Love Edy (29 page)

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “You’ll
be late for practice.”

“There’s time enough.”

Wyatt did away with the pretenses and shot a
look toward the main office behind them.

“Security’s on your right,” Hassan said, low
enough so that only he’d hear. After all, he still had a hand on
the boy’s slight shoulder. “We’ll keep them in view. Now let’s go.
You don’t want Edy thinking you’re afraid of me.”

Hassan looked up to find hesitation in Edy’s
expression. He disarmed it with a raise of his brow.

“We’ll only take a minute,” Hassan said. “If
you can stand our absence that long.”

It worked. Edy broke into a smile.

On the way out, they passed a pack of upper-
-classmen shouting greetings to their star running back. He steered
Wyatt, grip tightening on his shoulder as he pretended not to
notice the slight pull of resistance. Once they exited the
chain-link fence that lined the student parking lot, they crossed
the street, and Hassan released him. Wyatt shot a look back to the
security guard booth outside.

“No point in running,” Hassan said. “You
know I can catch you, like you know I can beat the hell out of you
before help arrives.”

The sudden slump of Wyatt’s shoulders served
as quiet acknowledgment of the facts.

“Great,” Hassan said. “Now that we’ve got
that out the way, tell me your goal with Edy. And if you feed me
some crap about platonic friendships, I’ll hammer you.”

Wyatt withdrew; face a blank slate, blood
drained from the truth.

“Don’t you have a practice or something?” he
said.

“I’m willing to be late for you,” Hassan
said, voice tender as if flowers and chocolate might follow.

“Then I’m honored,” Wyatt said.

Hassan glanced at his watch. “Let’s try this
again. This time, note the impatience painted plain on my face.
“What-is-your-goal-with-Edy?”

“Whatever it is, it’s more realistic than
yours!”

Hassan managed a deep breath before
strangling the urge to dive on him. “Okay. She know that?”

As expected, the indignant look slid
straight from Wyatt’s face. “What difference does it matter?”

Hassan snatched him by the shoulder and they
started down the street together, for a conversation that required
distance from so many ears.

“You love her?” Hassan said.

Wyatt’s face twisted in a grimace. “Does it
matter?”

“You know it does,” Hassan said.

“Then no. I don’t.”

Hassan stopped. Looked him over. “You know
better than to say it. You know that if she understood what the ice
cream dinners, hugs, and thousand text messages a day really meant,
you’d have nothing to hold onto but your own worthless
memories.”

Wyatt’s Adam’s apple dipped quick down a
long, pale throat.

“But I can’t prove you’re only pretending,
can I?” Hassan said. “My saying so would jeopardize our new
relationship. She’d think I’m trying to run her life. The
overprotective boyfriend,” he paused, surprised at having used the
word, but knowing it to be the right one. “The over protective
boyfriend coming between her and a friend. She wouldn’t believe it
if I told her you were a common snake.”

Hassan bent to pluck a jagged rock from the
ground. He ran a thumb over its contours as he contemplated.

“I don’t have many options,” he admitted.
“But neither do you. So, you know what I’m going to do? Pretend
right along with you. As of now, you’re a stand-up guy, not the
creep next door trying to get lucky.”

“What? But why?”

“Because me and you are gonna play the same
game. But we’re gonna play to different ends and see who comes out
on top.”

Wyatt frowned thoughtfully.

“Equal parts brawn and brain,” he said.
“Pradhan gets in the game and in the mind of his opponent while
other guys are still suiting up in the locker room.”

“September seventh,
Globe
, Special
Edition,” Hassan said. “Glad to know you’re a fan.”

He tossed his rock away and took off on a
shortcut to practice.

They were equal now, he and Wyatt, both
having recognized the other as an opponent. Now, their game could
begin.

Twenty

Dinner that night was a fabulous concoction
of curries, meats and breads, pressed over and running with plenty
because of the
Purnima
or full moon fast Hindus observed
intermittently.

“
I made your favorites, samosas, because
I know you haven’t eaten today,”
Rani said to Hassan as he took
a seat at the table.

