Summer went on, slow, unending. Juliet did not call me after the barbecue, which I didn't mind as much as I should have. I was enjoying spending time with Hyun before he visited his extended relatives in Korea, and Ayah had left for a summer camp for college, and would then immediately go to Somalia for a cousin's wedding. Juliet and Royce, their drama, their affair, the whole fever dream of a barbecue felt as distant as another country. A breath of another world, full of desire and heat, brushing against me for only an instant. Whatever brief infatuation I had for Juliet was already ebbing away, but who was to say it wouldn't come back? I hated her, I wanted her, I wanted to be her. I wanted to be Royce too—Royce, who had seemed so unperturbed under the glow of the bathroom light when I walked out. Laughing, even, like he found me terribly interesting.

I turned seventeen. Hyun had come over for my birthday, and we played video games and ate cake and drove around, and I remember sticking my hand out of the window of his car, feeling the summer air. A part of me had already started missing that carelessness, of celebrating birthdays and basking in the laziness of a summer vacation, even while I was living it. Hyun left three days after my birthday, and then I was alone.

My father brought up college, and made the inevitable comparison of me with my cousins, my relatives, who had gone to Ivy leagues. Who already had plans and offers. Without Hyun or Ayah, I didn't have the option of using them as an excuse to escape conversation. Royce and Juliet had never felt that distant, when I was sitting at the table with my father and mother, iftar ready to be eaten, my father turning sterner and sterner as the days went on. After we broke our fast, and after our prayers, I would sit in the living room and stare at my hands folded on my lap, fighting the heat behind my eyes as my father told me, again and again, how disappointed he was in me. How horrible my attention span was, how stupid and unintelligent I was, how I seemed to be only good at things that didn't matter—reading books and playing video games—and how I would have done better if I put in half as much effort into Math and Physics as I did into gaping at my laptop. He wouldn't even yell at me—that was the worst part. There was no anger in his voice. Just disappointment. Disgust. Contempt. As if he'd only just realized how much of a failure I was in his eyes.

I wondered if Royce ever had to do this.

Ramadan went on. Then the last two weeks rolled around, and then we were driving twenty minutes to the nearest mosque for the Taraweeh prayers. My mother and father in the front seat, me in the back. Tense, silent, awkward. The year before—hell, even a few months before that particular Ramadan—it wouldn't have been the case. My father would have been talking, and my mother would have been making jokes, and my sister would have been on call, laughing and listening. Small problems, in retrospect, but how huge the question of my future seemed to me. How abstract, how distant and how close it felt, all at once.

And then we arrived at the mosque. I prayed, away from my father, and away from my mother too, and I pressed my forehead against the perfumed carpet and prayed to Allah. I prayed for something, anything, to make the terrible anxiety pulsating in me go away. I prayed for my future to sort itself out. I prayed that my father wouldn't look at me with so much disdain, the expression that was so rare before becoming more frequent now whenever he looked at me, like I was a moron. I prayed for Hyun to come back, for Ayah's cousin's wedding to fall apart so she'd have to return. Something. Anything.

After Taraweeh, my father—as usual—hung around the other middle aged men that frequented the mosque, while my mother chatted up other mothers and aunties, and I made polite conversation, like a good child, with both groups before wandering off. There were children running around and chasing each other in the men's section of the masjid, and the only people my age were a group of guys who went to a different school than I did, and whom I didn't have much in common with. They saw me, and waved, and I waved back, and I resolutely made my way to the parking lot where I was planning to stand next to the car and use my phone and wait until my parents were finally ready to leave.

And then I saw him. I saw the line of his shoulders strained against the fabric of his shirt as he was bent at the waist, trying to drink from the shitty water fountain that had a water pressure that seemed almost magically random. I saw him stand up straight, smack the side of the water fountain, and then bend down to drink again. Royce, right in front of me.

He gave up, and turned around, and he found me.

I shouldn't have been so surprised to see him at the masjid. He was Muslim, he even fasted at the barbecue. But this—this impression of him, as someone who went to the mosque as I did, and probably prayed like I did—was hard for me to reconcile with the other version of him that had already taken up space in my head. The Royce that I knew, I associated with that flipped burgers and skinny dipped and talked and moved with ease and felt so unapproachable that the few similarities we shared felt like they were there to show how utterly different we were. He was tall where I was short, pretty where I was plain, lean with muscle where I was soft with flesh. And even those things, as small as they were, convinced me that I wouldn't even talk to him again. Every difference, when you're seventeen, feels like a degree of separation so large it might as well be a continent.

"Um," he said. He looked like he didn't quite know what to say to me. "Hi."

I didn't know what to say either. "You mean salaam."

He smiled. It wasn't the movie-star, cocksure smile he was throwing around at Juliet's house. This one was shyer, sweeter, almost. Something about it made my ears burn. "As-salamu-alaykum," he said, "is what you mean."

