The way he phrases it is so strange, but before I can ask him about it, he asks Emily, “Can you tell me some stuff about Ziya?”
A conspiratorial smirk crosses her face, and she leans forward. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything!”
“Whoa, wait.” I throw my hands in the air. “When did this turn into a Q and A panel about me—where I’m not even the one answering the questions?”
Aashiq pouts, and I pretend not to notice the jump in my stomach. “Well, you don’t talk a lot about yourself. I mean, youdo, but not the deeper stuff.”
Deeper stuff? My writing is one of the most intimate things about me. It’s incredibly difficult for me to talk about it, even with my actual writing muse. But I thought I was getting better at it.
Aashiq returns his attention to Emily. “What was Ziya like in college?”
“I hate to break it to you, but she was a lot like how she is now,” Emily answers. “In her room all day when she wasn’t in class, writing or reading or studying. Every now and then I dragged her out of the dorm to go to a party or a school event, but even while she was there, her face clearly said she’d rather be at home.” She picks at her fake nails. “It was actually kind of hurtful.”
I furrow my brows. “You never told me that.”
She huffs again. “Well, it wasn’t that I washurt, it was more like… I was having this great university experience, and I wanted you to be there with me.”
“I was perfectly happy with my university experience,” I say, but even as I speak the words, I know they’re a lie. One of the unfortunate perks about having a fully developed prefrontal cortex is it gives you the ability to look back on your life with an adult perspective and realize how much you really sold yourself short. Yes, I stayed in almost every night doing homework or writing, but at the time I told myself I was investing in my career. I wanted to be one of those people who got a bookdeal straight out of college. I was so worried about my future I forgot to enjoy my present, and when I think back, I should have been more involved in college, because it’s a stage of life I can never go back and relive. Humans are strange: we spend so much time preparing for a future that’s not guaranteed, we don’t realize we’re wasting the time we have now. And yet, we do it again and again. From childhood to the teen years, to the coming of age into adulthood and the rest of our lives, we forget our mistakes and are doomed to repeat them.
It’s a wonder natural selection hasn’t eradicated the human race entirely.
But I don’t want to repeat my mistakes. I can’t get my sheltered teen years back. I can’t relive my college experience or redo my twenties. But what I can do is live right now.
I reach across the table and take Emily’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“You shouldn’t be,” she says quickly, putting her own hand on top of mine. “I just felt sorry for you because I thought you were wasting away your time, especially after we got an apartment together after college. It kind of felt like you were unhappy but not trying anything to change that, and I didn’t know how to help you.”
“You help me by being my friend,” I assure her. I plant my other hand on top of hers. “You’ve never given up on me. And that’s more than I could ask for.”
Emily’s eyes get misty, and she blinks a few times before leaning back. “Well, I can at least say confidently that you’ve changed a lot recently.”
I straighten my spine. “Really?”
She nods. “Yeah. It’s been really wonderful to see.” Her gaze drifts over to Aashiq. “And it’s no secret why that’s happened.”
My cheeks flush, and I glance at Aashiq from the corner of my eye. His face is scrunched, though, and his eyes flicker between us before leaning closer to me. “Is she going to tell us why?”
To my surprise, I snort, which causes Emily to laugh, too. Aashiq’s confusion continues, but he quickly rebounds like always. “So, when is Daniel getting here?” he asks.
Emily’s laughter abruptly cuts off. She glances down at her phone. “He was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago, but I haven’t heard anything from him since then.” She blows a frustrated breath from her nose. “I’m sorry, guys.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Everything okay, Em?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” she replies too quickly.
I want to ask her more, but I don’t want to do it in front of Aashiq, who could very easily make the situation much worse. Our food arrives, and we get distracted by filling our stomachs anyway. But something still feels off with Emily, so I tuck a reminder to ask her about it later in the back of my head.
For now, though, I enjoy watching Aashiq and Emily laugh, and I see the ice start to melt bit by bit in Emily’s eyes.
15
It’s already been a while since my birthday, but because my family have all been so busy, we decided to celebrate my thirtieth birthday party a few weeks late. My parents offered to host, thankfully—I couldn’t have much of a party in my tiny apartment.
When I wake up, I stretch all my limbs. Aashiq lets me sleep in on the weekends because I get up so early on the weekdays to go on our runs, and thankfully my muscles have finally gotten used to the exercise, so I don’t feel like my legs are made of lead. I scroll through Instagram for a bit, then finally pull myself out of bed to start the day. My parents decided the party should start at one o’clock so we can have maximum family time. With Tasneem Baji and her family settled in Manhattan, Imran Bhai and his family’s recent relocation to the Bronx, and me in Brooklyn, it’s hard for all of us to gather more than a few times a year. So whenever we do, we make it an all-day excursion.
I step out into the hallway and instinctively, my feet head for the living room, where I expect to see Aashiq. One of our non-writing activities has been knitting, but he’s not very good at it, so he often sits on the couch and practices while he waitsfor me to get out of bed. On days when Emily has the night shift, he’ll spend the whole night in the living room knitting, and on days when she doesn’t, he’ll bring the knitting to work and practice during lunch. He can’t quite get the hang of the purl stitch, though it’s entertaining to see the frustration on his face while he tries—the only knitting happening is the knitting of his brows as he scrunches them. It’s funny; whenever I need help with writing, the answers come to him so quickly. When it comes to knitting, though, it’s like his brain struggles to connect with his hands.