It scared me.

I didn’t know how to handle the shape of hope. I didn’t know how such a thing might fit in my body. I was so afraid, so afraid of being disappointed.

I felt him before I saw him, arms around my body, a blur of movement, shuddering motion. The world came back to me in an explosion of sound, heaving breaths and cool air, the shaking of branches, whispering leaves. I was gasping, clinging to the slick edge of the pool, my thin clothes painted to my body, my scarf suctioned to my head.

I dragged myself out of the water, collapsed sideways. I was breathing hard, staring up at the sky. I could feel my heart pounding, my pulse racing.

“Sometimes, I swear, I really think you’re trying to kill me.”

I pulled myself up at the sound of his voice, bent my sopping knees to my chest. Ali was sitting at the edge of the pool, his legs still in the water, his body drenched. I watched him as he stared into the glowing depths, his hands planted on either side of him. Rivulets of water snaked down his face. He was beginning to shiver.

“What are you doing here?”

He turned to look at me. “Are you?” he asked. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“No,” I whispered.

“I went to your house,” he said. “You forgot your backpack in my living room. But when I got there your mom told me you’d gone to get it yourself, she said that maybe I’d missed you on the way over.”

I sighed, stared into the water. “How’d you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. I searched the park. I saw your shoes through the fence.” He nodded at the bars around the community swimming pool. “So I jumped it. God, Shadi, I didn’t know what you were doing.” He dropped his face in his hands. Pushed wet hair out of his eyes. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“What did you think I was doing?”

“I don’t know,” he said, exhaling suddenly. “I don’t know.”

I knew.

I picked up my sopping self, dripped over to him, sat down beside him. I noticed then that his fists were clenched. His body was shaking.

“Come on,” I said softly, tugging at his arm. “You’re freezing. You have to go home. You have to get dry.”

“Shadi.”

I hesitated at the sound of his voice. He sounded raw, close to pain. He turned, I turned, I searched his eyes. I saw something in his face that scared me, sent my heart racing. I touched his cheek almost without meaning to, traced the curve of his cheekbone. He sighed, the sound scattered.

“What are we doing?” he whispered.

I felt something snap inside of me, felt something sever. I stared at him with a trembling hope. My soggy mind didn’t know what it was doing. My own name pressed against my tongue.

Shadi meant joy, and all I ever did was cry.

Ali touched my chin, grazed my lips with his fingers. “Do you know what my mom said to me when you left?”

I shook my head.

“She was like, Ali, you idiot, that girl will never be interested in you. You don’t even know how to talk to girls like that. She’s way too good for you.”

I almost laughed. I felt closer to crying.

“Seriously,” he said, and I felt him smile, felt his words touch my skin as he spoke. “My own mother.”

That heat, that inexpressible heat pushed up my throat again, the feeling so familiar now I almost didn’t notice it.

His smile faded in the proceeding silence. He took a deep, bracing breath. He was trembling with cold, with fear. “You know what I want?” he said, pressing his forehead to mine. “What I want more than anything?”

“No.”

His hands were around my waist now, the two of us holding each other upright. “I want you to be happy.”

My eyes stung; I blinked. “Ali—”

“I still love you,” he whispered. “I still love you and I don’t know how to stop.”

I was becoming familiar with this feeling, these wings beating in my chest, this desperate acceleration of emotion. I couldn’t breathe around it, couldn’t see around it, couldn’t have imagined my heart could fissure and fuse, fissure and fuse on into infinity.

“Don’t,” I said softly. “I never did.”