Aziz didn’t say anything for a moment. He readjusted his arms on his chest, considering her. The space between them was tense, awkward. Amity wanted to rush from the scene and eliminate any memories from her mind.
“Well. I have to say, I’m shocked,” Aziz said. He shook his head sadly. “And sad that you’ve come to this decision—”
Behind Aziz, one of the maids appeared. She gestured down the steps. “Miss Winters! Your taxi has arrived!” Her voice cut through the tension, killing the moment.
Amity shrugged her shoulders and grabbed her suitcase, rushing past Aziz and down the steps, willing her body to carry the heavy load. She could rest her weary eyes on the plane, she reminded herself. She could find solace as the days passed, as she pushed further away from this moment.
Seconds later, she burst from the mansion and found the waiting taxi. The driver opened his arms to her suitcase and greeted her with a curt hello. She felt her legs and shoulders jittering, shaking as she pushed the strap from her body and handed it away. She could feel Aziz’s presence behind her; she could sense that he’d followed her down the steps and into the blistering sunshine. Could she push into the taxi and abandon him like that?
No.
She lost her head; she refuted any thought of professionalism. And she spun on her heels, back toward the mansion, where Aziz was standing with lost eyes. He opened his arms to her, but she stopped short, blinking at him. Behind her, the traffic revved full-force. Merchants screamed in Arabic. The world kept spinning.
“This is off the record,” she said then. She cleared her throat and made earnest eye contact with him. She felt alive. But she kept her distance. “Do you remember what you told me the first morning I was here, in the desert?”
Aziz cocked his head but didn’t speak.
“You told me that you’re nothing like the man that the public thinks you are. And it’s completely true. You’re not like that perception of you—and you’re also not like anyone in the world.” She swallowed, feeling the brevity of her words. “And that’s why I’m leaving. I’m leaving because there’s nothing I can really do here. You don’t need me. You don’t need a PR rep; you don’t need anyone to arrange your words for you. You just need to be yourself, wholly and truly, and the public will love you.”
Behind her, Amity could hear the taxi driver clear his throat. His impatience was mounting.
“Anyway. I just wanted to—to tell you that. That you don’t need me.”
But I need you, Amity thought hopelessly, swallowing once more, using every last shred of restraint to keep herself from throwing her arms around him. Keep it together, Amity, she told herself. Keep it together.
Aziz sighed once more, clearly exhausted. He placed his fingers to his temples and slumped his shoulders. “Wow, Amity. What a whirlwind that was.” He shook his head, giving her a mischievous grin. “But okay. I respect your decision. There’s not much more I can do than that, is there? I can’t convince you to stay, can I?”
“I know where I belong,” Amity said, her eyebrows high. “I suppose I’ve always known.”
Aziz stretched his arms out, then, and reached gently around her shoulders. Amity hugged him roughly, feeling his beating heart against her cheek and wanting to reach up, to kiss him. She felt the tension between them; she felt the chaos of her mind. She longed for it to calm, to fall away. And she knew it would, the moment she entered that taxi. And so, fighting every impulse in her body, she pulled away, swiping at her wet cheeks.
“I’ll tell your employers it was my decision to send you back,” Aziz said firmly. “I’ll tell them what you’re telling me. That I don’t need a PR rep. I’m not sure what they’ll say. Probably that I’m crazy.” He laughed warmly. “But I’ve always been a bit that way.”
“I like it,” Amity said wistfully. “I do.”
She couldn’t tell him a single thing more. She held her tongue, yanking it back toward her throat. She felt the moments tick. Finally, Aziz spoke once more.
“You know, you’re welcome to come back here any time you please. I hope you do, one day.”
Amity gave him a slight, confused grin. She felt her stomach flip over. It was a one-time thing for him, wasn’t it? That was the unspoken agreement?
“And I’ll make sure Flora gets home in one piece,” Aziz added, chortling.
Amity allowed her head to fall back in a high school laugh, an easy giggle. For a moment, she felt like she could laugh with him on the corner, in front of that mansion, for all of time. But it was time for her to go. And so she bowed her head, thanking him once more, before backing into the taxi and giving him a strained, single-swoop wave.
She forced herself to face forward, not to look back as the taxi swept away. And she told herself, continually, as she passed through the airport sensors and ticket-takers, that she’d made the right decision. She was no more supposed to be in Al-Mabbar than Aziz was supposed to be with her. They had been like two ships in the night, passing each other for only a moment, before going their separate ways. For a moment, deep into their passionate lovemaking, it had been beautiful. And then it had been over.
The pilot launched into his well-practiced speech, explaining that they’d have sixteen hours to cover across the ocean. Amity shoved her earplugs in, pulled an eye mask on, and bid Al-Mabbar a final goodbye. She wasn’t one to linger on past feelings, and this wouldn’t be any different.
THIRTEEN
“Just a tall macchiato,” Amity said, her expression blasé, looking down at her phone as she spoke. The line at Starbucks had been mortifyingly long, but since Flora—who, miraculously, was still her intern—hadn’t been available to fetch her coffee, she was multitasking herself through the afternoon.
“What’s the name?” the barista asked her. She chomped at her gum, looking at Amity with dead shark eyes.
“Amity,” she muttered.
She waited to the side, typing up a brief email to one of her clients—an eighteen-year-old actress who had recently gotten drunk and streaked down Hollywood Boulevard. Amity thought she could probably help her using some of her normal tactics: forcing the girl to volunteer her time at an animal shelter, or an orphanage. Anything that sounded good in a news anchor’s voice.
Whatever worked, Amity thought.
She clutched the latte and marched back into the searing L.A. sunshine. It was late August—the end of summer already—and the heat was at an all-time high, pushing her from air conditioning unit to air conditioning unit. She sighed and entered the hallway of her office building, her mind rushing with the emails she needed to send, the errands she needed to run.
It was true that she’d pushed herself full-force back into work life the minute she’d returned to LA. She really didn’t have a choice; she knew that unless she got stuck into new projects, she would drive herself crazy with thoughts of the Sheikh. Her bosses had been fine with her premature return—hearing from the Sheikh that he’d opted to take a different route. But because she hadn’t succeeded in overhauling his image back in Al-Mabbar, she hadn’t been given an option to go to New York. And so, here she was: back to square one. And she hated square one.
When Amity entered the office, she tripped lightly on the start of the carpet. Her latte sloshed up on her shirt and she bashed her shoulder against the wall, startling herself. She blinked rapidly, realizing that none of her coworkers or interns had noticed. They were bent over their screens, lost in their own affairs, their own early-twentysomething lives.