CHAPTER 23
DANIEL’S hand rests on Liyah’s thigh as they cruise down the Kennedy Expressway, mostly empty at this hour. Her fingers, peeking out of her puffy winter coat, grip a thermos full of coffee from which she takes periodic sips. Daniel is jealous; he had to chug his cup before they hit the road.
She sighs into her dark roast, and he sneaks a look at her. Her hair is braided into four large cornrows—he helped her make sure the parts at the back of her head were straight last night—so he can take in her entire side profile at once. As beautiful as her hair is when she wears it out, framing her face in masses of curls, he loves it like this, too. Pulled back, her features unobstructed.
Liyah’s eyes meet Daniel’s. He swallows. “Are your headphones charged?”
“Yes, I double-checked,” she replies, voice viscous and tired. “I need them to ward off chatty seatmates.”
“So that you won’t accuse them of a hate crime?”
She breathes out a quiet laugh through her nose. “I just don’t have time in my schedule. The last time I implied the cute guy next to me might’ve said something ignorant, six months flew by, and I still haven’t gotten rid of him.”
Daniel cracks a smile. “So, you thought I was cute?”
Liyah rolls her eyes. “Glad that’s your takeaway.”
The departures lane arrives faster than Daniel expects. Once pulled over, he hits his hazards and unbuckles his seat belt. He knows how Liyah feels about kissing in public—very, very against it—but the short daylight hours this time of year have given him the cover of darkness. And technically, his car is private property.
As he leans across the center console, Liyah does the same. Liyah rakes through the hair at the back of his head while they kiss, as she often does, and Daniel’s hand finds the spot where her neck meets her jaw.
Liyah gently nips at his bottom lip by way of parting, grinning as she scrambles out of the car, racing him to the trunk. She pulls out her suitcase and shuts the hood victoriously. “Ha! Beat you.”
Daniel clutches his chest. “You wound me.”
“You’d better get back in before the line monitor yells at you.”
“Will do. Text me when you land?”
“Sure thing,” Liyah calls, already wheeling her luggage toward the entrance, walking backward so that she still faces Daniel. “See you next year, Rosenberg!”
“Until then, Cohen-Jackson!”
I’ll miss you, he wants to say, but he bites his tongue and climbs back into his car.
JACKIE COHEN AND Charlie Jackson wait on the other side of Seattle-Tacoma Airport security, Liyah’s mother bouncing back and forth and waving her hands above her head, her father standing still with his arms crossed and a warm smile on his face. Two very different displays of roughly equivalent excitement. The last time she saw them was when they visited in late July. Once again, she’s struck with the specific adult realization that her mental construction of her parents is out of date. The roots of her dad’s chest-length locs are more salt than pepper, and her mom, still larger than life in her memories, barely reaches Liyah’s earlobes.
After she hugs them both tightly (granting her mother’s me first demand), her father wordlessly takes her suitcase from her. “Avi?” she inquires.
“Asleep.” It appears that her father has not become more verbose in her absence.
“You know how teenage boys are. If he doesn’t get ten hours, he’s a total nightmare,” her mom titters. “Unlike you at that age. You were a nightmare regardless. Worse if you hadn’t eaten.”
“Mom—”
“I’m just saying!” This is one of Jackie’s favorite phrases. It’s her version of putting “no offense, but” in front of something incredibly offensive. “It’s normal for teenage girls. God knows your bubbe went through worse with me. Anyway, his college applications are due in a few days, I say let him have his rest.”
“You’ll help him with those?”
“Yes, Dad. I might have to throw his Chanukah gift at him so that he’ll get up first, but I’ll help, promise.”
He squeezes her shoulder. “That’s my girl.”
Forty-five minutes later, Liyah finds her younger brother fast asleep, lying diagonally across his full-sized bed. He’s slept this way since he was small, guaranteeing that Liyah would end up on the floor at least once during every family vacation. Now he’s a pile of gangly, teenaged limbs, and his feet poke out from the left corner of his duvet. As promised, Liyah drops an artfully wrapped shoebox (a bit scuffed from travel, but the effort is obvious) on the center of his chest.
“Ow, what the fuck? Aliyah. That hurt.” Avi brushes the box aside and sits up, rubbing the spot it hit. He groans in that very teenaged way where the g in ugh is over-enunciated. “You’re the worst. This is why I’m Mom and Dad’s favorite.”
“Aww, Avraham, it’s cute you still think that,” Liyah coos as she backs out of the doorway. “I’ll concede on Mom, but I’ve had Dad wrapped around my finger since birth.”
“Get out of my room.”
“Be ready in twenty minutes, or I’ll make you ride in the back,” Liyah says, shutting the door with a thunk behind her.
“Liyah, don’t slam doors,” her mom calls from downstairs.
Safely away from her mother’s view, she rolls her eyes as she yells an apology. In her old bedroom (long scrubbed of music posters, Neen’s art, and far too many cheetah-print items), Liyah changes from her airplane uniform of sweatshirt and leggings to a pair of wide-leg overalls and a cropped sweater. While Avi’s filling their shared bathroom with the smell of Axe body wash and completely unnecessary aftershave, she heads to the one downstairs to wash her face and apply some makeup.
