Bittersweet (3 page)

Edy slipped off her knit cap and dropped into the bottom bunk of a pillow-cramped full sized bed. She ran a hand over the crocheted covered pillowcase enmeshed with interlocking Rs and wondered how long it took her grandmother to make it and how little her mother appreciated it. She kicked off her sneakers and stretched out, before folding her hands behind her head to stare up at the wooden anchors that supported the top bunk.

Her mother’s bed. Her mother’s walls. Her mother’s hands, fingers, toes, and body in this bed, in this moment, older, younger, different, obtuse, uncaring, unaware.

Edy rolled to one side, nose to cool wall, and inhaled. How out of place had her mother felt in this drafty, narrow house? Alienated enough to fashion a history of falsehoods, a lineage of fables as credible as the Brothers Grimm? Or ambitious enough to use lies as stepping stones, not caring who she trampled on the way?

Maybe she’d felt like Edy did when the girls styled their hair at school in the bathroom and talked fashion as they glossed their lips just so. Or was it more like the brittle smile and nausea of watching Bollywood wedding scenes with Rani?

Edy looked up to find Hassan and her grandfather in the doorway. She sat upright, trying on a smile in her best attempt to look upbeat. She knew Hassan would feel her mood and she hated to drag him down with her. He had an avalanche of thoughts and emotions to contend with, without him piling on concern for her. She wouldn’t break. But as her grandfather ran a hand along the frame of the door, Hassan x-rayed her face with worry. She wouldn’t break. Not even seeing her best friend shot had done that.

“I didn’t know the both of you were coming,” her grandfather said and glanced at Hassan, “until after you’d boarded the plane. So, you’ll have to forgive what you see. I can tell you’re used to better.” He stood to run a thumb along the pine of the door frame and turned a stern eye on Hassan. “I had plans to put you on the couch, boy, but I hadn’t counted on you being bigger than the furniture. So, new plan.”

Edy’s grandfather yanked the top mattress off the bed and tossed it to the floor. “Edy stays in this bed. And you stay in yours. I have a rifle in my bedroom that, while it ain’t loaded, can get loaded pretty quick if the two of you get confused about this part.”

He pivoted back and slipped a finger through the belt loop of his Dickies, mouth swung down like a horseshoe. He was John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in caricature.   

Edy stared at him. “You’re not really threatening him, are you?”

Her grandfather’s glare melted into shame and sheepishness. “Listen. I don’t want to, okay? So, behave. They say you two are like brother and sister anyway. I’m just covering the bases.”

Edy felt a stab of guilt for shaking him free of his threat. He seemed so uncomfortable without it.

He turned an appraising eye on Hassan. “Now, there’s too much furniture to stick you in the living room without your head or feet winding up in the fireplace. My wife says it’s uncivil for you to sleep in the hall. So, you’re in this here bedroom. Don’t make me regret it. I’m talking to you both.”

“Yes, sir,” they chimed.

She felt struck by the urge to hug him. She didn’t know where it came from or whether it would stick around. She didn’t even know if a man like this would welcome a hug. So Edy stayed where she sat.

Her grandfather looked around, as if he might fashion more space from the walls or ceiling. “I don’t like two teens in the same room. But Mary says your auras’ are pulsing pink and that we’re fine as long as they stay that way.” He shrugged. “Make sense of her if you can.” 

Edy peeked at Hassan and found him peeking right back.

“So you two are all settled then,” her grandfather said. “And while I’m all for trusting until I’m given a reason to distrust, I’ll be back to take off the doorknob so you won’t get any ideas.” He smiled broadly. “I’d rather play it safe this one time.”

Hassan snorted. “My luck,” he muttered once her grandfather left.

First Edy, then Hassan, bathed in a compact, scrubbed down tub complete with the clawed footing. When her grandparents turned out the lights for bed, the darkness combined with nightfall to pitch them into an inky, swallowing blackness.

