Love Edy (22 page)

Hassan took a seat on rock, and she dropped
next to him, watching him as he examined its surface.

“This is the right one?” he said, gaze still
searching.

She nudged his side and he shifted,
revealing the thing he sought. Their names, carved on the
underside, long, long ago. No dates, no hearts, nothing so
complicated. Just “Hassan”, then “Edy”, like always.

“I’m going to tell your father that you
exposed yourself to me,” she said, eyes on her bare feet, dangling
above water.

Hassan grinned. “Exposed myself? I should’ve
charged you for a show that good. You saw me and you liked it. You
know that.”

The heat returned, hundredfold in its fury,
painting her face and body, leaving her nowhere to hide. So, he’d
seen her. Not just looking but gaping, wondering what he felt
like.

But he couldn’t know, couldn’t know the
extent that he’d affected her, no matter how hard he kept on
grinning. And even with the thought, she saw the smile and saw past
it, to their days beyond the Cape. What would happen when they
returned to school, when football started, and he went from being
hers to being theirs once again?

“What?” Hassan said, smile drooping at the
edges.

Edy turned from him, horrified by what
pooled in her eyes.

“Nothing.” She hesitated, knowing he would
never be satisfied with the answer. “I only wish I didn’t have to
share you.”

Centuries passed in a second.

“Share me,” he echoed.

She couldn’t understand the irritation in
his voice. With his eyes clamped shut, vulnerability sharpened his
features and heightened his intensity. It painted him in stark
relief.

His face turned to steel.

“You’ve got it wrong,” Hassan said in a
voice that made Edy want to shrink into herself. “You’ve always had
it all wrong. Look at the way you are with my parents, with my mom
especially. Our lives change the second we do. A brick wall goes up
and it doesn’t come down. You know what happens next?” He gestured
between them, eyes narrowed, voice raw with bitterness. “They take
us. We don’t get family like we know it; we don’t get
us
like we know it.”

He dragged a shaky hand through his hair,
trailing sand and exhaled mightily. “And for the record you don’t
share me,” he mumbled. “Not even close.”

Edy bore the weight of someone expected to
speak. But the words wouldn’t come. What good was love with an
expiration date? What use was inevitable heartbreak? Yes, he cared
and she could cherish that, but to what end, to what purpose?
Predetermined paths waited for them both; his laid out and hers
what she made of it. She had nothing but leftover crumbs when it
came to Hassan. Loving him was a waste.

“Edy?” he said. “Talk to me. Please.”

She didn’t have the words for this
conversation. With fingers pinched to the bridge of her nose, she
shook her head and concentrated on breathing. At first, his glare
draped her, bathed her, willing her to bend to his will. But this
life, their life together, didn’t contort to anyone’s will.

So Hassan retreated, Goliath on the football
field, something else with Edy.

~~~

Fourteen phone calls unanswered on the “eve”
of Hassan’s birthday. Why Edy felt the need to call it that was
beyond him. Was it some great big holiday, a day of reverence, of
devotion? For the mighty Hassan Pradhan, every day was a day to
prostrate oneself before his altar of muscles.

What a jerk. What a scheming, greedy,
hoarder. As if the girls at school weren’t enough, he had to show
his naked body to Edy. And what for? In the hopes that she acted
like them, that she’d throw herself at him like them?

Wyatt shoved aside his Banquet TV dinner of
fried chicken and sighed. He drummed fingers on the surface of a
rickety pine table. The lamp perched on its end provided the only
source of light.

Calling her would do no good; all day Edy’s
phone had gone to voice mail. Texting her got no response. Seven of
those already and not a single one in reply. It was selfish of her,
shallow of her,
cruel
of her to treat him that way. But,
Hassan Pradhan was in her midst, and of course, she couldn’t
resist.

“Put that damned phone down,” Wyatt’s father
said. “You’ve been staring at it for two months.”

Two months. Two months of loneliness.

His father popped open another beer and
dropped down across from him, eyes laughing.

“I want to make a phone call,” Wyatt
said.

This time his father did laugh.

“You haven’t got anybody to call,” he said.
“Nobody that’ll call back, that is.”

Wyatt’s jaw set. He knew someone who would
call him back. Someone who had asked for him by name.

“Maybe I’ll call Lottie,” he said.

His father set aside his beer, all pretense
of amusement now gone.

“That’s not part of our deal,” Roland Green
said.

Wyatt swallowed. “Maybe I don’t like our
deal.”

His father snatched him by the forearm,
upturning his bottle of beer so that it ran a river from table to
floor. Four of his fingernails dug into the tender flesh of Wyatt’s
forearm, blanching it under the power of his grip.

Wyatt gasped. “Dad . . . stop. You’re
hurting me.”

“I’ll do a lot more than that if you go off
the rails again.” His father hurled his arm. It bounced off the
table, elbow first.

Wyatt cursed.

“Eat,” his father said and shoved the TV
dinner back at him.

The lamp on the table flickered. Either the
bulb needed replacing, or his father had forgotten to pay the bill
again. A minute later, Wyatt received his confirmation, when he and
his father were drenched in darkness.

