“Well...” I blow out a breath. “She is not yet my girlfriend.”
My dad’s eyes widen. “She said no?”
I shake my head, trying to figure out how to phrase this so it’s not too obvious why we were too busy for me to ask last night. “It just, um, didn’t seem like the right time.”
I wanted to wake up with her in my arms and do it in bed this morning, with her body warm and soft against mine. I wanted to hold her hand and tell her she’d changed so much for me, that every day I’m taking more steps to living on my own terms, and that going to LA and putting my doubts to rest is just one of them.
“Hey,Baba. Question for you. What are you supposed to do when a girl ‘needs space?’”
I put it in air quotes and everything.
My dad throws his head back and laughs for a long time before clapping his hand on my shoulder. “Oh, Youssef, you don’t know how many times your mother used that line on me back when we first met. I still don’t really know what ‘space’ means.” He does the air quotes too. “What I do know is that everybody needs different things to find their path, and if you can give a woman what she needs and be there waiting on the other side, and if she can do that for you, then your paths are meant to intertwine.”
“Wow,Baba. Pure poetry.”
He tightens his grip on my shoulder. “Don’t be smart.”
My Auntie Mariam comes over to join us then, chattering away in Arabic so fast I have trouble telling what she’s saying. My dad gives me an apologetic look as she grabs him by the arm and starts steering him over to one of my uncles.
I guess that’s all the advice I’ll be getting for today.
* * *
Two hours later,Paige and I are heading down the highway to Montreal. We’re just outside the city limits now, and we haven’t said much the whole trip. She did give me a one-armed hug in the hotel, and she put on a Sufjan Stevens album when I made her the official car DJ. Things can’t beallbad, but I can’t read where she’s at. It’s like we’re back to the early days of her broken arm, when she’d box me out every chance she got and I had to fight my way in.
I thought we were done with that.
“So, uh, any plans for the week?”
I sound so stupid I want to smack my head against the steering wheel, but I don’t know how to manoeuvre this conversation into telling her about LA. It really doesn’t seem like an ideal time, but I’m running out ofanytime. I leave the day after tomorrow, and I still haven’t confirmed with her that I’m going.
I was hoping to deliver the news in a far less tense atmosphere.
“Physio and getting approved to take this thing off.” She waves her splint-covered hand at me.
“Oh, right, right. That’s exciting.”
“Mhmm.”
Sufjan fills the awkward silence. I decide to just have at it. If she leaves this car without hearing what I have to say, I’m scared she won’t give me a chance to say it at all. I follow the curve of the highway and take a deep breath.
“So, uh, I have that trip to LA on Tuesday.”
Her head snaps to face me. “What?”
The temperature in the car drops a few degrees, the space between us icing over. It’s like I can feel all those walls of hers sliding back into place, and I don’t know how to stop them.
“Yeah, I know I haven’t mentioned it in a bit. I actually was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to go, but, um, now I am.”
“Oh. Okay. I...I didn’t realize it was so soon.”
I try to speak, but no words come out. My throat feels tight, constricted, like something’s choking me and holding back what I need to say. I want to tell her everything, but I don’t want it to be like this. I wantherto hear it, not the girl burrowing into her hoodie and staring out the window so she doesn’t have to look at me anymore.
You don’t have to hide from me.
I don’t know how to bring her back. I didn’t even think this could happen. I stare at the highway in front of us and the looming skyline of Montreal.
“That’s probably a good thing. We could both use some time to ourselves.”
