Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
The afternoon was… civil. An hour of listening to Jack’s tale of recovery, the millions of apologies following every other word, was all Baz could take. Sami was right—an unfortunate trend—that they’d need time to rebuild their relationship.
Jack promised to stay in touch. His invitation to meet at their family home had resistance rising in Baz. But Joel’s proposal to meet at the Catfé once they all had a chance to process, that was something Baz heard himself agreeing to. He even consented to Eevee giving Jack his number.
He blamed this act of faith on Sami’s smile, which seemed to grow with every neutral interaction Baz had with Jack. A dangerous tool of manipulation, but Baz was far from complaining. On the contrary. The moment they left, he wrapped Sami back into his arms where he belonged.
“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” And can it be to my place?
“Yes, please. I have some work to catch up on before Ian kills me.”
Oh. Shame, but Baz couldn’t argue with a hard worker, even if it was for the devil.
The reality of their jobs seemed worlds away. The thought of Sami trading the softness of today for his cocky lawyer facade tomorrow burned a hole in Baz’s chest. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be made to wait too long to see the real Sami again.
Sami insisted on navigating rather than putting his address into the GPS. Baz didn’t question it until they hit Chinatown and Sami instructed him to head further west. Past the University of Illinois. Past the medical district.
Baz frowned. “Where exactly do you live?”
Sami muttered something under his breath, nothing but slurred words.
“What was that?”
“Garfield Park,” Sami mumbled, quietly, like he was hoping the words would get lost in the space between them once more. They did not.
“What?!”
Driving. He was driving. Baz checked the road just long enough to make sure he was in his lane before he subjected Sami to the full intensity of his glare.
Chicago got a bad rap for being dangerous; the news made it sound like crime lingered at every corner and it was a miracle to make it out alive. Massive exaggerations, of course. But Sami had managed to pick one of the few genuinely dangerous neighborhoods.
“The east of it!” Sami insisted, like that made a difference.
“You let me let you go home alone at night to Garfield Park?” That was never happening again. From now on, Sami would stay the night, or Baz would give him a ride home personally.
“I live really close to the L.”
“Yeah, that makes it so much better.” Famously, no gangbangers ever hung around train stops. Not like those were the prime hubs for drug deals and gang escalations!
“You’re making this a bigger deal than it is. You don’t keep anything you care about in your car, though, right? Doesn’t even have to be valuable. Maybe we should let the air out your tires, just to be sure.”
“Oh my god.”
Sami’s chuckle was way too light given the danger he put himself in, walking around here at night. Such a blatant disregard for his mortality.
His apartment was just east of the truly dicey area, but this still felt dodgy.
Baz would have to see about calling in a favor from Aya’s real estate client—Baz had done most of the work for him anyway—to give Sami and Naija the option to upgrade.
Not becoming a casualty in a gang war was the least Sami deserved after all he had done this weekend.
Once again, Baz couldn’t find it in him to leave the car. Not if it meant saying goodbye. He’d rather stay and caress Sami’s hand, feeling the leathery scar tissue disappear under his sleeve.
“Thank you for today. And last night, and everything.” Baz hadn’t kept track of how often he had said it, but he knew it wasn’t enough. No one had ever done anything like this for him. He hadn’t thought anyone ever would.
“My pleasure. I love seeing grown men cry.” Sami’s grin softened. His fingers locked with Baz’s. “And it seemed like you needed a friend.”
A friend. Sure. Or maybe something more. Something that meant Sami would always look at him like there was no place he’d rather be despite the chaos he had been dragged into.
“I appreciate you.”
Sami’s throat bopped. “Do you, maybe, wanna come upstairs? About time you see what an apartment within someone’s means looks like.”
“Yeah.” Baz’s voice was barely more than a breath. “I think I could do with that inspiration.”
“Okay.”
Dirty gray tiles covered the floor of the hallway. The nicotine-yellow wallpaper revealed ashy concrete where it had been torn off. The stairs were too narrow to fit both of them, robbing Baz of any chance to keep holding Sami’s hand.
Four floors, no elevator. What a humbling reminder he needed to do more cardio at the gym. No wonder Sami had gorgeous legs.
Sami opened the door to a small living room that barely fitted a three-seater.
“Naija? You home?” he shouted, dropping his keys in the bowl next to the entrance. No reply.