“There’s a name for this, right? When my voice is all eerie in the darkness?” Edy said.

“Disembodied,” Hassan said. “And ow. I can’t even find my face.”

“Try above your neck. Now hurry up and come over before my granddad peeks through the doorknob hole.”

She rolled onto her side in the hopes of meeting him and extended her arms, swatting, batting, half hoping to clip him while giggling. But this was Hassan and he had luck in droves, so, no. Five fingers circled her wrist and slid up, up, up her arm, discarding every playful thought she’d ever had about him.

His fingers traced the slope of her shoulder, grazed down to her palm, and pressed a kiss in the center just there. Her insides curled like a flower blooming in reverse.

“Has—”

“Shhh.”

Another kiss followed the first, softer still, before her hand felt a drop of moisture. She followed it to the trail on his cheek.

“Hassan?” she whispered, heart constricting.

He sighed. “How much time do we have, Edy? How much time until my mother talks? And you know what happens then.”

Then he leaves. Then he ships off to some distant relative charged with the task of severing Hassan’s connection to her. Some relative who’d see it as their duty.

“There has to be some solution,” Edy said. “Your parents love you so much; I can’t imagine them without you.” She smiled weakly, warming to her own argument; perhaps convincing her and him in the process. “Could you see Ali without your football games to brag about? Or Rani without you to cook and fuss over? They’d lose part of themselves without you.”

It felt true; yet, she heard the uncertainty in her voice.   

He’d been brushing kisses at her neck, but now, Hassan drew back. “You’re looking at it wrong,” he said. “You’re looking at it like I’m being thrown away.”

Pushed out then? Disowned?

Hassan sighed, heavier, more labored than the first. Somehow, he expected her to get every part of his world. She shouldn’t ever need explanation.

“It’s discipline,” he said. “Like boot camp. They’d be sending me off for tough love, but in the end, when I’m older and more mature, I’m supposed to understand.”

“‘Tough love,’” Edy echoed and touched his hair with delicate fingers. “Why is it though that all the love around us twists to the point of pain?” His tough love meant to separate them, her mother, Wyatt’s.

“Hmm,” Hassan said and nibbled on her ear. “I don’t think it does.”

Okay, so, he wasn’t the least bit interested in a serious conversation anymore. And maybe she wasn’t either, judging by the way she set off sparks every time his teeth came down on her earlobe.

 “You okay?” he said with faint traces of amusement.  

Edy unraveled from him and propped up on one elbow. There. Now she could talk sense.

“I should ask if you’re okay since my grandfather said you’re as big as the furniture.” He could probably see her grin in the dark. And had she said ‘grandfather?’ Wow. That felt south of sane.

“Oh c’mon,” Hassan said. “It’s a condition of the sport. You want to build bulk. You need to.” He hesitated. “I thought you liked my size.”

Edy smothered a laugh, then didn’t. Could he really not know how perfect he was? “My grandmother called you a klutz. Or was it a clown?”

“Both.”

She ruptured in a fit of guffaws, before raising an arm, proclamation-style. “Here be South End High’s finest,” she announced. “Foot racing old ladies in the Kentucky mud.”

She’d pay for that. She knew it when she said it.

Fingers invaded the crannies and flesh of her ribcage, digging and working into all the secret, pee-inducing places. Yowling, Edy fought him off weakly with an arm, before giving up and withdrawing to the fetal position in laughter. He tugged on her limbs to extract her and finally promised not to do her any further harm.

“Shush,” Hassan warned and kissed her. “Before your granddad throws me to the wildcats.”

“Wildcats,” Edy said. “Really aren’t that wild. Or threatening.”

“Shut up,” Hassan said and she ruptured in another fit of laughter.

They grinned, nose to nose, mouths wide. When their smiles melted to a brush of a kiss, Edy rose to meet him. She met him in a sweep of lips, with a hand to the back of his head, with a thought for the time lost, wasted, stolen still in the back of her mind. Her kisses turned hard fast. They turned open mouthed, desperate, and greedy.