Except he had eaten, breakfast, lunch, and
an oversized coffee roll from Dunkin Donuts, so far as Edy knew.
Anyway, he hadn’t fasted on a full moon since fainting at peewee
league practice almost a decade ago. After hearing about it, Ali
had excused him from skipping meals—without letting Rani in on
it.

“Thanks, Mom,” Hassan said.

The second his mom turned from the table, he
shot Edy a wink that had her blushing and grinning like crazy. It
turned him to thinking of bedtime and whether how bad he wanted to
join her again. They hadn’t done anything that night and yet her
touch had him walking in circles.

With his mother tinkering around in the
kitchen, bringing out dishes one by one as if she were in the
world’s longest wedding processional, and with his father still
holed away in his study, Hassan’s hand flexed open and closed on
the table before he walked his fingers halfway across to where her
hand rested. Teasing. Threatening to touch. Her fingers inched
forward and he beckoned them.
Come on. Take a chance with
me.

His mother returned and they jerked at the
sight of her, burned by the fear of suspicion. She wielded a tray
stacked with pulses, an assortment of beans alone. But she was all
busy hands and idle chatter as she arranged the table to maniacal
standards.

“
Homework?”
she said.

“We did it,” Hassan said. Jeez, his heart
beat like he’d run back a touchdown. Damn if he’d admit to anyone
though.

“
Football practice?”
she said.

“Good.”

She gave him a warning eye. He knew that she
hated the way he tended to answer in English, no matter what
language addressed in. Rani turned to Edy.

“
Ballet practice?”

“
Long but good,”
she offered in
accented Punjabi, earning a smile from his mother. When Rani headed
for the kitchen Hassan snorted.

“Brownnoser,” he said and stole a samosa,
shoving it into his mouth before his mother returned.

Hours later, Hassan stretched out on his
bed, arms folded behind his head, eyes upward on the ceiling. With
dinner heavy in his stomach and his mom snoozing in bed before the
Bollywood musical
Ready
for the umpteenth time, Edy slipped
into his room and leaned against the door to shut it.

He had a Martha Stewart sort of room, if
Martha Stewart slung a football all day long. Stark against
otherwise white walls, life sized navy silhouettes sprung to life
with pigskin in hand. One stretched, form flawless, his muscles
tested in a gallop for his life. Another stiff armed with a ball
cradled tight, while a third, his favorite, featured a fearless
dive into the end zone. All this, of course, was in crisp contrast
to the show room furnishings his mother adorned the room in.

Edy flopped onto her back next to him. He
hadn’t been able to help the way his arm curled round her, nor the
way the corners of his mouth eased up as she snuggled in. He
listened to her breathe—in, out, in, out, until her chest synched
with his, their rising and falling soothed him with a sense of
security, teasing him with how basic and human they both were.

As if life could be that simple.

“How many Hindu gods can you name?” Hassan
said. More than me, I bet.

His mother snoozed on the downstairs couch,
volume amped on reruns of her Bollywood soaps. She would wait on
his father’s arrival, feed him, then bypass Hassan’s closed door
without issue. An adolescent boy required privacy, both parents
agreed. Sort of.

“What are you really asking?” she said and
turned so their noses grazed.

He claimed her mouth in what should have
been a gentle kiss, in what started as a brush of lips, but morphed
when Edy mewled and hauled him in tight by the shirt. When Hassan
extracted himself, every cell in him thudded with hard, hot blooded
protest.

“Well?” he worked out, despite lungs
deflated to the size of pebbles.

“Well what?” she said.

He rolled on his side to face her again.
“How many?”

He . . . needed this answer. Theology never
settled quite right with him, like a broken bone that wouldn’t set.
Whenever it came up, which was rare, it was the mask used to hide
another. Digging out the true thought, the true question, was
something that few could do but Edy.

“I don’t know. Maybe twenty.”

“Out of what?” he said. “Thousands? A
million?”

“Maybe.”

He drew back, so that he pressed against the
headboard, a knee up to prop his elbow.

“To devote to one thing is to sacrifice
another,” he said, still breathless.

“Who said that? Nietzsche?”

He looked at her. “Edy Phelps.”

