Chapter Thirteen #2
“I wish you would listen to me,” she repeated, suddenly feeling defeated and tired. “I don’t understand why you’re even here.”
“I think you do,” Tahsin answered, and her tone was hard now. Beside her, Naveed tried to defuse the situation, but both women ignored him. “If you had been honest with us from the start, we would all be in Atlanta right now.”
“I was honest! There is nothing going on between me and Tom!” Sameera said.
“Just as there was nothing going on between you and Hunter? Or you and Colin? Or you and Umar? You have lied to us again and again.”
Sameera flinched at the names of her high school and college boyfriends—all fleeting relationships. She hadn’t realized her parents had known about them. But of course they had—her mother was not above snooping in her room or even on her phone. She closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down.
“Remember what you did when you were eighteen?” Tahsin said, referring to the infamous overnight cabin trip.
Her mother’s voice was goading, as if she, too, was tired of skirting around the issue.
She sounded furious now, too. “You’ve proven again and again that we can’t trust you, Sameera.
That you are incapable of thinking clearly when a man is involved.
That you still need us to save you from yourself.
Look at what happened with Hunter—if you had only been honest with us about your relationship, we would have been able to stop what he did to you.
We could have guided you. Instead, you messed up your life. ”
Ice entered Sameera’s veins as she stared at her mother, before her gaze traveled to Naveed, who couldn’t meet her eyes.
This was what they really thought of her, she thought: that she was naive, weak, her judgment innately flawed.
They thought she deserved every single setback.
That she had deserved Hunter’s cruelties, small and large.
She was so sick of it.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a disappointment.
I know I’m not the daughter you wanted. But you’re not the parents I wished for, either,” she said flatly.
With a sick sense of satisfaction, she watched as her words landed, watched as Naveed’s face grew pale, watched her mother’s sharp inhalation. Good. She wanted them to hurt, too.
She handed her father the car keys and walked away before she started to cry.
Somehow, she found herself at Hilda’s Bakery, nursing a chili hot chocolate. The temperature and the spice level of the drink both fit her dark mood. She had regretted the words the minute they were out of her mouth, and she hated her momentary happiness at seeing them land even more.
If Nadiya were here, she would know what to do. She would have forced Sameera to be brave, to talk to her parents. Their argument was even more proof that they had things they still needed to say to one another, but she had messed it all up. Instead, she sat and sipped and seethed quietly.
Hilda had left her alone, but when Tom showed up twenty minutes later, she knew the baker must have called him, and part of her was grateful. He settled into the seat across from her, and she stared out the window at the people walking by.
“Want to tell me what happened?” he asked gently.
She shrugged. “My family is crazy.”
Tom’s laugh was soft, and kind. “You’ll never believe this, but same.”
“I’m the little girl who cried wolf, and now no one will ever believe me again,” she said. She felt ridiculous even trying to explain the situation to Tom. “They still haven’t forgiven me for the way I kept things from them. For lying to them about Hunter. They think I deserve what happened.”
She waited for Tom to ask for details, to press for the whole, sorry story. Instead, he put his forearms on the table, leaning forward. “When I was in middle school, my dad thought it would be a good idea to sponsor the local hockey league. Not a team: the entire organization.”
“That sounds . . . generous?” Sameera said, wondering where he was going with this.
“He had only one condition—I had to be a starter on the twelve-and-up boys’ team.”
“Sounds like a nice opportunity,” Sameera said cautiously.
“It would have been nice, if I knew how to skate. Or liked hockey. Or was friends with anyone else on the team,” Tom said.
“Oh no,” Sameera said, covering her mouth with her hands to stifle a horrified laugh.
“Rob showed up to every game and sat front and center, just to watch me fall on my face on the ice. He sat there while my teammates, who had been playing hockey from the age of three, made fun of me,” he said.
“I think he thought I’d magically get better, through the power of his money and childhood bullying.
” There was a wry smile on his face, but Sameera wasn’t fooled.
Tom had unearthed a painful childhood memory and presented it to her as if it were a talisman.
