“Careful,” I said, but it was too late. Landon took a sniff, which led to a cascade sinus failure.
“Bless you.”
“Thanks. Whew.”
“It’s my mom’s advieh.”
“Advieh?”
“Like a family spice mix. For Persian cooking.”
“It’s different.”
He shook out a handful and tossed it in with the onions and carrots, then got to work chopping celery.
While Landon cooked, I set the table and watched him work. He had become so comfortable in our kitchen, it was like he lived there. He had this soft smile, and he hummed as he pulled apart leftover chicken breast to add it to the pot.
As Landon worked, Dad came down the stairs, his ears red.
“Hey, boys,” he said. He leaned down to kiss my forehead. “Wow. Your hair looks great.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Stephen,” Landon said.
“Sorry for surprising you.”
“It’s all good.” Landon rummaged through the spice cabinet and pulled out the bag of bay leaves sitting in the back.
I didn’t know how he could be so cool about everything.
I couldn’t meet Dad’s eyes.
“Is Laleh okay?”
“I hope it’s not strep again. Be sure to wash your hands plenty.”
“Okay.”
“And thanks for making soup, Landon. It smells good.”
“Sure thing.”
Laleh eventually made her way downstairs in her green pajamas and poured herself into her seat at the kitchen table.
I kissed her head. “Hey, Laleh.”
She made the kind of dramatic groan I usually associated with adults who hadn’t had their coffee in the morning.
Sometimes it was hard to tell if my sister was nine or thirty-nine.
“Sorry you’re not feeling well.”
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and throaty.
“Landon’s making soup for you.”
“Yum,” she said, but with none of her usual manic enthusiasm for Landon’s cooking.
By eight o’clock, the soup was done, and Mom was finally home from work. She and Dad had been working a lot more hours since our trip to Iran.
Mom looked so tired, it was hard to decide who needed soup more, her or Laleh. But as soon as she tasted it, she smiled.
“This is good, Landon,” she said. “You made it in an hour?”
“Yeah. Well, you had good chicken for it.”
Like I said, Landon was a great cook. I think that’s the main reason he won Mom over.
It’s not like Shirin Kellner was mad or upset when I told her I was gay.
And it’s not like she was weird about me and Landon hanging out.
But sometimes there was this tension between us, some perturbation in the gravity of our orbits, that I couldn’t figure out.
At least Landon could cook.
Every Persian mother wants her son to marry someone who can cook.
To be clear, I was not considering marriage, to Landon or anyone else. But cooking skills are an absolute requirement in prospective partners as far as Iranian parents are concerned.
“Landon found your advieh,” I said.
“It’s Mamou’s recipe. My mother,” she said to Landon. “She used to mix it up in a big mortar and pestle.”
“I miss Mamou,” Laleh said between slurps of noodle. “I wish we could go see her again.”
The table got kind of quiet.
I think we all wished that.
The thing is, we only went to Iran last spring because Babou—my grandfather—had a brain tumor. He was dying. And Mom wanted us to meet him before it was too late.
“I wish we could go again too,” Mom said at last.
She turned back to me and ran her finger along the edge of my fade, where it met the long curls up top.
“I can’t believe you finally got a haircut.”
THE GRAND NAGUS
I was finishing up my homework when Dad knocked on my open door frame.
“You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
He closed the door behind him and sat on my bed.
“So.” He rubbed his palms on his knees. “I know we’ve talked some about dating. And sex. And consent. But I figured we had better revisit.”
My face burned.
“Dad.”
“I know it’s awkward. But it’s important, Darius.”
I spun my desk chair around and hunched over with my elbows on my knees.
“But, I mean.” I swallowed. “Nothing’s changed since the last time we talked.”
That was over the summer, right after Landon and I had our first onion-tinged kiss.
We’d had talks before that too. Like when I was eight, and about to have a baby sister, and asked where babies came from. And again, after Sex Ed in middle school.
The worst was when I was thirteen and woke up with sticky sheets.
It was the most painfully awkward conversation in me and Dad’s catalogue of painfully awkward conversations, and before our trip to Iran that was pretty much all our conversations.
To be honest, even after Iran—after there were no more walls between us—talking about sex was still awkward.
Dad cleared his throat. “Landon didn’t have his hand under your pants when I walked in?”
“No,” I said.
And then I said, “I mean, he hadn’t gotten very far.”
And then I said, “And I don’t really know if I want to do that kind of stuff yet.”
Dad nodded. “Okay. You know it’s healthy and normal if you do. And healthy and normal if you don’t. Right?”
I nodded and stared at my feet.
Dad let out a slow breath. “Did you tell him?”
I shook my head. “We were kissing.”
“Okay.” He stared out my window for a second. The curtains were open, and dusk was settling over the neighborhood like a blanket. “First, it’s okay to hit pause on kissing so you can communicate. Relationships, or even just casual, you know, whatevers, need communication. And second, if you don’t know what to say, you can use your hands to guide his. So if you don’t want them . . . uh . . . in your pants, you can gently guide him to somewhere better, like your back or your knee or whatever.”