Chapter Text
When Yousef enters the library at half past eight on this Monday morning, Sana is, as always, already there, at her usual table, a tall stack of books on her right, travel mug of tea on her left, laptop, notebook and worksheets spread out in front of her. She doesn't notice him, but that really isn’t that surprising - the large reading room of the National library lives up to its name, and as exams are coming up, it’s quite full, despite the early hour. Yousef, on the other hand, can never help but notice Sana, no matter how many other people are in the same room. How her eyes are glued to her worksheet, as she highlights sentences in neon yellow. How her other hand taps the beat of whatever song she has running through her headphones on the desk while she reads. The heart pins in her hijab. Her perfect purple lipstick. The label of her tea bag sticking out of the travel mug - red and orange, so maybe rooibos today?
Yousef adjusts his heavy backpack and scans the room. Unfortunately, the impending exam period has resulted in the population of the reading room almost doubling lately. He remembers how it was a couple of months ago, when he had first found his way here. Often, he and Sana would have a whole row of desks to themselves, and he’d been able to choose between sitting next to her or across from her. Sitting next to Sana meant that he would be able to take in her scent, a perfect blend of tea and soap and perfume. Sitting across from her meant that it was easier to sneak glances at her from time to time, most often disguised in stretches. Sometimes, Sana’d even glance back, and smile a little, and he’d get to see her beautiful dimples. Now, however, there’s no chance of that. The row Sana’s sitting in is almost full, and all the desks surrounding hers are occupied. Yousef sighs. As if today wasn’t going to be boring enough anyway. He weighs his options. He can choose between sitting in the row of desks behind Sana’s, one seat away from her, or in the same row, opposite her, three seats away from her. The first option means he’ll maybe be able to pick up some of her scent, and it’ll make it easier for him to casually ask if she wants to eat lunch together. The second option means he'll maybe be able to see her, but it’ll take more effort. He settles for the first option. Maybe one of the people next to Sana will move and he can grab that seat. If he can manage it without being too obvious.
The first option also means that Yousef will have to pass behind Sana's chair. This had seemed like an upside to this particular seat when he chose it, but now that he’s actually about to squeeze between Sana and the guy behind her he’s no longer so sure. Sana is just concentrating so hard, and he doesn't want to bother her. This small everyday exchange suddenly seems so momentous. What should he say? Should he touch her shoulder? Yousef has his interactions with Sana over the past few months pretty thoroughly catalogued in his brain, and he doesn't think he’s actually touched her before. This seems like a much too large step to take just because he needs to get past her chair. Should he lean down? Should he say hi? Just… ask her to scoot in a bit, so he can get through? Should he ask the guy behind her instead? But then she might think he’s ignoring her! Why is he even putting himself through this?! He should have just gone around the entire room and gotten to his seat from the other side of the row instead. But it’s too late to retreat now. Okay. Deep breath.
As he’s trying to get his voice under control, trying to make sure it doesn't come out to high pitched or too loud, Sana looks up from her text and turns towards him. She looks a bit startled for a brief moment, like she’s just realised that she isn't alone in the library, but then Yousef can actually see her relax when they lock eyes. And she smiles! Sana smiles at him! Okay, so it’s her half smile half smirk, that only reveals a little bit of one of her dimples, and not his favorite, her big, open mouthed smile, the one she has when something is genuinely funny, but hey, it’s Monday morning, he’ll take it! Yousef tries to smile back naturally, and not just grimace weirdly, especially as Sana removes her headphones and opens her mouth and speaks. It takes him a moment to long to register her hi, and then - fuck - his voice is too squeaky when he answers. And then Sana just looks at him, expectantly, like she’s waiting for him to say something more. Fuck fuck fuck . What should he say ?
“Ehm, I was going to sit… there?” What? What even was that? That was literally the weirdest way he could ask her to move. He couldn’t have thought of anything else? Literally anything else would have been smoother.
Sana turns her head and looks at the seat he’s pointing at.
“Oh, right.”
She pulls her chair in a bit and Yousef shuffles past, taking the opportunity to draw a very, very subtle breath, trying to register and remember every one of her smells. The tea is rooibos. He knew he recognized the tag. When he’s through Sana's already grabbed her headphones again and is watching her laptop screen intently.
