But it always turned into kissing sooner or later.
This time was no different: After a few minutes, Landon shifted and brought his lips toward mine. He was so slow and deliberate and tender, with the way he ran his hands through my hair, and grazed my lips with his, and rested his forehead against mine.
I kind of melted.
When he pulled away, his lips were puffy, and his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were soft like a cat’s. He smiled and reached out for me, taking my hand and pulling it toward his stomach. He slipped our hands under his shirt. The hairs above his waistband tickled my palm.
My breath hitched.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Can I do it to you?”
I shook my head.
He sighed and let me go. I pulled my hand back and sat on it.
“Is it something I’m doing? Or not doing?” he asked.
“No. I just . . . It’s hard.”
Landon giggled.
“Not like that. I don’t know . . .”
“I really like you, Darius.”
“I really like you too.”
Landon pushed my hair back off my forehead.
I melted a little more.
“I don’t ever want to pressure you. But I have to be honest and, well, sex is important to me. As part of a relationship.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just not ready.”
“What do you need to be ready?”
“I don’t know.”
I wanted to cry.
“I don’t know.”
Landon tugged my arm until he pulled my hand out from under me. He kissed my palm, and then he reached up and brushed a tear off my cheek. “Okay.” He wrapped his arms around me, and rested his head on my chest, and let out a little sigh.
* * *
When Landon headed home, and everyone else had gone to bed, I steeped a cup of Bai Mu Dan—this soothing, delicate white tea—to settle in for the night.
My bedroom still smelled faintly of Landon’s cologne, and I felt a little sticky and unsettled as I breathed in his scent.
I kind of wanted to go number three.
But Saturday night in Portland meant Sunday morning in Iran, and that meant Sohrab would be awake.
It took a couple rings before he answered.
“Hello, Darioush! Chetori?”
“I’m okay. How’re you? What did you do today?”
“Maman made kuku sabzi and took it for Mamou. We spent some time there.”
“How was it?”
“It was okay. Quiet. Babou was sleeping the whole time. Mamou says he is not eating much anymore.”
My chest squeezed.
And I had this really horrible thought: that the waiting was worse than Babou actually dying.
That it would be easier for everyone if he just passed away quietly.
I hated that I thought that.
I was so ashamed of myself.
“What’s wrong, Darioush?”
I shook my head and bit my lip to keep from crying.
What kind of person thinks that?
“Darioush?”
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I had an ugly thought, that’s all.”
Sohrab studied me for a second. “I have those too, sometimes.”
“Yeah.” I sniffed. “How’s school?”
Sohrab sighed. “Maman doesn’t want me to go anymore.”
“Really? Why?”
“The police have been bothering Amou Ashkan a lot lately. She’s worried they will start to bother me too.”
Sohrab’s Amou Ashkan ran a store in Yazd.
“But why now?”
“I don’t know, Darioush. Sometimes they just do. To remind people they can. Or because people are unhappy, and they say it’s the fault of the Bahá’ís.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
And then I said, “I wish you could be here instead.”
Sohrab got this sad smile.
“Sometimes I wish that too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know, it’s hard for Bahá’ís to go to university here. To make a future. And we have to do military service.” He chewed on his lip.
We had talked about Iranian compulsory service before. I hated that it haunted his future.
I hated that he had to worry about his future.
It made my own worries seem small and inadequate.
“My mom has a sister who left Iran. Khaleh Safa. She and her family went to Pakistan and became refugees. Now they live in Toronto.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“My dad always said, he didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave Iran. And I used to agree with him. But now I think about Khaleh Safa a lot.”
“You want to move, then?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could go to United States for university.”
“I wish you could too.”
Sohrab chewed on his lip.
“Enough sad things. How is Landon?”
The back of my neck prickled. “He’s okay.”
Sohrab looked at me, like he knew there was more.
Sohrab always knew.
“We talked some. About stuff.”
He kept looking at me.
“Sex stuff.”
Sohrab’s eyes got big for a second and he let out this little cough.
“Oh.” Sohrab’s camera wasn’t good enough for me to tell if his face was getting red, but his voice was distinctly pinched when he said, “Are you . . .”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, though.
“No. We just talked. Landon . . . he wants to.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Sohrab looked away for a minute. He shifted in his chair.
I could tell he was uncomfortable.
Sohrab didn’t have many walls inside, but one of them was about sex. He always got nervous if the conversation veered anywhere near the topic.
I felt kind of bad, bringing it up.
So I said, “I just want him to be happy.”
And Sohrab said, “I want you to be happy too, Darioush.”
“Thanks.”
A silence hung between us, laden with the things we couldn’t say out loud.
I swallowed.
“Mamou and Babou don’t know.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to tell them.”
“I know.”
MIRROR UNIVERSE
Our next soccer match was an away game, against Poplar Grove High School down in Salem.
After school, we grabbed our away kits and boarded the bus waiting in the student parking lot. I ended up in the middle of the bus, with Chip right across the aisle from me. At the front, Coach Bentley cleared her throat.
“It’s your first away game, gentlemen,” she said. “I’m not going to bore you with the Code of Conduct or anything. You all know what’s expected of you. So why don’t we go make it three and oh?”
We all cheered. The airbrakes hissed, the door hinged shut, and the bus lurched into motion, but Coach Bentley stayed standing, swaying as the bus mounted the speed bumps at the parking lot’s exit.
“Some of you have been asking about recruiters.” She glanced around, her eyes lingering on Gabe. He was, empirically speaking, our best player, and had a real chance of getting scouted. “I suspect there will be some today. I know it’s pointless telling you not to feel pressured. But I hope you’ll remember that this isn’t a singular opportunity, for any of you. There will be other games, other recruiters, and other paths to the future you want. So just get out there, play hard, and have fun. Go Chargers!”
“Go Chargers!” we shouted.
The bus bounced as we got onto the highway, and the guys settled into the ride, playing on their phones or talking or, sometimes, shouting from one end of the bus to the other.
In front of me, Gabe and Jaden speculated about which schools might have scouts at our game.
“Probably UW and UO, at least,” Jaden said. “Maybe Idaho?”
Gabe laughed. “Do they have schools in Idaho?”
“No idea. Hey, Darius.”
“Yeah?”
“Who do you think is gonna be at the game?”
“Oh,” I said. “I dunno.”
I was a junior. And besides, I was a defender. No one ever paid attention to defenders.
Plus, like I said, I was pretty sure college wasn’t for me. I knew Mom and Dad wanted me to go, but I just couldn’t see myself being happy there.
Across from me, Chip frowned at his phone, thumbs jabbing the screen. He huffed, crossed his arms, and stared out the window.
I watched him for a second, and then looked out my own window. It was one of those perfectly clear fall days where you can just barely make out Mount Hood to the east. I watched it as best I could, my view interrupted by billboards every so often, but the back of my neck prickled.
Chip huffed again, and then sighed.
I leaned across the aisle. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, but he kept his arms crossed and his shoulders up around his ears.
And then he said, “You’ve got a sister, right?”
“Yeah. Laleh.”
“She ever do anything that just makes you want to, like, murder her?”
“Not really. She’s nine.”
“Yeah, well, that’s okay then.” Chip puffed his cheeks and blew out a heavy breath. “My brother was supposed to look after Evie tonight, since Ana and Jason both have class, but now he says he’s sick and wants me to do it instead. Like I could just turn this bus around. Like our game calendar isn’t on the fridge.”