~~~

When Hassan woke to their final day on the
Cape, his birthday, it was only because he’d grown tired of Edy
nudging him.

“
Why
won’t you let me sleep?” he
moaned.

“Because I can’t take it anymore. Get up.
You
have
to get up.”

She leapt atop him, straddled him, then
shook him with vicious enthusiasm.

Hassan let out a torturous groan. “Edy! You
have
got
to stop jumping my bones. Now, get off.
Please.”

He covered his face with a pillow and
shifted his top half to one side, away from her. It was the best he
could manage with Edy on top.

“Hassan, come on! It’s our last day here
and—”

She fell back, fell silent, withdrawing in
more ways than one.

“And what?” Hassan said, moving the pillow
from his face.

He knew ‘what’, even if he couldn’t put it
into words. ‘What’ was the thing that happened between Boston and
the Cape, between Edy and Hassan alone and Edy and Hassan out
there, when the rest of the world imposed.

“Nothing,” she said.

He looked up at her, took her by the arms,
and willed her for once, just once, to say the thing that neither
of them had been able to.

He imagined pulling her down to him so that
their lips met, so that they kissed. What would she do? Pedal away,
shocked and confused and trying to figure out how their
sibling-like relationship had gone so wrong?

Except they’d never been like siblings. Not
to him.

Edy stared down at him, with those gaping,
glistening, wide, brown eyes—and inside, he felt his will begin to
wilt.

“Look outside,” she said.

Hassan sighed and released her.

She got up so that he could stretch to the
window, pull back the curtain, and take in the coastline. What in
the world could she want him to see? Sunrise? It was too late for
that.

His birthday. Hassan’s gaze skated closer to
the house, finally falling on the driveway, where he stopped.

A sable Mustang wrapped with a gleaming red
bow—
a convertible
—beckoned with the top down.

He cursed. “Is that mine?”

“Hell yeah!” Edy cried and yanked him by the
arm.

He pitched from the bed, and the two
scrambled, hand in hand, sliding on parquet, barreling downstairs,
about to smack into the front door.

Hassan shoved it open, and only dimly
registered their parents before they spilled out into the front
yard. He let go of Edy, to cavort left, then right, desperate to
soak up every line and curve of the his beauty, unable to slow for
a proper inspection. At the back of the Mustang, he registered the
Massachusetts tag with “Hassan 27”, and a howl ripped from his
throat.

He bolted to the driver’s side and yanked on
the handle. Since it was locked, he turned for the house where Edy
and his parents filled the doorway.

“Gimme the keys before I bust through the
window,” Hassan said.

Edy’s mother looked at his parents.

“I told you she couldn’t hold water,”
Rebecca said.

Hassan’s father held out the keys like an
offering, only to have them snatched in a hurricane of movement.
Hassan turned away, then doubled back to swallow his dad in a hug.
He squeezed first him, then his mother, and tearing off for the
car.

“Our gift’s inside!” Nathan called as Hassan
pried the door open.

“Are you kidding me? There’s more?”

Nathan descended the stairs. “Well, I know
how you young men like sound systems, so . . .”

Hassan shot Edy a look of frightened
curiosity. He couldn’t fathom what a sound system from Nathan might
look like, and apparently, neither could Edy. She came down and
joined him on the passenger’s side. Nathan made his way around to
the driver’s side door.