Eventually, she drew him to her and ran a
hand through his hair. Even that, gentle as it was, stoked his
flames a second time over.

“You’re a good son,” she said, “who loves
his parents and has his own mind. Why does that have to be
divorced? Accept truth in whatever way it comes, whether in the
Vedas or your own self-reflection.”

Hassan snorted. “Spoken like the daughter of
an Ivy League hippie.” He shot her a smile. “Enough with the
jabber. Kiss me so I can stop thinking about it.”

She did as she was told before pulling
away.

“What?” he said and puffed a breath of air
into the palm of his hand. He smelled garlic, which was bad, but
she’d had the same dinner as him.

Her nose wrinkled, gaze skating the length
of his room. She set the headset on his dresser and sauntered to
his walk-in closet.

“Neither,” she said and placed a hand on the
handle.

A flash of sweat-fused uniforms and
concussion heavy helmets k.o.’ing Edy had him slamming the door as
she yanked it.

“Um, something I can help you find,
Cake?”

She looked past him, then back, nostrils
flared, lips thinned. “You have so much
stuff,
” she accused.
“Things you never use.”

He had hoped her journey to his closet had
been about some shirt she wanted to model for him, maybe some tee
she could tie up and strut around in. What she was talking about
had him wading in blind.

“Okay,” Hassan said.

“You have coats you’ve never worn,” Edy
said. “Shirts, pants, sweaters you hate, stuffed back there, with
tags still attached.”

“Even shoes,” Edy said. “I know there are
sneakers Rani buys that you refuse to wear.”

That time she did snatch for his closet
door, only to have him yank her back at the onset of the
avalanche.

“Mind telling me what this is about?” he
demanded, slinging his helmets in one corner. He returned for the
funk-strewn practice uniforms as she disappeared into his closet
and retrieved her by the wrist when the mess had been cleared.

“Wyatt,” she said.

His fingers unwrapped from her arm one by
one until he withdrew from her.

“Hassan.”

“Edy.”

“You’ve seen him, Hassan. You’ve seen the
way he dresses. It’s not right. And . . . and I thought if there
was anyone I could come to for help, it would be you.”

He wanted his headset and Xbox; he wanted
the Edy before Wyatt Green. What he didn’t want was this.

“I’ve seen plenty that’s not right,” he
muttered and collapsed on his bed.

His girl.
His
girl digging in
his
closet to hand
his
clothes over to some slick
smiling snake that couldn’t even make a secret of wanting to bonk
her. In a justified world, no court would convict him for maiming
Wyatt Green, or at the very least, going Jigsaw on him for a few
hours.

“Hassan, please?” Edy said.

And he looked up to find not the fierceness
of a girl readied for closet battle, but the huge brown eyes he
drowned in, over and again, endlessly.

Eyes he never hoped to conquer. Hassan
exhaled.

“He won’t wear them,” he warned. “He won’t
even appreciate what you’ve done.”

Edy’s face split with a grin.

“He’s nowhere near my size,” Hassan tried.
“You’d be better off trying your own closet.”

She threw her arms around him in a squeeze
he returned despite his better judgment. This girl could lead him
to the heart of trouble, if she wanted. Hassan would follow, right
off a cliff.

~~~

Edy’s fingers flexed in their strain to
maintain her burden. One, two, three seconds of silent confusion
lapsed with nothing but the wind licking at her neck.

“What do you mean ‘no?’” she asked Wyatt. A
careless look behind her said that Hassan had gone back
indoors.

Wyatt stepped out on the porch, shutting the
door on a muffled television and ghostly array of shadows.

“You don’t get it, do you?” His gaze held no
one destination, darting from the two overstuffed bags Edy propped
against the wall of his house, to a hundred other minutiae, eyes
glassy. For whatever reason, he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Did I come at a bad time?” She probably
should have called. She’d been so psyched about the coat, sneakers
and half dozen other goodies that she hadn’t considered etiquette
or—

“Edy, you can’t expect me—” He swallowed.
“You must know . . .”

“I know they aren’t a perfect fit, but it’s
the best I could do.”

“You can’t be this stupid!”

Edy stood, sure that her eyes had doubled in
size, even as icicle winds battered them.