She felt Salman’s hands on her shoulders and the cool of his shadow blocking out the sunlight. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Nadya.”
Oh, if he only knew! Nadya could have laughed if she weren’t crying. He was sitting down next to her, now. She could feel his arm wrapping around her shoulders, and she had a quick flashback to how it had felt the night before, when he had carried her. The soft, steady heartbeat. The easy strength of his arms.
“What are you apologizing for?”
Now was the time. She’d gone beyond the point where she could run away without a word. She had to tell him. She had to finally be honest.
But as she raised her face out of her hands and her eyes met his, the words stuck in her throat. “I’m sorry for ruining the day by getting emotional.” It was only half a lie, so it slid out easily. “It’s just that I’m so happy.”
For a moment, Nadya thought he saw through her. She was far too distraught for her tears to be those of joy. But he sighed, and, it seemed, made a decision not to pry.
He rubbed her arm gently with his hand. “I know, it’s a lot,” he said. “Maybe it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you here. All my plans…” Then his tone shifted, becoming more upbeat. “Most couples don’t have this problem,” he said. “They date. They have time.”
Something about the way he said it brought Nadya outside of herself. She wasn’t focusing on her guilt, or what she would be doing to him and his actual fiancée when they found out what she had done. She was thinking about it, now, as though it were all true – as though she were his intended.
“And we do have time, you know. Not a lot of time, sure. But we have a couple days.”
Nadya let out a chuckle. “Time to date? Time to have a normal relationship?”
He was nodding, now. “We’re in America. I’ve lived a lot of my life in America. Let’s have a normal American relationship, in a day and a half.”
She looked at him skeptically. “So, what I’m hearing you say, is that you want to argue about furniture in Ikea, almost break up because of something utterly insignificant, get nervous meeting each other’s parents, have an awkward discussion about the future and then eventually decide to go all in?”
He shrugged. “Well, maybe not all that. Although, I have to admit, Nadya, I wish I could do all that with you.”
At his words, a little part of Nadya wanted to scream the truth at him. You could, she wanted to say. We could have all that.
But to say that would have meant telling him everything. And if she told him everything, he wouldn’t want to do any of that with her anymore.
“We could have some of it,” she said. “We could go on a date.”
“I’d love to,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. She felt like she’d fallen into a trap, without even realizing it.
“I won’t organize it, though,” he continued. “If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, this is going to need to be a partnership.”
It was tongue in cheek, but it was still strange to hear those words coming out of his mouth. He was the rich prince, with an old-fashioned wedding arrangement. The man who had carried her to her bed. He was chivalrous and there was something classic and old-fashioned about him.
But talking to him now, he seemed more at ease. She could see him as the man he must have been at Columbia and at Stanford. A college student, just as she had been, although admittedly he had never had to wait outside in the line at a financial aid office.
Nadya imagined taking Salman on any of the dates she’d been on, and had to laugh. The one where they’d gone to a theater production that was supposed to be somewhat experimental, only to find out that it was very experimental, was a particular favorite.
“What?” he asked, defensively, like he thought she must have been making fun of him.
“I don’t think the kind of date I would plan would suit you,” she said.
“How would you know unless you tried me?”
He had her at that.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’m sure you know New York better than I do.”
It struck Nadya, again, how little she knew about the women she was impersonating. It would have been easier if she’d known all along that the other Nadya was familiar with New York, and she didn’t have to pretend she was a stranger to the city.
Still, she hesitated. She knew where she would bring him, if he was serious, and if she dared. Rudy’s, an underground punk club out in Brooklyn, was a place that had formed her. They’d been a bit fast and loose with IDs back in the day, and that, combined with the fact that it was far enough away from where her family lived that she and her friends weren’t likely to be recognized had made it a mainstay for her little crew. They had so many memories there, it was like the place had a glow around it when she pictured it in her mind.
Taking him there would be a lot like taking her here must have been for him. It was a part of her. It was what she chose for herself.
“I really don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said, unsurely.
“I insist,” he said, just as she’d hoped he would.
The tears she’d been crying just moment before were forgotten, now. She wanted to see his face as they went out to Brooklyn. She wanted to see him see the city. She wanted to see him see how the night looked through the cigarette smoke in the alley out back, when they wanted a break from the din inside. But Nadya’s growing excitement was punctured by a thought.
“Even if you wanted to go wherever I’d take you, I doubt your security would let you.”
He pulled back, so that he could look in her eyes. “We’ll see what we can do about that.” He winked. He had a mischievous side.
And that was the thing, wasn’t it? He had sides to him that she hadn’t gotten to see, and she’d liked the sides she’d seen already so much that she wanted to see them all. Whatever the risk.
He stood, and positioned himself in front of her, reaching his hands out for hers, gently rubbing her fingers with his thumbs when she gave them to him.
“Two of them break for dinner at 7:30. Only Ahmed will be on duty. And he’s… more agreeable.”
She imagined him, when he was in college, slipping away from his bodyguards to go for walks alone, in the city. He struck her as the sort that would do that. He’d slip away to go think deep thoughts walking the city blocks, while she’d slip away from her parents to go dancing in an outer borough.
“Yes?” he asked her, pulling her out of her imagination.
“Yes,” she said. And then he pulled her up and towards him, so that she rested against him, her arms around his neck, and his lips near her ear. It happened so suddenly that she didn’t have time to react.
“It’s really is ok,” he whispered. “I promise you.”
And then he turned and pulled her towards the helicopter, and the bright allure of the city that it would carry them to.