“Good luck with… that,” Yousef says, desperate for a last moment of her attention. She glances up at him again, but without dimples this time.
“Thanks.” And then the headphones are back on and she’s grabbed her highlighter again.
Yousef is confused. Did that go well? Or not well? He’s never entirely sure with Sana. He pulls his laptop and his own travel mug (of coffee) out of his backpack, before hanging it on the back of his chair. First she smiled at him… right? He didn't imagine that? No, he’s pretty sure she smiled. And then he’s pretty sure she didn't. Was what he said really that bad? He turns the sentence over in his head. I was going to sit there. It’s a stupid sentence, definitely. Most assuredly. Is it offensive in some way? He can't see anything terrible about it, but he could be wrong. He’s probably wrong. Fuck. Yousef opens his laptop and pulls up the article he has to read. Maybe it was his voice? Maybe his voice was so squeaky and terrible that Sana finally realised that she’s way too good and cool to hang out with him? That’s probably it. This day has already gone from horrible to amazing back to horrible. And he hasn’t even had his coffee yet. Yousef sighs. Okay, article. Great.
Dyscalculia refers to a persistent difficulty in learning and understanding mathematics.
In the corner of his eye Yousef can see something move. Maybe it’s Sana? He has to check, so he turns his head, as little as possible, straining his eyes to their farthest corners. It’s not Sana. She’s as focused on her work as always.
Dyscalculia refers to a persistent difficulty in learning and understanding mathematics.
Yousef sighs. Around him, people are typing way too loudly for a library. Papers are rustling, highlighters are squeaking. Yousef reaches into his backpack again, pulls out his own earphones and loads Spotify on his phone. The Weeknd or Cezinando? He settles on Cezinando.
Dyscalculia refers to a persistent difficulty in learning and understanding mathematics.
He can't read in English while listening to music in Norwegian. He switches to The Weeknd. And while he’s taking a break anyway, he checks Instagram, and Facebook. Nothing new.
Yousef barely finishes the four page article before it’s time for lunch. He looks over to Sana again. She doesn't look like she’s taken a single break. Two of her five books have migrated from the pile on her right to form a new pile on her left, and a third is open in front of her.
Okay. This part, Yousef has done before. He started going to the library around the middle of the semester, when he realised that he couldn't focus at home. Yes, he realises the irony of that. Sana had already settled in here, and after a few days they had run into each other when they both took a lunch break at the same time. It had been… more or less spontaneous. Yousef may have observed what time Sana usually ate lunch, and he may have seen her leave her desk that day, but seriously, the acceptable time window for lunch isn't that long, so it would have happened sooner or later anyway. And then, after a little while, they had just settled into a routine of getting lunch together most days. Yousef returns to Facebook and opens a chat window. It takes him a while to find the perfect gif to illustrate his message, but finally he finds one of a chipmunk eating carrots. Sana almost always has carrots with her lunch. Ready for lunch? he writes, and then immediately regrets and deletes it. Too presumptuous. Did you bring lunch today? No, that’s exactly what he wrote on Friday, he can’t write the exact same thing twice in a row. Up for lunch? Yeah, that’s okay. He adds a sandwich emoji, and presses send. The writing bubble appears almost immediately, and Yousef can feel his heart thump loudly in his chest.
Sorry, I have plans.
Oh.
Oh. Okay. This is fine. It’s fine! It’s not like Sana owes him anything, they’re just friends, not even friends, really, just lunch buddies. This is fine. Definitely fine.
And awkward. So awkward. How can he stay here, sitting almost back to back with Sana, now that she’s shot him down? She’s probably sensed his desperation. It’s practically seeping out of his pores by now. Should he ignore her? Should he look over at her? He should go eat his lunch. That’s what he’ll do. That’s the natural, casual thing to do. Yes. He’ll do that.
