Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,50
of my nose. I shivered a little.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
He traced his thumb along my bottom lip, and then down to my chin.
“Sorry I missed your game.”
“We lost anyway,” I said.
“Hey.”
“It’s okay.”
Landon’s thumb moved down to my collarbone, feather-light strokes that gave me goose bumps.
“Homecoming is coming up. Isn’t it?”
I swallowed hard. My heart thumped.
“Yeah,” I squeaked.
I cleared my throat.
“So.”
“So?”
“Have you thought about . . . maybe . . . going together?”
“Um.”
I’d never thought about that before.
How did you ask another guy to homecoming?
How did anyone ever ask anyone to homecoming?
“Wow,” Landon said. He started to roll away from me.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s just, I’ve never gone to a dance before.”
“Never?”
“Not a school one. I’ve been to plenty of Persian dances before. But those are different.”
Landon chuckled.
“I guess . . . I never really thought about it before.”
“And now?”
My face felt like a fusion reactor.
“Do you want to go to homecoming with me?”
* * *
I said bye to Landon and then curled up on the couch with my new American Lit reading: The Chocolate War, which was even more of a let-down than The Catcher in the Rye.
We had to do an essay on its “themes,” which as far as I could tell were “people are awful and bullies always win.”
I yawned, marked my place, and went to make a bowl of matcha. I had fifty more pages to get through, and I knew I’d never make it without something to keep me awake and focused.
“Will you be able to sleep after all that matcha?” Oma asked as I sieved the emerald powder.
“I’ll fall asleep without it.”
“Is there any water left?”
“Yeah.”
Oma made a pot of Genmaicha while I whisked my matcha. I used the M-method, just like Mr. Edwards taught me, moving the chasen—the bamboo whisk—in the shape of an M to get the optimal froth, though I threw in an occasional sweep around the circumference of the bowl to grab any particles I might have missed.
Oma and Grandma had set up on the couch, each with her own iPad, playing one of those puzzle games where you match colored dots on a grid to make them vanish. I took my book and folded myself into the armchair with my legs splayed out.
If I’d been back in Yazd, with Mamou and Babou, maybe we would have talked about my day. And drank tea, and eaten dessert, and shared old family stories.
But instead, we sat in silence, except for the music of Oma’s game.
I found my place and started reading again, but I’d only gone a paragraph before Grandma asked, without looking up from her iPad, “What were you and Landon talking about?”
“Huh?”
“In your room.”
I blushed.
I knew we hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
Why did I feel guilty?
“Just talked. About homecoming.”
“That’s coming up?” Oma asked.
“Yeah.” I looked down at my book. “We’re gonna go together.”
“Really? Your school’s okay with it?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Grandma got this wistful look in her eyes. “Just like that?”
“What?”
She locked her iPad and looked at Oma for a long moment. And then she said, “You know, when we were growing up, two guys never could have gone to a dance together. And we were lucky we were married long before Oma ever came out.”
Oma patted Grandma’s hand.
“There were times I thought we might not get to stay married, once I started transitioning. But now . . .” She pursed her lips for a second. “You and Landon can just walk down the street holding hands like it’s no big deal.”
“Um.”
“What your grandmother means,” Grandma said, “is that things are so much easier for you now. You don’t have to fight for acceptance as much as we did.”
I blinked.
Some days it felt like I’d done nothing but fight to be accepted. For being depressed. For being Iranian. For being gay.
I couldn’t tell them that, though.
Not when they were finally opening up to me a little bit.
“But you know, you’re always going to have it easier than us,” Grandma said. “As a cis man. You’ll always have it easier in life.”
“Oh.”
I sank back into my chair, my ears aflame.
I didn’t know what was happening.
It felt like my grandmothers were mad at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
Oma studied me for a second. “You don’t have to be. You’ve got your own problems. It’s not like it’s exactly easy now. We’re just a couple of tired old queers.”
I shook my head.
Grandma chuckled. “We are. Spend enough of your life fighting and you’ll be tired too.”