Chasing Pavements

My mom was waiting up for me, even though I told her not to; I could tell because the windows of the living room gave off a dim blue glow from the TV. I went around to the back of the house, tapping at one of the window’s outdoor shutters, which didn’t really serve as shutters so much as decorations, until the spare key fell out. I opened the door slowly, trying hard to avoid the inevitable creak. I slipped in silently, wanting to surprise her.

The door led me to the kitchen, where there was a suran-wrapped plate of steak waiting on the counter for me. That was just like my mom—making sure I ate a full meal for dinner, no matter the hour. The steak was cold in my hands, but delicious nevertheless.

I tiptoed into the living room where my mom was waiting. Only, she’d fallen asleep. I smiled to myself, turning the TV off and kissing her forehead before following my dad’s snores up the stairs and settling into my old bedroom down the hall.

I had moved out of my parents’ house when my best friend and I decided to rent a house together about six months ago. The situation was only temporary: she was working and going to school fulltime, and I didn’t want to be that one guy my age living with his parents, so we agreed to rent it together until she got her degree and could afford to live on her own. However, she was on her own a majority of the time nonetheless—I was constantly touring—but it was still ours.

It would have been much easier to just fly to Boston and stay at my own house, instead of taking a cab half an hour south to my parents’, but there was just no fun in that—Farah would be in Braintree for work in the morning and my car was here anyway. Also, she hated surprises, so, naturally, I was set on surprising her.

During our senior year in high school, Farah’s aunts bought a beauty parlor and she’s been working there since. It was a small salon, filled with middle aged Italian women who either hated my guts or wanted my nuts. I was familiar with all of the regulars and spent way too much time there to have been considered straight in school.

But I didn’t mind. The beauty parlor had been a place of refuge for us—a place where we had shared some of our deepest thoughts and darkest fears; where I had asked her to senior prom the day her boyfriend broke up with her; where she got accepted to the best college in the country and I decided that college wasn’t for me; where she had cut her hair short and I had cried for the first time in front of her because I’d been cheated on.

It was at this very went parlor that I found myself driving to on a Saturday morning, with all of my luggage from tour heavy in the backseat. It wasn’t far from my house—parking took longer—and it was nice to see her old car again. The door to the parlor was wide open, so I walked through, placing my sunglasses in my collar as I escaped the bright sun. I spotted Farah right away, her eyes glancing quickly at the light blockage before turning back to the nails she had been painting. She looked up again, this time exclaiming, “Oh my God!”

She scrambled to get to me, and soon I had her small body in my arms. It felt good to hold her again, but it might have just been the girlish aspect of her—hugging a stranger is nothing like hugging a loved one. She still smelled the same, and it surprised me that I remembered after being apart for three months.

“You’re here!” she said excitedly.

“I’m here!” I said back.

Her aunts and the regulars greeted me with comments about how it went and how they were glad to see me again. And then everything fell back into place: Farah apologized and returned to the woman whose nails she had been painting an ugly shade of green, and I dragged a chair to sit next to her, engaging in conversation with anyone willing to listen.

“I thought you were coming back in December,” she said. “Are you, like, on a break or something?”

I shook my head, handing her a roll of paper towels that I knew she needed; I knew the process of doing one’s hair and nails very well. “Nope, I’m back for good,” I said, looking around and marveling on how little the parlor had changed in my absence. I glanced down, noticing that a coat and scarf that I had given her had been slung over her handbag.

“I’m glad,” she said, “Now that it’s starting to get cold, all of the spiders are coming inside of the house.”

I chuckled, “It’s a good thing I’m here then. Hey, when are you off?”

She glanced down at the gold watch on her wrist, “As soon as I’m finished; early day today—midterms coming up.”

“Farah, you’re going to die from lack of sleep before you even have the chance to take those tests,” one of her aunts, Hilda, said with an even more Brooklyn-y accent than I remembered. Hilda had never really liked me. It was probably because of my long hair, tattoos, and the fact that I really didn’t care; she thought I was gay until fairly recently.

She shrugged it off, “If I pass these tests, I will die happy. Actually, no, I won’t, because I still won’t have my degree—okay, honey, you’re all set. Careful not to touch anything; let’s get you to a drying station…” she coaxed the woman toward a serious of UV lamps designed specifically to dry nails. She turned to me, “Let’s hit it.”

I was afraid that my being gone for the past few months would lead to awkward conversation, but I was wrong: it was much easier to talk to Farah than expected, and I didn’t have to hold myself back with her like I did with all of the other girls I knew. It was good, too, because she was apparently so wrapped up in midterms that she had absolutely nothing to share with me other than court cases she was required to memorize, so I finally got to get out all of my feelings that I couldn’t share with my guy best friends.

However, I soon came to realize that I didn’t have much to share either, other than a date I’d gone on. “She was nice,” I told her as she tried to drive through the streets of Braintree; Farah had always been a horrid driver. “But I don’t know. I think I meet too many people too quickly to really befriend them, you know?”

“Was she cute?” she asked, peering out the window to make sure she wouldn’t scrape the curb while she made a left-hand turn into the parking lot of a shopping strip.

“Absolutely,” I said, picturing the girl in my mind, “An eight, easily.”

