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When Sana’s friends talk about crushes, they don't usually bother to ask her who she likes.
It's not particularly interesting, anyway, to hear them go on about sex appeal and jaw lines and rough voices, to watch Noora attempt to talk around her feelings for William whilst Eva looks at her with something a lot like wistfulness, familiar to Sana in a way she's never said aloud. She picks at her food, usually, and tries not to make her judgemental faces too judgemental. So she doesn't want to hear about Vilde’s sex with Magnus; sue her. So she doesn't want to know which guy at school is the hottest, rated by their asses. It’s not that they never talk about anything else, but Sana never has much patience for the times they do.
There’s only so much she can contribute when they never ask her. She doesn’t blame them, not really; their talk of sexual escapades is irrelevant to her, and anything she brought up would be just the same for them. But--
If they were to ask, Sana thinks she would tell them there’s no one, not because it’s true, but because she knows the words that would pour out of her mouth would reveal more than she could ever say.
She thinks she could talk for hours and never tell the whole story: about the line of his nose, the way it’s a little crooked; the way his hair falls over his face; all of his smiles; his soft voice and the way it’s changed over the years he’s been friends with her brother. (She would talk for far too long about his eyes, certainly, because his eyes would be the most important part, the way they make her feel soft inside, welcomed and warm.)
The way she would sum it up frightens her the most: Yousef notices me .
They never ask, and Sana never tells. It would be ridiculous, anyway; a cliche. Another girl with another stupid crush on her older brother’s friend, just like every teen movie with fighting and sorrow and breakups in the middle and a happily ever after at the end.
(Sana is not so far gone as to make believe she’s in one. She puts far too much effort into their short interactions for that.
Sometimes, she rehearses what she’s going to say to him the next time they meet. The word hi over in her head three times before it makes it out of her mouth, stance careful, face controlled. Sana doesn’t think she could bear to show him the softness she feels when she’s around him. She thinks he sees it anyway.)
If she was telling someone about it, Sana would tell them that Yousef notices her, but the truth is more potent: he knows her, like souls touching souls, and she is far too old for this sentimental nonsense but she feels it right to her fingertips when he smiles at her, when she looks at him and catches him looking back. Yousef smiles at her like she’s the only person in the world, or like he knows there are others but would rather make her his priority.
“Hey,” he says to her most times, or some variation thereof, and the syllable carries the weight of words she wishes he would say. He’s always around his friends, around Elias or someone else, and she curls her fingers at her sides to keep herself from--well, she doesn’t know. Reaching out? Sometimes she feels as though something deep within her chest reaches for him every time they’re in the same room.
Sometimes, when everything is quiet and she allows her mind to wander, she wonders if he is reaching back. (She wonders if the moments she catches him looking are hopeful fantasies, or if he feels every moment with the weight she hopes he does.) These are not moments she allows herself often, not really. It’s not as if she has the time, anyway, with school and the girls and everything else.
So, she has a crush, a boy she feels herself go soft around. It’s not a big deal, because it’s more than that, too--she could go her entire life knowing him and nothing more, simply because he is the person to step out of the crowd she can’t find a place in to keep her company. His subtle beauty, the way he makes her warm inside, is no more than a footnote, an asterix at the end of a paragraph.
(The only problem with that, though, is that Sana has always read the footnotes, has always looked for what the author is trying to hide in their tiny script. They’re the most interesting part, sometimes, almost as revealing as the actual text. There’s a part of her that glows with grim satisfaction when she reads them, like she’s beaten an academic at their own game, like she’s discovered something that isn’t supposed to be known.)
What Sana would never tell anyone about Yousef is this: he makes her feel strong and vulnerable all at once, overjoyed and yearning, and somewhere in that mess of feeling she thinks that she could fall in love with him. There’s a part of her, a deeply hidden and dangerous part, that may have already.
If the girls asked her if there was anyone, she would say no, not because she feels nothing for him, but because she feels everything. Everything is too much for them, for these girls who would ask about making moves and seduction and the perfect shade of lipstick to draw his attention. They would ask about conversations, would frown in confusion at explanations of looks across rooms, short phrases offered in soft voices that mean more than all the words in every dictionary in the world. They would say “ what happened to not having sex? ”, not understanding that the weight of everything between them is so much more than bodies touching bodies, no matter how much that may work for her friends. She doesn’t tell them because they wouldn’t understand, because she’s not sure they would even try.
Sana does not tell them that Yousef makes her want to smile wider than she ever has, that sometimes she will feel wrong in her place in the world, like nothing and no one can keep her to it, and he will look across the room at her and anchor her to the ground. That when she feels misunderstood and separate, he will look at her, he will know her, and everything will be alright.
She does not tell them, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it in every part of her, and somehow that feels more important than anything she might say.