How about this?”

A pillowcase, this time.

“Just forget it.”

Hassan stepped out and strode toward the
closet, tracking footprints in his wake. In the center of the hall
and right next to Edy, he grabbed an oversized towel and dried
himself. He made no effort to shield his junk or the delight it
took in having her for an audience. Once he’d rid himself of
moisture clear down to the bottom of his feet, Hassan tied the
towel loose around his waist.

“What?” he said.

Edy’s blinked a thousand times.
“N-nothing.”

“Breakfast then,” he said. “When I
change.”

Dressed in a black t-shirt and basketball
shorts, Hassan ventured to the kitchen for breakfast. Since he and
Edy seemed to be the only two up, he put on a bit of instant
oatmeal for the both of them. Thinking they could use some fruit,
he rummaged till he found strawberries, a kiwi, and a batch of
blueberries. He threw the kiwi back, remembering that they were
Nathan’s favorite, and grabbed a bag of bagels instead. With those
in the toaster, Hassan whistled out the R&B tune from the
shower as he fixed up the two bowls of oatmeal, careful to count
out Edy’s berries. Done, he ventured to the bottom of the stairs
and shouted for her to join him.

“You’ll wake the house,” Edy said and
dropped into a seat at the breakfast table.

He poured her a glass of milk before sitting
down with a cup of water for himself.

“So,” he said, cutting right to the point.
“Were you up on the phone with him all night or just up really
early, eager to hear him?”

Edy stared at him, stiff. “We were on the
phone a long time, yes. He couldn’t sleep—”

“He couldn’t sleep,” Hassan snapped.

“Yeah. So, he texted me. You know how those
things wake me up.”

“Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

“What’s with you?” Edy said. “What
difference does it make?”

Hassan burst from the table, went for the
bagels, and found them scorched, which pissed him off even more.
But two were burned worse than the others, so he dumped those
before Edy. She giggled.

“You are
so
mad at me,” she said.

He opened the refrigerator, grabbed butter
and cream cheese, and tossed them both to the table, not caring
that they bounced.

“You’re not even thinking straight. I was up
most of the night with you, remember? And not that it’s any of
your
business, but he called me upset. His parents were
fighting again.”

Didn’t she say he woke her? Who the hell
fought first thing in the morning?

Hassan dropped into his seat and shoveled a
spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth, finding it too hot. But he chewed
anyway, allowing the heat to fuel his anger and incense him more as
the food clung to his tongue. Even the way she looked at him pissed
him off, gentle-like, as if mocking him while simultaneously
wanting to make amends.

“Eat your food,” he snapped.

She lowered her gaze to the oatmeal and
smiled at the blueberries. “Twenty?”

“Should be. Count them.”

When they were kids, her father had taken a
trip to El Salvador to study conditions following the civil war.
For twenty days he was gone, each marked with a blueberry in her
oatmeal, placed there by Hassan.

“Nineteen.” She pouted.

He went to the fridge, retrieved one, and
hurled it in her bowl.

“You can’t help yourself. You try to take
care of me even when you’re mad.”

So she was mocking him. She plopped a berry
in her mouth and smiled.

Hassan watched her chew, fascinated with the
contours of her mouth and the way it moved, despite trying to hold
onto fast melting anger.

