Home > Misfit in Love (Saints and Misfits #2)(2)

Misfit in Love (Saints and Misfits #2)(2)
Author: S. K. Ali

“Janna farted again!” Logan shouts.

“Atain!” Luke echoes. He advances his rotund self toward me, paddling furiously in the floatation device he’s permanently wedged into whenever he’s in the water, and pulls at my burkini pants. Lately he’s into disrobing unsuspecting humans of clothing covering their nether regions.

Uh-oh.

My old, unreliable burkini pants.

Before I have a moment to clutch at them, they fall off completely.

Haytham turns around quickly but not before letting out a laugh that he tries to cover with the back of his hand.

I am so thankful my burkini top is so long, so very, very long, that nothing showed. Thank you, Allah, for saving my butt, literally.

I slide down into the water. As low as I can in the shallowest part of the super-long shallow-entry lake.

And then, while trying to walk away in a dignified but quick fashion on the shifting sands of the lake bed, I trip on the pants swiftly gathering themselves under my feet and tip face-forward into the water.

Underwater, I pray that Haytham didn’t turn around again when he heard the new laughs Logan and Luke let out, Luke even clapping his hands with glee.

I close my eyes and stay in place, even though it’s so shallow. I have to sit cross-legged, and still my head rises in humiliation above the water, like a wounded giraffe.

One of the ways Muhammad is all right is that he gets my utter mortification pretty thoroughly. Even though he has no qualms about doing things to bother me when we’re on our own, he understands, sometimes, the preservation of my dignity in public.

“Okay, we’re going in! Logan, Luke, now! It’s almost dinnertime!” thunders my only dependable brother.

I hear screams of “NO!” accompanied by splashes and threats and grabbings of half brothers, and then silence.

When I open my eyes, they’re gone.

All of them, even him.

I stand and fit my feet through the legs of my pants, frowning as I struggle to find the holes at the hem.

Who is he?

Haytham?

I mean besides being Sarah’s cousin?

Besides being the guy I just got completely humiliated in front of?

Lifting my long burkini top and bunching it under my chin to hold it in place, I tug at the bottom’s waist and knot the excess fabric as best as I can. Mental note: Get a new burkini.

I’m just going to forget this “Janna farted” incident and go get showered and changed and then head to the hotel in town to see Mom, who’s arriving today to help with wedding stuff.

I haven’t seen her in almost a month now, so I can’t wait to catch up.

It was Muhammad who guilted me into staying so long at Dad’s. I hadn’t been sure I wanted to spend three weeks here before the wedding. I had originally wanted to stay home in Eastspring to work and just come up the week of the wedding to help him out, but then Muhammad had pouted, his lips drooping, and he’d slouched his whole self. So you don’t want to hang out with me at Dad’s before you go to college and before I become an old married man? Our last time as free siblings?

So yeah, I’d given in. And said good-bye to Mom. And a job.

I hung around here at Dad’s scrumptious home just resting and relaxing and eating good food and swimming every day and reading all the books and watching all the movies and shows I’d missed while finishing high school. And of course hanging around with Muhammad and Luke and Logan.

And it was fun. I’m glad I did it, actually.

But there’s something I like even more than the comforts at Dad’s: After the wedding, after Muhammad leaves with Sarah, everything goes back to normal. Exactly how I like it.

It’ll only be me and Mom in Eastspring once again, the way it used to be—well, the way it used to be since my parents got divorced when I was ten, and we moved apart when I was eleven.

Before the divorce, I used to think of myself and Dad as a team, as we’re kind of similar in our eye-on-the-prize way of seeing things. He applies it to the business world because he owns a food company, and I apply it to the getting-the-best-grades-possible-in-school world. Dad’s goal-oriented philosophy helped him become the number one prepackaged Indian dessert manufacturer in North America. And mine landed me a hefty scholarship to UChicago to study English.

Team Dad and Janna lasted only so long, though.

When a member of our mosque community assaulted me two years ago, Mom was the one who was there for me. She got me counseling with Dr. Lloyd, pressed charges, and wrapped me in relentless love, and so we became a new team, a championship team. Dad was just a ball of anger, blaming the mosque, wanting something bigger to be held accountable. I found it hard to connect with him then.

Like Mom, Nuah helped me through that time too. He was never far away and stood by me when some people in our community refused to believe what had happened. In addition to duas, he kept sending me memes to brighten my day. And specially selected cat videos—which I have no idea where he found, because they weren’t the viral ones.

So it’s going to be a Nuah-and-me and a mom-and-me summer when we get back to Eastspring, insha’Allah.

And my world going back to being small and cozy like that is exactly what I need when this huge wedding is done.

 

 

Chapter Two

 


On the way back to the house a bit later, with a towel sheltering my shoulders, I notice there’s a gathering at the gazebo.

It’s Haytham and the laddoos, Logan and Luke. And is that Sarah’s little brother, Dawud? Lying down on the floorboards with a book open in front of his face?

Haytham, clothed now in a navy T-shirt and khaki shorts, waves me over.

I tuck in the tendrils of hair that made their way out of my burkini cap, hesitating a moment, staring at my feet in the grass leading up from the sandy edge of the shore, across the huge expanse of backyard, to the patio at the back of the house. Then I turn left and make my way to the gazebo, my eyes still on my black-polished toes in yellow flip-flops moving through the neatly mowed grass, which feels cool against the skin of my feet.

When I glance back up, I see that my little brothers are holding a silver tray between them, excitement on their faces. Logan beams while Luke giggles.

There’s a pink-frosted cupcake on the tray with a card beside it. In big crayon writing, the front of it says SORRY JANNA. Logan waits for me to reach the bottom step of the gazebo before speaking. “Janna, we’re very sorry. Really sorry for laughing at you. You didn’t fart.”

“Reawy sowwy,” Luke says, echoing Logan. “You didn’t fawt.”

“We were joking. But now we’re sorry.” Logan looks behind him at Haytham. “Is that good?”

Haytham shakes his head and points at me. “You’ll have to ask Janna.”

“Janna, is that good?” Logan says, walking over to me carefully with the tray. “Is the apology good?”

I climb the two steps to take the cupcake, nod, and look at Haytham.

He smiles at me, the edges of his eyes scrunching with mirth in the dappled light of the sun filtering through the leaves of the trees behind him, and suddenly the sky that was in my heart before when I thought of Nuah flies out and surrounds me.

It’s like happiness is everywhere now, not just secretly in my heart.

What is happening?

I drop my gaze to the cupcake in my hands.

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