When she emerges, her mom looks up and exclaims, “You look so cute, honey!”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Famous early hominin, abbreviated as Ar. something. Seven letters, starts with r?”
Liyah smiles. It’s been a while since her mom called her with an anthropological crossword clue, but she always does it like this, with no context or introduction. “Ardipithecus ramidus. R-A-M-I-D-U-S.”
“Oh, it’s so good to have you home. You really should visit more often. What kind of example are you setting for Avi? I’ll be an empty nester soon, and then I’ll have children I see three times a year.”
Avi appears behind their mother’s armchair. He’s been taller than Liyah for two years, but every visit, the first time she sees him standing is unsettling. “I’ll make sure to see you more than that, Mom.” He bends down to give her a hug, turning to Liyah and mouthing favorite. She wrinkles her nose and jingles the car keys.
“Sweet kicks,” she says as she unlocks the family SUV. She bought them on intel from Jordan; apparently, they’re a very sought-after colorway of Nike Blazer Mid ’77s, and she had to refresh her browser obsessively to nab them before they sold out. Not that she’d tell that to Avi.
Something about the way he replies, “Yeah, they’re sick,” makes her think he knows anyway. “Can I DJ?”
“If you play Brad Paisley to fuck with me again, I’m driving us into oncoming traffic.”
“We’re half white, Liyah. You gotta embrace our culture.”
“I fully endorse all lesbian country songs and murder ballads about abusive husbands if you want to play those. It’s the I-like-guns-and-women-and-beer-and-trucks stuff I can’t stand. Here.” She tosses her phone into his lap and buckles her seat belt. “Text Neen and tell them we’re on our way.”
At the coffee shop, Avi jiggles his leg impatiently and swipes fingerfuls of the whipped cream atop his drink. “Will you tell me what you think already?”
“It’s well written,” she says. “But it isn’t funny.”
Cue the infamous Avi pout. “So?”
“You’re funny,” she says. “This is not. It’s kind of boring, actually.”
He grumbles, spinning his laptop so that he can see the document, now marred with Liyah’s comments and bright red edits. “I thought I had to be a serious person to get into college.”
She folds her arms. “Your grades and varsity letters show you’re a serious person. Your essay should show that you have a personality. That’s hard for some people, but yours isn’t awful, so you should be fine.”
“Ugh, Liyah. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Try telling the story like you would tell me. We can edit it for professionalism later.” The bell above the door sounds, alerting Liyah to Neen’s entrance.
Liyah barely makes it out of her chair in time to catch Neen’s running hug. “C-J!” they say, as if in disbelief of her presence, before pulling back and offering their ear. Liyah bumps it with hers.
“You guys are so fucking weird,” Avi says.
“Aw, Avi, are we embarrassing you?” Neen croons, reaching over to pat his cheek (if they’d gone to ruffle the short locs atop his low fade, they might’ve lost a hand).
“Yes.”
“Good,” Liyah responds. “Now get to work on those edits.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Liyah ignores him and, spying a croissant in the pastry display case, joins Neen in line.
KAYLA’S BALCONY IS small but cozy, lit only by string lights, and has a beautiful view overlooking the city skyline. Daniel is drinking wine in silence with his sister, fuzzy blankets draped across their legs to keep warm, when his phone screen flashes with a text.
Liyah
[image of ball gown made from tinsel] My New Year’s Eve look. Thoughts?
Daniel
you can’t wear that
Liyah
Why not???
Daniel
i already bought it. you don’t want to compete with me for who wore it best, i’ll win
what are you doing? house party?
Liyah
Nah, Neen and I will probably go to a queer bar with a dance floor. You?
Daniel doesn’t actually know; when Kayla invited him to New York for the long weekend, he didn’t ask a lot of questions. “Noona, what are we doing for New Year’s?”
His sister looks up from where her nose is buried in a Zadie Smith novel and shrugs. “We can always go to a bar, and a few people I know are having a party. We could even stay here. So long as you don’t ask me to go to Times Square, the world is your oyster.”
“I could be down for an apartment party,” he says.
“Alright. Get ready to meet a ton of thirtysomethings in boring jobs who do shit like make homemade pickles on the side.”
Daniel smirks. “Well, you know, now that you’re a Brooklyn hipster, I expected as much.”
Kayla responds with an exaggerated sigh. “Hi pot, I’m kettle. Nice to meet you. Go back to texting your girlfriend, I want to finish this chapter.”
He laughs and returns to his phone.
Daniel
kayla’s friend’s party. excited to see what’s in store for me after thirty
Liyah
Let me know your findings. I’ll add it to the exhibition
Daniel
i’ll be sure to take notes
Daniel finishes the New Yorker article he was reading and makes it halfway through the following one before he realizes that he never corrected Kayla.
He clears his throat. “Liyah’s not my girlfriend. We’re, um, friends.” The end of his sentence pitches up involuntarily. Kayla’s lips curve. Oh shit.
“Wow, took you fifteen whole minutes to come up with that one, huh?” He opens his mouth to reply, but Kayla brings her finger to her lips. “Shh, I’m reading.”