Edy stuck a blue-stained tongue out at him
and the last of his will dissipated. Hassan reached for it, as if
to snatch it from her mouth. She giggled and swatted him away.

~~~

She’d seen Hassan naked. Completely naked,
with not a thread to hide behind. She’d seen the contours of his
abs, the carving of his thighs, and parts of him that made her
blush and hide even when alone.

She’d seen every inch of him.

He sat across from her, wolfing down a
proper brunch, oblivious to the staining of her cheeks.

“Hassan, you must be so excited about the
upcoming season,” Edy’s father said. He placed a few slices of
Canadian bacon on his English muffin and topped it with a poached
egg. Edy’s mother handed him the Hollandaise sauce without looking
up from her cell phone.

Across from him, Hassan’s father, Ali, was
busy earning stinkeye from Rani for the fistful of sugar-glazed
bacon he munched on.

“The season. Oh yeah,” Hassan said. “Should
be a good one.”

He sounded as if he were trying to get his
bearings, trying to emerge from whatever thoughts he’d submerged
into.

Meanwhile, Edy’s cell buzzed. She didn’t
want to look at it, not in front of him, not when everything
Wyatt-related seemed to irk him, not when they’d spent a whole
summer apart either and seemed somehow closer because of it . . .
as long as Wyatt Green didn’t come up.

The phone vibrated again, and Edy slipped a
hand into her pocket, covert, to silence it. She thought of that
same hand, under Hassan’s the night before, and of the assertion
that they had always been linked, eternally, repeatedly,
forevermore.

“West Roxbury has a new middle linebacker,”
Hassan said and stole bacon from his father’s plate. “Me and
Lawrence peeked in on him at a practice. He’s a beast.”

West Roxbury and South End met mid-season,
two meteorites colliding in the atmosphere.

“We’ll see if we can find some footage
online of him. Break down his style, his mindset, get at the heart
of his weaknesses,” her dad said.

Hassan looked doubtful.

Edy brought a slice of mango to her mouth
with a frown. “What’s the guy’s name again?”

“Leahy,” Hassan said. “Robert Leahy.”

“That guy?” Edy scoffed. “What a slob. Kinda
slow in the head, too. I’ve seen him on YouTube.” She had, of
course, never, ever seen him. “You’d get past him every time.”

Hassan laughed. “He’s actually pretty fast.
You’d know that if you’d seen him.”

She brought apple juice to her lips,
considering how quickly he’d honed in on the lie. “You’ve been
training, haven’t you?” His body certainly argued the case.

“Yeah?”

“Well, let me see.” Edy hurled the juice
into his face and bolted, upturning a chair as she fled for the
shore.

Hassan hurdled over the toppled furniture,
leapt the stairs, and swallowed the space between them in a
measured sprint. He snatched her with a scoop and barreled onward
for the water. Edy shrieked, wild, laughing, thrashing to get free.
She caught an earful of his mother’s shouting before landing
headfirst in the bay.

Four years ago, on a trip to India, they’d
visited the beaches of Goa, where cows and sunning bodies shared
the same sand. A moment of teasing and tussling had ended the same
way, with a scandalized Rani professing her utmost shame before
taking Hassan and Edy back to the hotel. She fussed about what her
parents would say if they had been there, what her brother would
say, her sister. She wasn’t raising Hassan right, Rani insisted, if
he could be so indecent and not care about how it affected the
family. A female had no business being touched by a man who wasn’t
her husband or son, and, clearly, they were neither. They’d been
provocative, unforgivable.

Edy now emerged from shallow waters,
sputtering and laughing, to find Hassan looming over her, large.
She knew he’d be impossible to tackle head on, football players
found that out routinely on Fridays. So, she used his saturated
polo to pull herself up before a wave made her tumble. Smile smug,
he lent a hand on her scramble up but found she used it as leverage
to tickle him. Hassan fell into the waves, his laughter uproarious,
on the defensive, and pushing Edy away. They tangled and fell into
the water as one, his mother fussing in Punjabi the whole time.

Ali always came to their defense, usually,
with some well-reasoned premise posited by a sociologist he
admired. Stuff about gender, expectations, identity, and cinematic
constructs in the Asian Indian diaspora. No one dared argue with
him. One, because he was the final authority in his family, and
two, because no one knew what the hell he was talking about. But
this time when they emerged, drenched and dripping, Ali said
nothing, eye on his son, attentive instead.

Fourteen

Edy lived for their days on The Cape.
Snapshots in time they were, frozen moments, where the laws of the
outside world didn’t apply. It was an impossibly positive place,
bursting with memories, brimming with promises.

The spot where their land met the beach was
roughhewn. Tufts of wild grass and rocks jutted in unexpected
places. Edy balanced on a massive one, arms arched and extended in
classic
demi
second. She placed weight on the back leg and
offered a
demi-plié
, opposite leg bent, then straightened in
a sleek slide forward. A clean turn, a pirouette, and a
grand
battement
followed, leg thrown up in the last so that it
paralleled her head. The crashing of waves was her music, the howl
of wind her beat. Below her was a drop. But if she was good, it
wouldn’t matter.

Applause shattered her concentration.

“I haven’t seen that in awhile. I’d
forgotten how perfect you were.”

Hassan scaled the rock, crowding her so that
dancing was no longer possible.

“I was trying to shift into something new.
Bean showed me
something
and I . . .” Edy sighed. She’d been
unable to seize the caustic fury from the pit, unable to morph it
and make it her own. Though she’d absorbed every technical detail
she’d been exposed to, she couldn’t rattle her muse. All this time,
all these years, she’d been a parrot of dance, enslaved to
choreographers and instructors. Everything she attempted on her own
felt stilted and tepid. Bean had warned her though; she would find
no focus until she abandoned fear for courage. Choreography was
nakedness. Edy wondered if she could ever embrace it.