It made it easier to share her thoughts, the ones she wished she didn’t have.
“Sometimes, I feel embarrassed by my parents,” she said in a low voice, hating herself.
“I don’t want to feel this way. I hate that I do, and I know I should have grown out of this by now.
But they will be walking down the street and say something outrageous, or wear something silly, like those Christmas sweaters, and I’m thirteen years old again and mortified, and I want to disappear. ”
They looked at each other in silence, and for the first time, Sameera didn’t feel the usual self-disgust mixed with toe-curling anxiety when she thought about what she had shared.
“It will be okay,” Tom said solemnly. “Whatever they did, I promise it will be all right.”
“They invited a random stranger over for dinner at Cooke Place. Tonight,” Sameera blurted.
Tom paused. “That’s fine. My dad loves company.”
“Abu Isra plans to bring his wife and six kids,” she added.
Tom broke out in a smile. “Abu Isra is coming over? Then there’s no trouble at all. My parents eat at his restaurant all the time.”
This startled a laugh from Sameera. “Does everyone just know each other here?”
“Pretty much, yes,” Tom said. “It used to drive my mom crazy. She was an introvert.”
Sameera raised a brow. “That must have been difficult, in a place like Wolf Run.”
“I think she understood what was expected of her when she married my dad. There’s always give and pull in any relationship.”
“That hasn’t been my experience,” Sameera said wryly, thinking of Hunter. She returned to people-watching, but this time she could feel Tom’s gaze on her.
“Why are you single?” he asked, something more than curiosity in his voice.
“How do you know I’m single? Maybe I have a boyfriend in Atlanta. Or a fiancé,” she teased, and his eyes went wide. “Relax, I’m single. I have been, ever since my boyfriend and I broke up last year.”
“That’s a long time,” he said.
“When you work sixty- to eighty-hour weeks, what’s impossible is keeping anyone around,” she countered.
That wasn’t the only reason, of course. Bee had installed a few apps on her phone several months after Hunter left, had even offered to set her up with her cute next-door neighbor, Diego, a visual artist. She had rebuffed every encouragement.
The scars Hunter had left by his betrayal ran too deep to be quickly forgotten.
Sometimes she wondered if she would ever be able to let someone into her heart again. No matter how amazing their samosas.
“I understand what it’s like, being too busy for a relationship.
I’m just wondering how you walk anywhere without tripping.
” Off her questioning look, he added, “Because of all the people dropping at your feet.” She threw her balled-up napkin at him, and he smiled at her before ducking his head, suddenly shy.
“Andy wasn’t lying in his message. It’s been a while for me, too,” he admitted.
“Now that I can believe,” she said, and he made a face at her.
“We both work crazy hours. We’re both ambitious and driven. Some of us are more charming than others,” he added, waggling his brows.
“You mean some of us have to try harder,” she teased, and he grinned, accepting her parry.
“Plus, there’s the online hellscape of dating apps.” He shrugged his shoulders in a who is even dating amid the trash fire that is modern life sort of way. Except, in her case, it wasn’t the whole story, and for the first time in a long time, she found herself wanting to talk about Hunter.
“My last relationship didn’t end well. When Hunter left me—”
“Your ex was named Hunter?” Tom asked, unimpressed. “His name is a red flag.”
Sameera started laughing. “That’s what my sister Nadiya said!”
“Nadiya has good instincts. You should listen to her.”
“She’s currently not talking to me, because she thinks I’m dating you.”
Tom leaned back. “Give me your phone. I’ll text her right now and tell her you’re smarter than that.”
Sameera laughed and shook her head.
“What happened with the Walking Red Flag?” Tom asked.
“We met while I was in law school,” Sameera started. “He was finishing up an MBA.”
“Second red flag,” Tom murmured. “Never trust a finance bro.”
“He’s an engineer. And weren’t you in business school?” she asked.
“Which is why I know what I’m talking about. I bet he couldn’t cook, either,” Tom said darkly.
Sameera shrugged—Tom wasn’t wrong—before continuing.
“I fell for him, hard. I thought I was in love, but he wasn’t Muslim, and I knew my parents wouldn’t understand.
