“Tuesday. Then hung out with my parents and little brother and now here we are.” He’s picking through the candy, separating the pineapple ones. “Your dad said there’s wedding-favor assembling happening tomorrow?”
I nod and glance at Sarah. I wonder if she knows that the favors include little blue chocolate basketballs. This I knew from Muhammad yelling “YES” last week and sharing his “amazing online discovery” with me.
Khadija beams. “And tomorrow is the henna party. I can’t wait. I even splurged on a dress for it, and it’s not a tent like the one I’m wearing to the wedding.” She winks at me and Sarah. “I want at least one cute pic from third trimester.”
“Oh yeah, I can’t wait to see your foxy dress,” Sarah says, laughing.
Nuah pokes Muhammad. “What are we doing? When they’re henna-partying?”
“We’re outta here. Maybe go into town to eat?”
“No, I’m throwing something for you and your friends. A party in the barn.” Dad brings a platter of corn to the table.
“I thought we were just going to eat?” Muhammad raises his eyebrows. “Eating is fine. Eating is enough, Dad.”
“There’ll be eating, don’t worry. I run a successful food company—you don’t think I’d have thought of the eating?” Dad laughs.
“Let’s keep it simple,” Muhammad mumbles into his burger.
“Want some gummy bears, Uncle?” Nuah indicates the package that’s now half-gone. Then he reaches over to my plate and deposits all the colorless bears on it with a smile.
Dad shakes his head and does a whistle. It’s his call-the-laddoos whistle.
Linda hates it. The whole time I’ve been here at their house, I’ve seen her getting upset about it, about how it’ll make the kids think they’re dogs, but now she just calls out, “Luke, Logan, come and eat. Dawud, you too, and—I’m so sorry—I forgot your name.”
“Haytham, no problem.” He comes over and sits on the other side of Sarah. “Hey, are those halal gummy bears?”
“Appetizers.” Nuah passes the pack over.
“You mean Nuah and Janna’s code for I missed you, boo.” Muhammad guffaws, and Sarah suddenly flexes herself from the hip down, and, from my brother’s abrupt laugh shutdown, my guess is that she stepped on his foot hard.
I’m going to like having Sarah in the family.
I scoot myself over closer to her. Now directly across from Nuah again. I can’t stop myself from smiling at him.
Dad, who’s right behind Nuah, stares at me with his eyebrows raised.
Weird.
“Hey, where are all the pineapple ones?” Haytham is peering into the gummies bag, tossing its contents. “Those are my favorites.”
“Nuah gave them all to Janna. I mean JY, as he calls her,” my brother volunteers.
I make a mental note to never ever be nice to Muhammad again. I’m about to pick some pineapple gummies to put them back in the bag for Haytham when I hear it.
It’s the ice-cream truck. On its way back from its first stop at the end of the road, where a cluster of houses sits across from a small restaurant overlooking the water.
“ICE CREAM!” Logan yells when he hears the “Pop Goes the Weasel” jingle, after which Luke echoes him. “ITE CWEAM!”
Linda immediately moves into place to stop Luke from running to the front of the house. Now I get why she’s always wearing leggings.
Dawud sets down his plate and makes his way to Sarah, little-brother pout on. “Can I get ice cream? I’ll eat dinner after. Please?”
“Let’s go check this ice-cream guy out.” Haytham stands up and motions to me. “You coming?”
I look at my pile of pineapple bears and then at Nuah. He’s chewing the last of his burger and gazing behind Sarah at the water.
I want to stay with him. He’s just so calm, and that’s what I want right now. “No, I’m going to finish eating dinner.”
“Okay, then I’ll report my findings.” Haytham puts a hand in his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He nods at Linda and bends to scoop Luke up. “I’ll take the boys. Who else wants ice cream? Dawud will help me carry it.”
“I’m done with my burger, so I’ll come see what they’ve got.” Nuah wipes his face with a yellow napkin, one of the thousand Dad ordered and has now put to use in the house because he realized we didn’t need a thousand for the wedding.
I stand too. “I’ll come as well, then.”
Muhammad lets out a loud laugh.
Nuah and Haytham and the kids have already started walking, so I turn to glare at my brother. “You are so unbelievably immature! Sarah, you don’t know what you’re getting into. You can still opt out, you know.”
Sarah flexes herself again, and it must have been for a hard stomp, because Muhammad whispers “sorry” to her and then makes a please-forgive-me face at me. “Sorry, Janna. I mean, JY,” he adds with a giggle.
I turn and stalk off. At least he won’t be there at the ice-cream truck.
It’ll just be me and Nuah. And the little kids.
Oh yeah, and Haytham, too.
Chapter Eight
The jolly jingle stops, the window slides open, and the ice-cream-truck operator appears.
“What do you want?” his mouth, under a lush gray mustache, demands, while his eyes, under lush gray eyebrows, stay still and drooping. His face muscles are so unmoving, the only way we know he just spoke is by the words we heard, which he repeats louder now. “What? Do you want?”
The gruff words we heard.
Haytham looks at me pointedly and pulls out money. “Tell the nice man what ice cream you want,” he says to Luke and Logan.
“Ite cweam!” yells Luke, in Haytham’s arms, reaching pudgy fingers toward the window.
“He always wants whatever Logan gets. So let Logan choose first.” I hoist Logan up and point at all the pictures on the side of the truck, like I do every time it comes around. And, like every time, he pronounces a new choice and then changes his mind last minute to a chocolate Drumstick. I announce two of those to the guy, who’s scowling now, his eyebrows closing in on each other.
I choose a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. Haytham mouths great choice to me and picks the same.
Dawud can’t choose, so Haytham lets him get all three of his choices, a Firecracker pop, a Choco Taco, and an ice-cream sandwich, if he promises to share the ones he doesn’t end up wanting.
Nuah goes with an orange Creamsicle. “What?” he asks Haytham when Haytham shoots him a look.
“Dude, I’ve never seen anyone buy those except my grandma once.”
“Your grandma has good taste, then.” Nuah unwraps his treat and watches Haytham paying. “Next time, it’s on me.”
The ice-cream-truck guy hands Haytham back his change and grunts before closing the window again. At no point did his mustache move up to allow a smile or even any sort of mouth movement.
“Aha, so I’m right. We were just served by mean-uncle ice-cream-truck guy,” Haytham says as we walk back across the long lawn. He cracks the side of the chocolate shell on his cone with his teeth and scoops into the vanilla underneath. The ice cream starts running immediately, and he begins twisting his tongue all over the cone in his hurry to get all the drips.