Yousef shuts his laptop and stands up. Should he leave one of his books, or maybe a notebook, to make sure the seat doesn’t get snatched up while he’s away? Then he feels the chair behind him wobble slightly against the back of his knees, and when it disappears completely he feels momentary a surge in his gut as he realises what’s coming. It seems to Yousef like the whole room startles and turns to stare at him. He forgot the heavy bag on the back of his chair. The bang of his books and the chair colliding with the floor echoes against the high ceilings. Great. This is in no way casual. Like he hasn't embarrassed himself enough today already. Yousef doesn't want to look over at Sana, but he can't help himself. When he catches her eye she instantly returns to her book. Great. She doesn't want anyone to know that she knows him. Of course she doesn't.
Any thoughts of returning to the library - to Sana - after lunch have evaporated. Yousef gathers his things, and flees.
*
He ends up at Kaffebrenneriet, where Even’s working a slow shift. The café is empty apart from the two of them and a girl with a laptop, wearing earphones, so Yousef doesn’t feel too bad about taking up Even’s time. He’s keeping him company! It’s called being a good friend. Okay, so it could also be called moping, but whatever. Details. This is a horrible day, even for a Monday. Yousef is allowed to mope. Even brings him a cup of tea and wipes down the tables around Yousef for the third time, so that it at least looks like he’s working. Yousef doesn't want tea. Tea reminds him of Sana. And he’s trying to be mad at Even right now, because Even laughed at him when Yousef told him how he’d been humiliated by his chair, and the tea makes that harder.
“Why don’t you just ask her out?” Even asks, because he is an unfeeling brute with zero empathy for Yousef’s predicament. He can't just ask Sana out ! Not without being absolutely certain that she likes him! What if she says no?! Then he’ll never be able to go to Elias’ place again, both because it’d be humiliating to see Sana, but also because he isn’t sure how Elias would react to finding out that his best friend is in love with his little sister. Yousef wants to tell Even all of this, because then he’d surely understand that this is a fucking tragedy, on par with his beloved Baz Luhrmann movies. Yousef and Sana are possibly meant to be, but the universe keeps throwing obstacles like occupied seats and other lunch plans in their way. The problem is that since Elias can never know that Yousef likes Sana, at least not until Yousef knows that Sana likes him back and possibly not until they're already married, their other friends can't know either. Because Yousef knows their friends. He’s heard how they talk when one of them has a thing for a girl. There is no way they wouldn’t tease him about this, and there is no way they wouldn’t do it in front of Elias. So they must be kept in the dark as well.
“What, like you asked Isak out?” he shoots back instead, because they’ve heard the story of the paper towels and the weed and the fucking swimming pool, and yes, the reactions to that story are high on the list of reasons why Yousef will never tell his friends that he’s in love.
Even grins, because he’s fucking happy and domestic and has forgotten all about the miserable agony of being in love. “It worked though!”
“Yeah, I’m not exactly going to follow… her into the bathroom.”
“But seriously! What’s the worst that could happen? Aren’t there like 200 people in your class? If she says no you never have to talk to her again!”
Oh right. That excuse.
Even’s not even supposed to know that there is a her. This is really all Eskild’s fault. Yousef had assumed that there was some kind of flatmate code, that if you find your flatmate moping over a girl’s Instagram in the middle of the night you don't tell their other friends. This was when Yousef was new to Kollektivet. He knows better now. At least he’d been able to stop Eskild before he’d revealed the identity of the girl. And he’d explicitly sworn Even and Isak to secrecy. But now he’s stuck with this white lie that this is a girl in his class, and yes, he can see how crushing on some random girl in his class doesn't seem as life-altering to Even as being in love with Sana.
Yousef doesn't really know how to answer Even, so he settles for a tortured moan, stifled by burying his face in his arms on the table. It smells somewhat of the sour rag Even used to clean it. Even laughs at him.
*
Yousef doesn’t go back to the library all week. In fact, he barely leaves the apartment at all, until, out of the blue, wherever did this week disappear to?, it’s Friday afternoon and he discovers, as he’s about to make a sandwich, that he’s completely out of butter. And also pasta. Which is weird, because he could have sworn that he had both butter and pasta when he last checked. But the past few months have taught him, time and again, that trying to keep food away from Eskild is near impossible, and Yousef isn’t about to start something over butter and pasta. So he goes to the store.