Baz closed the door behind them, and wow.
Nearly every inch of the walls was covered, by art—like the painting of a cartoon frog wearing oversized glasses—movie posters, and several pictures of Naija, Sami, the gang, and a bunch of people Baz didn’t recognize.
Miles of fairy lights roped around each wall piece, intertwined with vines of ivy.
With the dark wooden furniture and indirect light, the room resembled a particularly artsy speakeasy.
If this was happy, no wonder Sami thought his place was sad.
“Busy,” Baz remarked.
“I know. Naija does a lot of paint-by-numbers when she’s stressed. We’re kind of running out of space to put everything up.”
Running out of space seemed to be a general theme. Everything was stuffed to the max, and yet, there was a strange comfort in the clutter. This place felt so… lived in. A home.
A sepia-colored photo next to the front door caught his eye, striking because it was on its own on the small stretch of blue wall. The edges had faded, the quality was grainy, but the image was clear: an older man was twirling a young girl around on a beach, in front of a small brick house.
“That’s stunning. Where’s that?”
Smiling, Sami stepped closer to the photo. “Isn’t it? That was my family’s home. Back in al-Tantura.”
“Why did you move?” Chicago was far from ugly, but there was something special about that picture, something serene and elysian.
Sami’s index finger traced over the image. “Well, when a bunch of armed soldiers bulldoze into your house and demand you leave or else they’ll kill you, if not worse, you might be persuaded to move too.”
Baz blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
Sami’s gaze was loaded with something Baz couldn’t grasp. The air between them grew thick. “Tantura, Palestine, Baz.”
Oh. Sami was… his family had been… “Oh.”
“Told you I’m from nowhere I can go back to.”
“Yeah, but… Oh.” It wasn’t good enough, he knew that, but better words escaped him.
“I know. It was a small village, they were outmatched, but my great-grandparents still tried to defend their home. They were murdered in that house, right in front of my teta when she was only a child. She never spoke about the massacre she witnessed, but she cried every year on May twenty-second.”
“What happened to her?” Baz’s voice came out hushed.
“She and everyone else were forced to abandon our land. She joined the neighboring family, and they built a new village for Palestinian refugees in Jordan. That’s where she brought up my mother and it is where my mom fell in love with an American geologist. She followed him here.
Well, to California. They brought teta along too, but she never liked it there,” Sami chuckled sadly. A flicker of pain ran over his face.
“It’s weird. I’ve never been to that house, but my teta told stories about how she’d go fishing with her dad or play on the beach, and I just…” His eyes glazed over under his rapid blinks. “When I think of home, this is what I see. My mom still wears the key around her neck, every day.”
The heaviness of his words threatened to tear Baz’s heart into pieces. He lowered his hands on Sami’s shoulders, slowly, ready to withdraw any second. When Sami didn’t flinch, but put his on top, Baz leaned his forehead against Sami’s temple too.
“I’m sorry,” Baz whispered. He wished he had the magic words that would somehow make this better, but his brain came up blank. What was there to say in the face of such profound pain he couldn’t pretend to understand?
“Yeah. Teta made this, you know.” With more care than Baz had ever seen him handle anything, Sami pulled an off-white, square shawl off the wooden coat stand by the door.
The tassels along its edge danced at the movement.
Some loose threads stuck out. “My kufiya. Apparently, my mom swaddled me in it when I was a baby. I barely wear it, it’s too special for that, but, you know.
I like having it on display. Reminds me of her. ”
Baz couldn’t begin to fathom how precious of an heirloom it must be—and still, Sami folded the shawl into a triangle and threw it over Baz’s shoulders. He arranged the cotton ends on Baz’s chest, gently smoothing out the fabric.
“Suits you.”
The ‘What doesn’t?’ got stuck in Baz’s throat. The moment was too fragile to risk breaking with a joke.
“You must miss your teta.”
“I do. I miss her joy. She was the funniest person I’ve ever known, always a quip on her lips. And whenever I tried to talk back, she’d shove some food into my mouth.”
Baz could picture it too well, a young Sami, ever the menace, engaging in a battle of wits with his grandma just to get a snack.
Baz’s relationship with his mother had always been distant, and still, the grief of losing her had knocked him out. Still did. He couldn’t imagine how much of his own grief Sami hid under that sunny exterior.
“She sounds awesome.”