For The Hope Of It All

Ilyes

We shower together after we eat to save time. Kiyara is kind enough to wrap my boot with a trash bag and in return, I eat her out as she washes her hair. My days have been mostly this. Aside from helping out at the deli or making dinner with my khala, I wait until Kiyara calls or texts and when she doesn't, I do the reaching out. Sometimes, Kiyara says no because she's tired or Jude is home but most times she responds with a simple 'fine'. I'm not sure what it is about her that I can't get enough of. Even with her indifference toward me. She was beautiful and quick as a whip. Mean too but not in a malicious way. Fun. Different from Safiyah who was nothing but kind, sweet, loving. But that was what I needed. I didn't want a reminder of the girl I'd lost. I wanted something different. The opposite. I missed Safiyah. I missed her in my bones. I thought of her far too much. If she called, I would have come running. But she didn't. So I found myself spending my days with Kiyara. I wasn't one to do casual sex. Before Safiyah, I'd also been in a relationship with a nice Muslim girl from Newcastle. It didn't last long because her dad didn't like the culture of football and because he wanted us to get married within the year. I wasn't ready to get married, not at 23. Even though a lot of my teammates were married and had kids, I didn't want to do it for the sake of it. It was encouraged in the locker room. The players who got married had less time to party and go to the club on their days off, which meant less distraction, and hopefully more wins. I didn't see the correlation but at the same time, I wasn't one to spend my time partying even in my early twenties.

The drive to Shore Park and Parkway was longer than I'd like but we arrived eventually. Kiyara had been on her phone the entire drive and even then I couldn't help looking over to see if she was texting this Santiago Margolis person. I'm not sure why I'm so peeved about him. I didn't know who he was. Maybe it was because from the beginning Kiyara had stated she was just using me until he came back. Or maybe it was because she was so giddy whenever she got a text from him or he called. She never showed as much enthusiasm towards me unless we were having sex. Part of me knew the conditions of our agreement but surely this Santiago guy wasn't as good looking as I was. Or talented. She was also so tight lipped about him. All I'd found out over the weeks was that he was an English professor at the college she worked at and that he was away for eight weeks. I couldn't find him in her Instagram following. I even tried to get more out of Eva when she came over but she only knew that much. I guess Kiyara didn't speak that much about him to anyone else.

"Why don't you drink, by the way?" Kiyara says to me once we reach an empty bench with the perfect view of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge. The sun is starting to set but the sky is still mostly blue, on parts slowly turning orange.

"I do. Rarely, very rarely. The last time I drank was probably Benny's mum's wedding." I rub my hands down my trousers. "I'm Muslim so I don't like to drink often."

"Interesting" She turns back towards the water so I take the time to trace my eyes along the slope of her nose.

"Are you... Muslim too?" I ask, remembering the prayer mat that I had spotted in her room.

"Not a good one, no." Kiyara shifts uncomfortably, "My dad is Muslim."

"No such thing as a bad Muslim" I shrug, stretching an arm behind her. "I saw the prayer mat in your room"

"I pray sometimes. When I remember to. Or when something goes well in my life. To be grateful, you know. I wish I was more religious but I hate to admit that my faith relied heavily on my dad."

"How so?"

"Well my mom's Catholic. My dad's a Muslim. I remember that he would pray at home and fast and go to the mosque. And he would take me. And then they divorced so I'd see him pray when he had me every second week. And I'd pray with him. He'd take me to celebrate Eid with his family in Indonesia. But then he moved to Jakarta permanently with his wife maybe six years ago so... yeah"