When Yousef returns and pushes the heavy door to the apartment open he can hear screaming from the tv in the living room. Linn, probably. He tries to guess the show. Paradise hotel, maybe? No, that’s usually in spring, right? Unless it’s a rerun. Or it could be Keeping up with the Kardashians? Or maybe Linn fell asleep on the couch again and left the tv on. Yousef makes his way to the kitchen and plays a game of fridge tetris, wedging a packet of butter between a jar of pesto and a carton of milk. He should ask Linn if she’s eaten anything besides cereal today, if he should make soup for her too. He wonders, again, how she can eat so little real food - it’s all frozen pizzas and snacks. And he tries to imagine, again, how his mother would react if she could see Linn’s diet. She’s probably faint, then berate her for it while cooking a massive dinner. And then she’d nag her about eating properly for the rest of eternity, just like she nags Yousef about eating, despite the fact that he’s basically never skipped a meal in his life. But, Yousef’s mother isn’t here, so he guesses that he’ll just have to step into her shoes when it comes to Linn.
When Yousef enters the living room the first thing he notices is that he was right, that is Keeping up with the Kardashians on the tv. It’s possible, he thinks to himself, that he’s been spending too much time here with Linn. The second thing he notices is that Linn isn’t there. Instead, the couches are occupied by Eskild, Isak, Noora, Eva, Chris and… Sana.
Sana is here. Sana is in his apartment. On his couch. Drinking water. Okay, so technically it’s Eskild’s couch, but still. And now he's staring at her. He knows he is, and he can't seem to stop. Sana stares back, and - Yousef’s heart starts beating like he’s just run a sprint - a tiny smile appears on her face. And then she looks down at her lap. Fuck. She’s probably still thinking about the chair thing. She’s probably silently laughing at him.
“Yousef!” Eskild’s voice tears Yousef’s attention away from Sana. “Hi! You’re home!” He has a glass of wine in his hand, and Yousef sees that the rest of them do as well. Eskild smiles broadly at him. “Join us!”
“Okay…” Sometimes, Yousef finds Eskild’s energy a bit intimidating, like he has to stay on high alert at all times so he’s not swept up into something that he actually doesn’t want to be a part of. Friday and Saturday nights are usually the worst for this, but it has happened on the occasional Tuesday or random Thursday as well. Never on a Sunday, though. “Join you for what?”
“We’re taking Linn out, trying to cheer her up,” Noora explains. “You must have noticed that she’s been a bit down lately?” She looks at him expectantly, critically, like she's reevaluating his suitability as her replacement in Kollektivet. Yousef had, in fact, noticed, but Linn’s been down since he moved in in August so he’d assumed that that was just her default mode. “She broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago.” What? Linn had a boyfriend? Yousef doesn’t particularly want to reveal that he’s just now realizing how little he actually knows about his flatmate, so he just nods.
“We’re going to a gay bar!” Eva cheers, the wine in her glass swooshing precariously. Yousef suspects that it’s not her first. “Come with us!” Yousef can’t believe his luck. He has the opportunity to go out with Sana. Okay, so not in, like, the date meaning of the term, but still! Out! With Sana! Without Elias or the guys! He very nearly pinches himself to see if he’s dreaming, because this entire scenario actually isn’t that different from some of the dreams he’s been having lately, but decides against it. If he pinches himself Sana will definitely think he’s weird.
“Unless you have plans already?” Isak interjects, narrowing his eyes, but with an amused smirk playing on his lips. Sana, who’s been staring at and fiddling with her glas since he entered, twisting it in her hands, suddenly looks up at him again, with the same hint of a smile and slightly raised eyebrows. All the other faces in the room, the noise from the tv, the smell of the wine - it all becomes blurry. Everything except Sana.
“No! No plans!” He does, as a matter of fact, have plans. Plans with Elias and Even and the rest of the boys. Plans that Isak obviously knows about. He catches Isak’s eye and tries to plead with him, telepathically, to not reveal this. Isak smirks at him again. He looks very pleased with himself. Yousef, however, can’t be bothered to be concerned with this - because Sana’s smile just got slightly bigger.