He responded by climbing atop her.

Edy wrapped arms around his neck and met conquering kisses, promising kisses, goodbye kisses without the goodbye, all as his hands reached and roamed. She swept her hands across the muscles of his body, first touching, then kneading stone to sweat. When he tossed aside his damp shirt he returned to her more determined than before, mouth working her over, stirring her up, so that she rocked beneath him. Edy whimpered; body caught in her hypnotic, ferocious sway, grinding against solidness and melting, somehow knowing what to do.

Edy glanced at the faint and shady hole where the doorknob used to be and questioned how hard Frank and Mary Reynolds slept. A thunderous snore from down the hall was her response. Had they been so loud they’d missed it before?

Hassan froze. “That scared the
pakhana
outta me. He needs to get that checked.”

Her heart slammed like a gauntlet already. “Yeah,” she whispered. “He does.”

Silence weighed in on them and Hassan adjusted his weight, drifting hints of citrus and leather and surging intensity just by moving, just by breathing. Edy thought of parting with him in a week, a month, a lifetime. No amount of time with him felt like enough.

As she had the thought, her shirt fell away.

Edy’s shirt fell away, and oh God, those lips of his, would make her embarrass herself. He was everywhere without caring, searing murmurs of appreciation, burning words of love into her skin, melting her to a broken whisper of his name, and then, not even that.

He brushed the place where her bra clasped between the cups and Edy inhaled borrowed air.

“We—we’re waiting, right?” Hassan said and dragged a finger along the swell of her breast. He made a point of drawing back to prop up on one elbow.

Waiting. Yeah. About that.

“Why not?” Edy breathed. “We’ve got forever, right?”

Okay, that wasn’t fair. That really wasn’t fair. But their future slamming into a brick wall hurt her in ways that made her lash out, wounded and mean. So, she told him she was sorry.

“It’s okay,” Hassan said. “Let me wait for you.” He touched her face.

 “That’s not—” Agitation choked her as she groped for the right words. Mentioning his parents in bed felt wrong. “Trust me; that’s not it,” she said lamely.

She felt him shift to face her in the dark and knew she didn’t have to finish, knew that he got it. That the issue wasn’t him waiting on her to feel ready, but rather, them not feeling like every moment of their lives—including this one—took place with an audience that included his parents.  

 He exhaled. “We should get some sleep. Today’s been crazy. And I’d, uh, hate to find that your grandfather actually does own a rifle.”

Right. Their day had been crazy. Because there were new grandparents and old lies and Hassan’s hands on her combined with a future they may or may not have had. She gnawed on her lip, nostrils flared, until Hassan returned to his makeshift bed.

Edy expelled a breath. “Come back,” she said. “I miss you.”

Hassan slipped into bed again and cinched her tight against him, so that her back pressed his chest and their bodies cupped. They laid there awhile enjoying the silence. Eventually, he tucked the stray hair on her cheek behind her ear and dotted her neck in kisses, trailing to her collarbone until she gripped the sheets and whimpered. Edy twisted to face him and their mouths crashed, desperate, bitter and greedy.

Reality hit her like a brick. It could be their last chance, their only chance to be together. Would she take it and treasure the memory or hold out for the certainty of knowing she was ready?

“I have protection,” Hassan said. “But it may be too old. It’s in my wallet if you want it.”

He waited for her in stillness.

Last chance.

“Get it,” Edy said and swallowed a throat full of nervousness.

He disappeared from her and the silence stretched on. The bed creaked with his return and seconds later she heard the crumple of foil. He breathed steady, but heavy, and eventually he went still. He’d either broken the rubber or figured it out.

“Got it?” Edy whispered.

“Yeah.”

He climbed atop and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. His shoulders shook. His body shook. Of the two, Edy was the steady one.

“I’ll be okay,” she whispered and pressed her hand to his face.

“You always are,” he said and gathered her into his arms.

They became one as they never had before.