For someone with such an average sized car, Farah did an amazing job at parking in two spaces. “Eh, not my problem,” she shrugged, kicking lightly at the back tire when she noticed. She turned back to me, “Did you sleep with her?” she asked, “Not even in the perverted way, but in the honestly curious way. I know you were on a dry streak,” she teased.

I felt my ears go hot, “No, I didn’t sleep with her; I’d only known her, like, twelve hours.” I paused, “But I’m not gonna lie, I had the urge.”

After we had both lost our virginity—practically the only “first” that we didn’t experience together—we acknowledged that we wouldn’t sleep with anyone we had known for less than a day. It wasn’t that we had made a pact or anything—it was more like a promise that we’d made to ourselves out loud—but it did kind of conflict with any itch to have a one-night-stand, which I admittedly had experienced. The Eight had expected it, and I would have been prepared to give it, if it weren’t for my sense of morality and Farah’s smug laugh in the back of my mind when she found out that I had been humped and dumped.

But it wasn’t like I wanted to sleep with Farah, either. She was beautiful, and I loved her, but I could never bring myself to be in love with her. Our platonic relationship had sort of skipped over the compassionate stage of love to a deep, all-knowing, I-Love-Slash-Want-Slash-Need-You-But-Not-In-That-Way thing. Sure, we’ve kissed—a quick touching of the lips at midnight on New Year’s, an Honest-to-God accidental mistletoe encounter at a holiday party, my twenty-first birthday when she got uncharacteristically and embarrassingly drunk and gave me a lap dance—and sure, I enjoyed each one. But with Farah, all I needed was her to be there: I needed a body to hold, an ear to listen, a being to be.

I held the door to Starbucks open for her as she strutted in as if she owned the place. If not the beauty parlor, Farah could be found in a Starbucks, studying like a majority of the other college kids. “Hi, can I have a—” she began when she reached the counter.

The barista, who didn’t even look up as he began scrawling on a cup, cut her off, “A chai tea for Farah with only one ‘R’ and an ‘H’, coming right up.” He finished the order and looked up at me, “Are you together?”

“Um, yeah…” I said slowly, at a loss for words when I realized just how much Farah’s life revolved around being alone in the presence of others in a Starbucks. “Can I just have a regular coffee?”

The barista shouted out our order to a fellow coffeemaker, I paid, and soon I was getting down to the bottom of the Starbucks situation while we waited for our drinks. “I get lonely,” she defended.

“Why Braintree?” I asked. “Do the chai teas in the million Starbuckses in Boston suck?”

The barista called for a chai tea pick up, and as she reached for the drink she was intercepted by another hand. Instead of answering my question, her eyes followed the hand up to it’s owner’s face.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking into a twentysomething man’s eyes. “I think that one’s yours.”

He spoke, and, boy, did he have an accent on him. He was the kind of Australian that gives listening effort. He picked up the cup, turning it until he stumbled across her name, “I think they spelled my name wrong, then,” he said, handing it to her, “The name Farah only belongs to beautiful people.” He beamed down at her and her face turned the same burgundy color of the scarf I had given her.

I nearly vomited, but I figured that, judging by Farah’s expression, he was the male equivalent of an eight. Farah took the tea that he offered and, if possible, she turned an even deeper shade of red. “It really is a small world—I hardly ever meet someone with the same name.” She was flirting back. That killed me.

He laughed, offering his hand to her, “Noah, actually. Close, but not nearly as pretty.”

Not only were they blocking my coffee access when the barista called, but apparently several other people who wanted to be alone in the presence of others too. “Farah, there are people in line…” I mumbled subtly.

They both looked at me, still holding each other’s hands, “Oh,” she said, suddenly conscious again. Their hands dropped.

When neither showed any sign of moving, I said, “It’s getting late. We should head home before traffic gets too bad.”

“Oh, you live together?” Noah asked, discouraged. I had never really thought of how scandalous it sounded.

“Sort of/Yep,” Farah and I said at the same time, respectively.

“We’re roommates,” she clarified. “I’m in college full-time, and he’s never home.”

“I’m a musician,” I said, sort of trying to intimidate him, and suddenly feeling protective of Farah like I did the first time I met any of my sister’s boyfriends.

“I understand,” he said, finally moving out of the way and taking Farah along with him. “I’m never home either. I’m a pre-med and in America on a sort of business trip.”

A pre-med. Of course. He was a pre-med, she was a pre-law, and I was a guy with a lot of tattoos and a high school education.

“I’m in pre-law,” Farah said excitedly. I knew that deep down, she really wanted a guy on her own intellectual level to be around all the time, not someone like me who won’t even put out.

“You must be a Harvard student,” he observed.

She nodded, “I’m graduating this spring, that is, if I manage to pass my midterms.”

He smiled again, showing perfect white teeth, “I’m shadowing Harvard Med, but I haven’t been to the campus yet. Maybe you could show me around.”

Even I knew that the Medical campus was nowhere near the Law campus. But she just smiled and said, “I don’t see why not.”

“But of course, you’ll have to let me buy you dinner first.”

She glanced at me, but I kept my face expressionless, as if I had gone off into space and hadn’t been listening. “I’d like that,” she said at last.