He’s informed of the plan, which consists of luring Linn out of her room with promises of alcohol and dinner, and then later moving on to a club where a friend of Eskild’s is dj-ing. Noora’s planned the food part of the evening, so there’s actual salad involved. Somehow (possibly because he volunteered) Yousef’s been put in charge of that, so now he's trying to focus on cutting the tomatoes rather than himself. It’s doubly challenging, because their knife is old and dull, and Sana’s sitting on the kitchen counter, smiling at Eva, Chris and Eskild, who are trying to get Linn excited by miming to Britney. Yousef has to admit that they’re pretty funny.
It’s interesting to see Sana with her friends, rather than with Elias and his friends. She seems calmer here. Relaxed. With Elias it often seems like she feels that she has to prove herself, and to be fair, Elias loves riling Sana up. Here, she’s laughing, miming along to Britney, telling stories about their other friends (apparently someone called Julian Dahl hooked up with someone called Sara, and this is a big deal? Yousef has no idea who any of these people are, so the details are kind of fuzzy for him). And when he glances over at her, he keeps catching her just looking away.
“Noora? Is this vinaigrette like you want it?” Yousef looks over at Noora by the stove. She’s making a very strange face at Sana, raising her eyebrows and smirking and tilting her head. When she sees him looking she quickly composes herself, but the smirk remains.
“Hm? Oh, I have… I’m chewing gum, I can’t taste it right now… Sana! Why don't you taste it?”
Sana cocks an eyebrow at her, but scoots closer to Yousef. The only thing separating them right now is a bowl of salad and a cutting board. Sana is so close that Yousef can physically feel her presence, even if they’re not touching. He tries to breath normally, but the sound of his breathing is suddenly very loud, echoing in his head. If Yousef was daring enough he could touch Sana right now. He wouldn’t even have to reach. He wills himself to look at her face, and she meets his eyes, smiling.
“Do you want me to taste?” she asks.
What Yousef wants is to dip the spoon he’s holding in the dressing and bring it up to Sana’s perfect mouth himself. He wants to watch her lick the dressing off it, wants to wipe a stray drop of oil from her chin with his thumb.
What he does is dip it and hand it to her, carefully holding a hand underneath so that she doesn't get oil on her white pants. Keeps his distance. But when Sana takes the spoon her finger touches his thumb, and it's possibly the most intense touch Yousef has experienced. He glances upward, because with Sana sitting on the counter he has to look up to meet her eyes, and she locks his gaze with her own and keeps it locked, bolted with iron, as she puts the spoon between her lips. Yousef has to consciously move his arm and pull his hand through his hair to break away. Then Sana smiles at him, and her dimples are deep as the Mariana Trench.
“This is really good. Where did you learn to cook?” She’s teasing him, and Yousef’s never been happier to be teased. This, he can handle. This is familiar. This, they’ve done since Sana was just Elias’ little sister, instead of this indefinable, incomprehensible presence in his life .
“This isn't cooking,” he replies. “But then again, you’ve actually burnt eggs so I guess you wouldn’t know the difference.”
She raises her eyebrows at him. “Seriously? You’re going to bring that up? I was thirteen!”
“Sana, you boiled eggs for forty minutes!”
“Okay, I guess I’ll just have you cook for me then.” She smirks, and Yousef nearly swallows his tongue. He wants to tell her that yes, please, he’ll gladly cook for her every day for the rest of their lives it’d be a fucking privilege - but he manages to play it fairly cool and just smirks back at her. Well played, he congratulates himself. That was, at the very least, not a total disaster. It might even qualify as flirting.
*
Watching Sana dance is a revelation. Yousef realises that he never has, before. It’s not that they haven’t partied together before - but it’s always been with Elias and the guys, and sometimes with Isak’s friends as well, and, well, it’s never been like this. He’s used to seeing Sana bop around with her friends a bit, make some silly moves and funny faces before going off to the side. This is not that. Yousef has never seen Sana dance like this. It’s like she’s forgotten that she is at a club, that there are other people around her. Her eyes are almost closed, her smile is glorious but secretive, like she’s smiling entirely for herself, entirely because she’s happy. No part of this, of her, is a performance, a display. No part of this is for anyone else. The rest of their groups are doing some kind of ridiculous interpretative moves, miming the lyrics to the song. Sana is just swaying to the beat, moving like her heartbeat has been replaced by the rhythm of the music, like she has the melody pulsing through her veins. They’re on opposite ends of a circle formed by their friends, and Yousef’s eyes are glued to Sana. He barely registers the music, moving instead to the beat of her, shifting his weight as she shifts hers, moving his hands as she moves her hands.