“I’m not exactly sure how it all works. It
appeared to be a very complicated process. But the gentleman
assured me it’s quite common among young people to place the
speakers in the trunk.”

Hassan and Edy turned to each other,
wide-mouthed, before diving from their seats.

“Holy crap. This thing is tremendous!”

“Satellite radio,” her father continued,
prouder now, posture straighter after his gift’s enthusiastic
reception. “Twenty-four hour football commentary on three stations
all year round.”

Football. The thing that anchored him, that
made sense even when thinking was an ordeal. Only Nathan knew and
understood and had felt it for himself.

Hassan swept him into an embrace before
remembering Rebecca and going to smother her too.

His gaze turned back to the car, where he
absorbed the beauty of it all and the power hidden just beneath the
hood. He had no idea how long he should stand there, looking
thankful. “So, um, can we go somewhere? Maybe get some bread or
something?”

“Bread.” Rebecca hooted and messed up his
hair.

“Around the block a few times,” Hassan’s
father said. “Mind the posted speed limits, the stop signs,
etcetera.” He looked his son over once more. “And when you get
back, dress properly.”

Hassan looked down at the tee and pajama
pants he wore, noted the absence of shoes, and grinned.

“Bye,” he said and grabbed Edy by the
hand.

A few minutes later, the two eased down the
unassuming streets of North Truro, wild grass, sand dunes, and
slung low houses on either side of them.

“Unreal. Beyond unreal,” he muttered and
adjusted his mirrors at a red light. “I don’t think anything could
make this day better.”

“Well, I have something for you. I mean,
it’s not a Mustang or a sound system, but . . .”

“You do? Why didn’t you tell me?” Hassan
pulled over.

Edy reached under her seat and pawed around
before returning with a slender, baby blue box wrapped with a sleek
white ribbon.

Tiffany’s.

He shot her a look, drawing a blank as to
what it could be. Nonetheless, Hassan took it from her and tugged
at the ribbon.

“Where’d you get Tiffany’s money?” he said
as he unwrapped his gift.

“You know I get a few bucks to spend for
your birthday each year.”

“Not Tiffany bucks.” He looked up at
her.

Edy blushed. “I’ve been saving my allowance.
Walking home instead of catching the bus.”

The walks home with Wyatt. They didn’t mean
what he thought.

Hassan lifted the lid, revealing a pair of
sterling silver dog tags engraved on one side. He picked them up
and squinted at elaborate font.

To Hassan,

My favorite guy,

In this life and the next.

Believing in you even when you don’t.

Edy

He looked at her.

“How could you—”

“My secret.”

Her words meant a million things at once,
the way everything between them did. And yet, it surprised him when
his vision blurred. Hassan blinked away tears.

“I love it.” He cleared his throat. “It’s
perfect. Really.” He closed a fist around the tags and enveloped
Edy in his arms, holding her closer to his heart than anyone
ever.

Fifteen

Wyatt knew sophomore year would blow. He
knew it the moment Hassan pulled into the driveway with the top
down on a $32,000 car, name hanging on the back, Jay-Z cranking
from the speaker system. He knew it the moment Hassan leapt from
said car, sleeves rolled to reveal massive biceps, only to go
around and help Edy out as if she were some bruised rose petal. And
he knew it the moment the two sauntered into her house, arm in arm,
without a look his way.

Her father had been so abrupt to Wyatt. Not
rude, but barely tolerating. Didn’t he see what was right under his
nose? He was so busy worrying about what might be he couldn’t see
what was. Hassan and Edy on the verge of something more. Maybe
already there.

Things came easy for Hassan. Looks.
Athleticism. Girls. Edy Phelps, however, wouldn’t come so easy.

She didn’t know about the summer, about the
wild parties and endless stream of girls. She didn’t know how
Hassan had spent his weeks apart from her. But she would. Wyatt
would make sure of it.

Monday morning, Wyatt stood curbside before
his house as the caravan got organized. And by caravan, he meant
the twins in the SUV with Kyle and Lawrence in tow, plus Hassan in
the Mustang with Edy. Chloe was absent, though it was no surprise.
Two weeks earlier, she’d shouted Lawrence down in the street about
skanks, so they were Splitsville. Funny how Wyatt had an ear to all
of South End’s drama, right there from his stoop.