Not that I ever told them about any of my relationships.
Only Nadiya knew how much I liked him. He wasn’t terrible, not at the start. ”
Tom snorted. “Neither is arsenic.” He put his hands up at her expression. “I’ll be good. Please, continue, and make sure to include this guy’s full name and last known address. I’d like to pay him a visit when we return home.”
Home. Tom thought of Atlanta as home, but the way he had said it, it almost sounded as if he meant their home.
Sameera took a deep breath. “I wish I could tell you where Hunter is right now. Last year, five years into our relationship, I came back to the apartment we shared to find it cleared out. His belongings were gone. But he did leave behind about seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of debt, on credit cards and lines of credit he had taken out in my name. ”
The shocked expression on Tom’s face nearly turned her brittle smile into a genuine one. “I guess I’m not so smart after all,” she said, and her voice shook. Tom instantly reached for her hand, clasping it tightly in his own warm grip.
“I promise you, Sameera,” he said, his eyes steady on her face. “I will name my garbage disposal after that turd.”
She laughed, but it sounded like a sob, and she realized her cheeks were wet.
She hadn’t thought she had any tears left for Hunter.
She wiped them away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to tell you the story of my greatest mistake.
I should come with caution tape.” She knew she sounded pitiful, but the gentle look Tom gave her now somehow made her feel lighter, like less of a disaster.
“Do you have any sad stories you want to share?”
Tom leaned back. “How about this? One night, I was catering yet another holiday party. The people who hired me wanted classy, upmarket, bland food that looked expensive. The party was full of the usual type, boasting about their yachts or whatever, and I was incredibly bored. Then suddenly, a spotlight shone down on the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, right in the middle of the party. ”
Sameera raised her eyebrows. What was he talking about?
Tom continued, “Except there wasn’t a spotlight.
It just felt like it, because all I could see was her.
Beautiful, sure. But there was something about her.
She carried herself with this aloof vitality.
She handled her idiot colleagues without breaking a sweat.
She told me my samosas weren’t spicy enough, and she was right. ”
Sameera’s heart started to pound.
Tom’s smile was almost sad. “She didn’t notice me, of course.
Goddesses usually don’t notice mortals, not until they make themselves into a nuisance, but still, I tried to capture her attention.
I got the special drink she requested, even though I had to run to the corner store, but she barely looked my way.
When she walked into my kitchen to take a call, I knew I was in trouble.
Because in addition to being the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, she was funny and kind and smart, and she told me her mom made the best samosas and .
. .” He trailed off, eyes coming to land on hers, which were wide and staring.
Was he serious? Were any of these words true?
“And that’s when I knew that even if nothing ever came of it, even if we never met again, I had met someone special,” Tom said simply. They stared at each other, the moment lengthening, stretching, gaining heat in an impossible way.
“That’s some story,” Sameera said, her voice faint. She swallowed and tried again. “Not sure it’s believable, actually.”
But Tom wasn’t done. “The next day, her mother invited me to cater an Eid party. And even though I was double-booked and had a wait list of clients, I canceled everything and accepted. Just so I could see her again.”
Her words had dried up now, and Tom’s eyes were steady on hers, warm and sincere. She felt a rising panic.
“Tom, I—” she started before stumbling to a stop. He stood and held out a hand to her.
“It’s okay, Sameera. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know that I think you’re spectacular,” he said softly.
Her mind was reeling. Did Tom mean any of it?
He had been nothing if not honest since they met, attentive and generous, eager to please and capable of accepting when he was wrong.
If she wasn’t so damaged, she might be in real trouble.
But she was too messed up, mixed up, and confused to accept the hand he was metaphorically holding out to her.
Instead, she reached for her signature move and deflected.
“We should head back to Cooke Place and break the news to Rob and Barb about our last-minute dinner guests,” Sameera said.
After an infinitesimal pause, Tom tucked his hand in his pocket.
She walked out of the store, her heart twinging only a little, but not so anyone would notice, least of all Tom.
It was better this way. For both of them.