"I'm gonna admit," I said. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"At the masjid or this specific water fountain?" He was still smiling, and now he was meeting my eyes, head ducked down to look at me properly.

"Little bit of both," I said. It was easier to bear the brunt of his gaze here, where I could hear kids screaming with laughter, and the slow noise of conversation between adults. "No offense."

"None taken. Can I ask why you weren't expecting me at the masjid, though?"

"Because," I said. "You don't really strike me as the type to actually pray."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"And," I said, and searched lamely for the words to explain why it felt wrong to see him here. "Juliet, and you, you know. Kind of defeats the point of prayer, no?"

His smile wavered, but didn't drop. "I'm not sure if any of that has any bearing on why I would or wouldn't pray."

"Sure it doesn't. But all of it does have a bearing on whether I think you're the kind of person to pray."

"How small-minded of you, then."

"Hey," I said, and I felt guilty for ever saying anything in the first place. "I'm not perfect."

He looked at me, glancing briefly up and down at the whole length of my body, and said, "Could have fooled me."

"Flirt," I said, a little quickly. I really didn't want to think about the way he said it, or the way he looked at me when he did. "You having trouble with that water fountain?"

"A little, yes." He turned away from me, and towards the water fountain, and smacked the side of the basin. "What is up with the water flow?"

"It's messed up," I said. I stepped beside him, and touched the button that sat on top of the faucet that spat out water. "You have to twist and press it a certain way and—" I twisted and pressed down on it, and water came out in a steady stream—"there you go. Drink."

I kept pressing down on the button, and I expected him to brush my hand away and keep pressing it down himself, but he didn't. He glanced at me, and then bent his head down to drink the water.

As he drank, his eyes flickered up to meet mine, and something about this—the angle of his head, how close we were—felt so embarrassing and illicit that I immediately looked anywhere but at him.

"Thanks," he said, and stood up straight. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "You're being awfully nice to me."

"Awfully nice?" I asked. "It's just a water fountain. You don't have to start prostrating yourself before me."

He let out a snort. "No, I meant that—you having feelings for Juliet, me being with her, me basically encouraging her to cheat on her boyfriend—none of that's getting in the way of you being polite to me."

I leaned my back against the wall of the masjid, and looked at the hollow of his throat. He was wearing a t-shirt, and it looked soft and worn. He was wearing something much nicer at the barbecue, and I wondered if he just dressed nicer, but less comfortably, for Juliet's sake.

"I could say the same," I said. "I saw Juliet cheating on her boyfriend with you. And still. Here you are, talking to me."

"Here I am," he said, and tilted his head to the side. "And here you are."

Royce wasn't smiling anymore. He'd gotten closer to me, without my realizing it, and I realized how stupid I was to have leaned on the wall. Now I couldn't step backwards, away from him. He wasn't that close—only a foot or two—but still. I felt caged, hemmed in. I thought, distantly, of what other masjid-goers would think if any one of them saw us standing so close together. The rumors that would fly. I should have side stepped past him, but I didn't really want to draw attention to how self-conscious I was of the lack of distance between us, which would just make things awkward. So I stayed there, my back still pressed against the peeling paint of the masjid.

"Royce," I said. "Why do you like her?"

To his credit, he didn't even blink at the question. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Don't deflect," I said. "Answer me."

He stayed silent. Whether it was because he was thinking, or because he genuinely didn't want to answer, I didn't know. It didn't matter anyway, because we were interrupted by someone calling his name.

He stepped back away from me, and a girl came around the corner, walking right towards him. She was shorter than me, and immediately, I could spot the family resemblance. She had Royce's features, but they were refracted onto her face in a way that made her look less striking than him.

"There you are," she said. "Baba's looking everywhere for you." She looked at me, and raised an eyebrow. "Who's this?"

"A friend," Royce said. He turned to me, and then gestured at the girl. "This is Amna. My younger sister."

"Hi," Amna said to me. "I'm eleven, by the way."

"That's, uh," I said. "Cool?"

She gave me a sweet smile. "Is Royce your boyfriend?"

Royce smacked the back of her head faster than I could even think to formulate a response.

"You idiot," he said, and I could see that he'd gone a little red. "Why are you such a freak?" He grabbed her into a chokehold, and started rubbing his knuckles into her scalp, ignoring her yelps. "You seriously need to learn to shut up, you goddamn weirdo!"

I started to laugh, and Amna managed to wriggle free out of Royce's grasp long enough to hide behind me instead, and Royce just glared at her. She stuck out her tongue at Royce, and I laughed again, and she started giggling along with me.

"Relax," I said, grinning, to Royce. "She was just joking, right?"

Amna nodded. "Right."

"She's just a shithead," Royce said. "That says stupid things."

"This explains a lot about you, actually," I said.

"Explains what?" Amna asked.

"Literally nobody is talking to you, asshole," Royce snapped at her.

"It explains why you were taking care of me at that barbecue," I said. "You're an older sibling."

