Love from A to Z: List 2

Or, in this case, maybe I’d call it serendipity?
Though if I did, I'd be saying it was a happy thing that the girl from the plane yesterday was standing on the front steps of my home.
Let’s call it serendipity, then.

Standing beside her was Ms. Raymond. I’m pretty sure this made my welcome smile falter a bit. I knew she’d be coming over today, so it wasn’t as bad as seeing her yesterday at the airport.

The rest of the guys got up too and began bounding down the steps behind Tsetso, simultaneously trying to pull one another back to be the one to get there the fastest.

Like, I’m lying here in bed after the party, proud that I passed a full day at home without once thinking about how I have to tell my father about my multiple sclerosis.

They were also similar in mannerisms.

Getting excited at the same things and then, just like that, without a glance at the others, becoming suddenly subdued in unison.

Because I just wanted to yank Madison’s phone from her, superglue her to a chair, and force her to watch the longest video on cultural appropriation.

I knew there was at least one shot from yesterday that Adam had ended up in inadvertently. There it was. There he was. In the background behind us, the Emmas and me.

Eyes that could faze with their gaze, so carefully did they look at things.

Auntie Nandy’s hips and shoulders looked like they belonged to two different people, while her arms didn’t seem to know whether they were taking turns flailing for help from a helicopter hovering over a deserted island or pointing earnestly at something someone lost on the ground.

The cobblestone streets, polished smooth, were lit by lights attached to the buildings, in alcoves and atop the structures as well.

There were all sorts of shops selling everything from trinkets like camel key chains to rugs to perfumes and pure-gold jewelry.

What he meant was he hadn’t liked me asking why he’d written a whole screed on how hijabi girls who wore makeup canceled their hijabs.

Tomorrow I was going to be poised and peaceful.
Maybe quieter, too. Well, quieter in the sense that I was going to listen more than talk. Not jump to conclusions.

Somebody grieving is going to be in my vicinity tomorrow.

Third impression notwithstanding, I was pretty sure meeting her went beyond serendipity.

She was busy shooing a butterfly, one of the hundreds flying around us in the pavilion.

At first glance, the scene appeared the same throughout, but subtle color shifts in the rocks and sand made it interesting.

My movement caused Hanna to jolt beside me, head lolling, eyes flickering open. I hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep leaning on me.

She gazed up from the gold hijab she’d carefully wrapped around her head for prayers. It was turban style, with the ends brought down and flung around her neck like a fancy scarf. She had dark sunglasses on—something she insisted helped her focus while praying—and the whole effect was of a very fashionable supplicant to God.

Spring break goes like this. Solemn at first, and then, after the anniversary, as Dad remembered us, Hanna and me, he would get chipper, eager to do things together as a family.

With what I hoped was discretion, I lifted my phone and took a picture and messaged it to Kavi.

From near the door to the shelter, Adam turned around to look at me, eyes full of mirth.

“You’re going to love the shelter. They want prospective adopters to see the personalities of the dogs, so they let them run around the warehouse and the pen outside, in the sand, and we can just mingle with them,” Adam assured me, holding the door open to my personal nightmare.

Adam and Hanna had filled me in on the stories. Of dogs being mistreated by different sorts of people—some locals, some Westerners, expatriates working in the Arabian Gulf who took them in and then didn’t care for them as their canine type needed to be taken care of, some who then even just released the dogs into the streets when they moved back home.

And then there were the cultural taboos about dogs being bad.

I told myself that the Saluki Mission Shelter was the woman in the well: noble and selfless. And that I should have a tiny iota of this compassion too. Enough to proceed to see this sad, neglected dog.

Fencer provided information that “resulted in Ayaan’s removal from student leadership, as her actions contravene school guidelines on responsible social media use.”

It was a pretty fancy ceiling, moldings crisscrossing in twirls and flourishes.

I was letting myself be what I’d never ever wanted to be: at the mercy of a guy’s whims.

We ate quietly on the couch, watching some house-hunting reality show on TV, Auntie Nandy engrossed, me scrolling through my phone.

He’d chewed his food for so long while eating that I passed him the salad unasked to break his reverie, to get him to swallow.

There’s nothing ahead for us and nothing comes out of wishing it weren’t so.
I’m pragmatic that way, have always been so, through everything.

Connor is the kind of guy you can’t stand, because of his know-it-all, wisecracking ways, but then you just put up hanging around with—because, behind the bravado, he has a strange, deep well of concern for others.

He had no sense of finesse and would ask a million questions, mostly having to do with why I was doing this.