“I sure hope so.” She laughs nervously. “Do you … not want us to be?”
“I thought …” I say slowly. “We were girlfriends?”
A flash of surprise registers in Hani’s expression. Just surprise—not disgust or amusement.
We hold each other’s gaze for a moment longer than necessary. I will her to say something—yes, we are a couple.Or laugh—no, how could you ever think that?I will her to do something. Lean in? Lean back? Anything.
It’s just then that the automated Luas announcement clicks on, and it’s as if it breaks our trance. Our strange moment when we were almost … something. And I’m not sure what that something was.
“Milltown,” says the electronic voice. “Báile an Mhuilinn.”
“Shit. That’s us.” I jump out of my seat, and I’m halfway out the door when I notice that Hani isn’t following behind. “Hani?”
She doesn’t get up. Doesn’t even meet my eyes. “I’m just going to go to the next stop and get my bus.”
“Oh … okay.” There’s so much more I want to say, but there’s a beep, indicating the doors are about to close, and I step outside. It’s only as the Luas starts up once more and begins moving that I catch Hani’s eyes through the window.
I have no idea what she’s thinking.
chapter twenty-five
hani
WHENISTEP OUTSIDE THELUAS FIVE MINUTES LATER, it’s raining. And not the usual Irish drizzle that barely gets your hair wet—it’s a downpour.
I guess that’s what I get for skipping out on my promise to walk Ishu home. That’s the thought swimming around in my head as I leg it all the way to the bus stop. Not that it makes any kind of a difference because a) the other thoughts, the ones I’m not doing such a great job of suppressing, are still trying to push their way to the surface, and b) it’s raining so hard that just taking the few minutes to run gets me absolutely soaked.
What is it about Ishu that being with her always leads to me getting drenched?
I shake my head, slip onto the bus and settle down in my seat. When I glance at my phone, I find three missed calls from Ishu. And six messages in my group chat with Dee and Aisling. I slide my finger over both the notifications so that they disappear. I turn on Spotify, hit shuffle, and turn the music up the loudest it will go.
I drown out the world—and, most importantly, my thoughts—and just stare out the window, focusing on the rain against the glass, the hazy cars passing, and the music.
Aisling: actually had a lot of fun tonight
Dee: Ishita is really different from how she usually is in school!
Aisling: she’s kind of fun?
Dee: right??
Aisling: maybe we can do something together tomorrow??
Dee: yeah I’d be up for that
Aisling: movie at mine??
Dee: Maira????
Aisling: hellooooo?
I wake up to all of these messages in my inbox and heave a sigh. The last thing I want to do is spend the day watching a movie with Dee, Aisling, and Ishu. I’m pretty sure Ishu doesn’t want to do that either. So I send them back a quick reply:
Hey, sorry … was asleep. No can do on the movie today, sorry. Maybe next weekend?
There’s another message from Ishu. All it says is,are we good?and I’m not sure how to respond to that. Because I don’t know if we are good, but I don’t want her to know that. So I just send a thumbs up emoji and hope she leaves me alone.
What I want to do more than anything is talk to someone about what happened yesterday, because I still can’t wrap my head around it.