"He was taking care of you?" Amna asked, her voice going a little shrill with excitement.

"He was taking care of you?" Royce mimicked, pitching his voice in a mockery of his younger sister's. "Shut up, Amna. Go away."

"I'm gonna tell Baba you're being mean to me."

"Baba's not gonna believe you."

"This," I said, "is really making me miss my older sister."

"Of course you were defending Amna," said Royce, with a suffering sigh. "You're a younger sibling. Of course."

"Is he mean to you?" Amna asked me. "Because he's mean to me."

"He's not mean to me," I answered. "Why's he mean to you?"

"Because I'm better than him," she said, puffing up her chest.

"Because you're annoying." Royce was making a face at her, and he reached past me to grab Amna by her shoulder. "Come on. You said Baba was waiting."

Amna kept complaining, but made no move to escape her brother's grip. They were beginning to walk away, and I stayed back, watching them. I wanted to talk to Royce more, alone, and I liked talking to him—if only because it had been a long time since I last talked to anybody my age. I still had his number on my phone, and I never texted him after the barbecue, but I was thinking it wouldn't be so bad to ask him to hang out with me, and kill time with him until Hyun or Ayah came back.

And then Royce stopped walking away, turned around, and came back towards me, with his sister in tow.

"What?" I asked. "Did you forget something?"

He shook his head. His brow was furrowed, and he was biting the inside of his cheek, before he said, "Do you want to meet my dad?"

I was staring at him.

His frown grew more severe. "If you don't want to—"

"No, that's not it. I'm just wondering," I interrupted, before he could walk back the invitation. "Why?"

"Oh." He scratched the back of his neck. "We could have iftar together. You're the first Muslim I met here that I kind of like. And my dad's been pressing me to make more Muslim friends, even though he's not really religious."

"Ah. So I'm special?"

Behind Royce, Amna was making a gagging sound. Without turning around, Royce smacked the top of her head.

"So humble," he said, smiling. "Sure, you're special. Do you want to come or not?"

I did. I followed Royce and Amna back to the front of the mosque, where my father was deep in conversation with a man who looked like he was on the farther side of middle-age, but looked rather sturdy, and stood with a distinguished air. When my father paused speaking to him to look at Royce approaching with Amna and I behind him, the man turned around too, and I realized with a start that he must have been Royce's father. They had the same eyes, and the same shape of their mouth, but more than that, it was the way he squinted at me, as if trying to place me—it was like Royce's frown, the same deep furrow in between the brow. He smiled at me, kindly, and my father looked mildly confused to see me with a boy my age.

"Where were you?" my father asked. "Never mind that. Have you met Nadir? He's a university professor here, and his son's at Durham—"

"That would be me," Royce said, smoothly interrupting my father before he could go on. "The prodigal son in question. This is my sister, Amna." Amna rushed towards Royce's father, and started complaining about Royce hitting her.

"Royce," I said, "that's my father. Abba, this is Royce. He's a friend."

"We're friends?" Royce said, lightly teasing. "That's news to me."

"Your father was just telling me about you," my father said, to Royce. Then, he looked at me and started speaking. "It's good that you've made friends with him. Did you know Royce is taking several AP classes, and he's on the soccer team, as well as the student council at Durham? You could learn a thing or two from him."

"Actually," Royce said, "I was hoping to bring Ro over sometime, for iftar?"

My father looked a little taken aback. I'd never managed to really get along with anybody from the masjid before, especially somebody as impressive—in my father's eyes, anyway—as Royce.

"If that's alright with Nadir," my father said, in place of an answer.

"Of course it's alright," Royce's father—Nadir said. "Don't worry—" he clapped a hand on my father's shoulder—"I'll keep an eye on both of them, and make sure nothing untoward is happening."

My father let out a laugh, and Royce joined in rather awkwardly, and the rest of the conversation passed by in forgettable blur. Before leaving, Royce had made sure I had his number, and his breath had brushed the shell of my ear when he bent his head next to mine, to look at my phone. When he left with his father and his sister, I didn't feel as terrible as I did when I first came to the masjid, and on the drive back home, my father was asking me questions about Royce—questions I was ill prepared to answer—all the while.

There was a lull in the questions my father was throwing at me and the answers I was giving him, and then my mother finally spoke up.

"This Royce," she said, not turning to look at me in the backseat, "is he handsome?"

I groaned, and my father couldn't stop himself from bursting out into laughter.

"Well?" my mother prompted. "Is he? The way you're both talking about him, I wish I could have seen him."

"He's tall," my father said, approvingly. "Huge boy. Very nice looking."

"Abba," I whined. "Not you too."

My mother said nothing, not for a while. When we were finally pulling into the driveway of our house, she reached behind the passenger seat, searching for my hand. I took it, and she squeezed my fingers.

"Be careful, beta," she said, her voice full of fondness. "The handsome ones are always dangerous."