Heart the Lover (10)

I hear Yash go downstairs. Ten minutes later the house smells of sautéed onions and garlic and I know he’s making hashbrowns to go with his scrambled eggs. If I get down there quick enough he’ll make enough for me.

The potatoes are crackling in the cast-iron pan and he doesn’t hear me come down. I stop in the doorway and watch him scrape and flip with a spatula. He’s got on gray sweats and a fraying blue Allman Brothers T-shirt. His hair is wet, the front part in a great loop high above his forehead. This is why Sam and Ivan call him Rooster, this way he has of drying his hair. I’ve never seen it before.

I don’t know how to not startle him. ‘Mmmm,’ I hum softly. ‘Smells yummy.’



He jumps. A few potatoes fly off the spatula.

‘Jesus, Jordan. I thought you guys went off somewhere.’ He looks mad but also very funny with his hair looped up like that. He sees me see it and I see him stop his hand from trying to fix it. ‘It’s not funny. My heart is going a hundred miles per hour.’

‘I’m sorry. Here, you sit.’ I pull out a chair for him. ‘And I’ll stir.’ I take the spatula from him. He actually does as he’s told. When I turn around again he’s tousled his hair back to normal.

‘Sam go to church?’

I nod. ‘Should I scramble some eggs?’

‘Sure.’

‘You do the cheese,’ I say and fetch him the cheddar and a grater. We are used to cooking together. Sam is happy with a PB&J and Ivan only likes takeout. But Yash and I cook chicken legs and fresh vegetables. I often make my mother’s picadillo and he makes his grandmother’s butter chicken. But we’ve never been alone in the kitchen together for this long. We’ve never cooked for two. I crack the eggs into a bowl and froth them with a fork. I divide the potatoes on two plates then pour the eggs into the pan and scrape up the browned bits of potato and onion into the scramble. The eggs don’t stick, and cook quickly in nice chunks, not pebbly like they get in the cheap frying pan on Pye Street. I sprinkle on the cheese just before taking them off the flame.



‘God, those look perfect,’ he says when I bring them to the table. He’s set it with green cloth napkins I’ve never seen before.

‘This is so nice,’ I say, sitting at my place across from him.

We both look at the clock at the same time.

We take a few bites and compliment each other on our parts of the meal, then we eat quietly. It isn’t the kind of silence Sam and I have, where each of us will say something if we can think of it. With Yash I can say anything and it will turn into a conversation. We could talk about the green napkins—where he’d found them, what they remind us of, who ironed them—for a half hour. But I want to make it count. I missed him during those eleven days. I thought we couldn’t be friends anymore. I can’t say that but it’s all heavy in my mind. We have less than a half hour before Sam comes back. We need to talk about something big, something that will secure our friendship forever. It’s a lot of pressure to put on twenty-five minutes on a Sunday morning. I glance over at him when he’s putting both eggs and potato on his fork with a knife. He eats in that British way his father must have taught him, the knife so active, not just for cutting. He has a very small smile on his face, as if he doesn’t notice we’re not talking, or as if we are.

He catches me looking at him and the grin spreads. ‘Glad you’re back.’



‘Me too. I missed this place.’ I look around the room, as if that’s what I missed, then point to a copy of The Inferno on the counter and ask what class it’s for.

‘It’s not for a class,’ he says. ‘I’m just doing a little advanced reading for Gastrell’s Immortality seminar in the fall.’

‘The fall? You’re not graduating with us?’

‘I took a leave of absence sophomore year so I have another year.’

Sam told me that he’d taken time off. He said Yash’s dad had put his mom in a psychiatric hospital and Yash’d had to get her out. I asked how Yash’s dad had had the power to do that when they’d been divorced since Yash was five, and Sam said he didn’t understand why I wanted to be a writer when I could never just trust a story.

I like that I’ll know where Yash is in the fall. ‘Have you read that story “The Last Fall” by Ray Hart, about a guy who stays at college for an extra semester?’

‘Do tell. The plot sounds positively riveting.’

‘It’s beautiful. All his friends are gone and he sees the back of the neck of an old girlfriend in class and marvels at the feelings he once had for her and he’s got this housemate who only plays an album called Country Greats and the leaves are falling and the cold is coming and he has this thing with another girl that’s not really serious but there’s this gorgeous moment next to a soccer field when she fastens and unfastens a button on his jacket.’ I can’t read the expression on Yash’s face. ‘It’s just this long tender farewell to youth.’

‘I’d like to read it,’ he says, and nothing else. No quip, no barb.

‘I haven’t done it justice.’

The back door rattles and we both jump. Sam is in the window. He gives the door a shove with his hip and it comes unstuck. I’ve never seen anyone go in or out that way before.