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He nods, and when he turns his upper body to me, I close the space between our chairs and rest my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Tonight he is wearing fitted jeans, a gray long-sleeved thermal, and plain white socks, so much more casual than when we meet for lessons. I prefer him the other way, with his starched collars and wool sweaters and argyle socks. But if this is what he wears when no one else is around, I wonder what it means that he’s dressed this way for me.
Here at his kitchen table, on a night I don’t have a lesson, I feel like his girlfriend. And I realize . . . I want to be his girlfriend. I want to hold hands on the city bus and try new restaurants. I want to go to a coffee shop and drink lattes and kiss the foam off each other’s lips. I want to walk around his apartment in nothing but my underwear and one of his collared shirts.
I want. Two simple words that contain every note of every song I’ve played for him, every second I’ve lain awake at night imagining us together. I want, I want, I want. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to have?
“Do you want to go out somewhere?” I ask. “We could go to a jazz club, or a movie, or go for a walk around Capitol Hill. . . .”
“You know we can’t.” Gently, he pushes my head off his chest so he can start clearing the table.
“What, every single one of your students is hanging out at the jazz club on a school night?” I wince as I say it. Arjun turns toward the kitchen sink, doesn’t look at me. “I’m sorry.” I scramble to smooth things out between us. “Hey, could you teach me something in Hindi? You speak it, right?”
“Yes, but not everyone in India does. The official language of Gujarat, where I grew up, is Gujarati. That’s what I speak with my family.”
“Teach me something in Gujarati.”
He thinks for a moment and at last turns to face me, a smile on his lips. “Tu sundar che,” he says. “You are beautiful.”
My shoulders relax. We are okay again. “Do you want to learn some Hebrew?”
“I think I know a little. Shalom, kvetch, schlep . . .”
Those words in his voice make me laugh so hard I nearly choke on my wine. “?‘Kvetch’ and ‘schlep’ are Yiddish. ‘Shalom’ is Hebrew. It means ‘hello,’ or ‘peace.’ You can say, ‘hi, how are you’—shalom, ma shlomech?” He repeats it. “Tov,” I say. My sister’s sometimes-nickname. “Good.”
He returns to the dishes, and again I feel the need to drag him back to me. Sometimes it’s as though he’s playing a mental tug-of-war, weighing whether he wants me here or not.
Maybe he feels sorry for you, taunts a small and horrible voice in the back of my mind.
I shove it away as I get to my feet and explore his kitchen a bit, since I’ve never really been in here. A flyer for the New Year’s Eve showcase is stuck to his fridge with a magnet with a dentist’s sparkling fac
e and phone number on it. Probably free. Curious, I open the refrigerator, not quite sure what I am expecting to find but surprised by what greets me. Leftover ingredients from tonight’s dinner, but not much else: some butter, a third of a tomato, a jar of something called achar.
“Whoa, your milk is seriously expired,” I say with a laugh.
“I guess I eat a lot of takeout,” he says sheepishly, and it makes me jealous. I suppose when you live alone, you can fill your fridge with whatever you want.
“Do you want to toss this out?”
“I’ll get it later.”
I close the fridge and lean against the counter next to him. “What was it like, growing up in India? In Gujarat?”
A few moments of quiet pass before he speaks. “I was born in Ahmedabad. That’s the largest city in Gujarat. Have I told you about all the stray dogs there?” When I shake my head, he dries his hands on a towel and continues: “There are so many. They’re so, so skinny, and some of them, you can see their ribs jutting out. Every morning on my walk to school, I’d buy a mango off a street vendor, slice it up with a pocketknife, and feed it to the dogs. One dog used to follow me all the way to school most days, and he’d be there when I got out. Like he was waiting for me. My parents wouldn’t let us have a dog, so I pretended he was mine.”
I picture a young Arjun feeding a dog a mango. “That sounds adorable.” I hook my fingers through the belt loops on his jeans. When I kiss him, I bite down lightly on his bottom lip. It makes him groan deep in his throat. Hopefully he has forgotten my suggestion to venture out into the world. I don’t need that. He is right here.
“Sometimes I forget you’re in high school,” he says. “You don’t seem eighteen at all.”
“Maybe you’re stunted,” I suggest.
“That must be it. I’m stunted, or you’re wise beyond your years.” Then a strange expression comes over his face. “You’re eighteen,” he repeats.
“I believe we’ve established this a number of times.”
“Are you . . . ? I mean, have you . . . ?”
“Have I what?” I tease, though I’m fairly certain I know where this is going.
“Have you had sex before?” And there it is. The words glide out so easily. I always think sleep with, though I’ve never actually slept the entire night next to a guy. “It doesn’t matter to me either way. I just want to know.”