Sana’s eyes open and find his. She smiles, and it’s a new smile. A smile he hasn’t seen before. Soft. Private. This is his new favorite smile. He can only smile back, hoping that his smile is braver than his brain will ever be and tells Sana everything he’s feeling - not just in his heart, but in his gut, his chest, his arms, in every nerve ending on his entire body.
Eva pulls Eskild into the middle of the circle for some kind of impromptu dance battle, and as he grabs her and lifts her over his shoulder the dance floor shifts and Yousef finds himself standing right in front of Sana. He recognizes the feeling from the living room - the rest of the world fades away and they are the only two people who exist.
He wants to kiss her. He wants to touch her, stroke her cheek, feel her lean her face into his hand. But he can't move. He can only smile down at her, take in every centimeter of her face, try to memorize every last detail, every eyelash, every tiny spot, the exact bend of her nose - because who knows when he’ll have the opportunity to look at her like this again? And Sana looks up at him and smiles back.
*
Later, when he lies in bed and replays the evening in his mind, resting on Sana’s dimples, and laugh, and dancing, like they are gifs on an eternal loop, Yousef has no clue if it was his idea or Sana’s that they leave the club and walk home together. He supposes it doesn't matter, but he wishes he’d remember anyway. He wants to remember everything. They walk side by side under the Christmas lights, past shop windows dressed in red and glitter, posters of half naked models pushing lingerie as the perfect gift. Yousef is very aware of his hands. What does he usually do with his hands when he walks? He keeps alternating between stuffing them in his pockets and pulling them out again. Neither way feels natural.
When they’ve walked in silence for a while, Sana speaks.
“You haven’t been at the library this week?”
She noticed. She noticed! Probably just because she had to eat alone, but still. Yousef pulls his hand through his hair, buying time. He wishes he could say something that Sana would interpret as “no, because I’m hopelessly in love with you and can barely manage to stand and sit and walk in your presence, let alone learn things” if by some miracle she feels something for him too, but that would seem perfectly innocent of she doesn't. He can't think of anything.
“No, you know… it’s just so crowded right now… and I have that exam soon…”
Pathetic. Seriously pathetic.
“Right.”
They walk in silence again. Yousef can feel the slush seep through his sneakers. He did not dress warmly enough for this. They had taken cabs to the club, and this? Nightly, snowy walks with Sana? It’s been a daydream of his for so long that he’d ruled out it coming true. (Okay, so it’s just one walk, so far, and it’s more wet than snowy, but it's close enough.)
“How did you know that you wanted to study special education?” She asks suddenly, fixing her gaze on him, but it's a soft gaze, curious. There’s no judgement there, like Yousef always fears there will be, whenever he tells people his plans for the future. That he’s not going to be a doctor, or a dentist, or an engineer. Not even a real teacher. But when Sana asks, it’s like she's actually, genuinely, interested in his answer. Yousef believes her. He knows Sana well enough (has observed her with distant relatives enough) to know that she doesn't do small talk. So he takes the time to consider her question before he responds.
“You know how I worked at a daycare center?” he begins, slowly, not entirely sure how he’s going to phrase this. He feels a bit out of his depth here. Sana always seems so sure of herself, her opinions, her values. He's heard her school the guys on feminism and Islam and politics many times - at one point, about a month before the last parliamentary election, she and Adam almost stopped talking altogether because they supported different parties - and Sana couldn’t even vote yet. And she seems to be able to put these thoughts into words like they spring into her mind fully formed and formulated, like little sermons, expertly delivered. Yousef’s mind doesn't work like that. It is a jumble of ideas and instinct, gut feelings of what is right and what’s not, and it is rare that he can put into words why .
“There was a little girl there…” he tries. Sana nods, so he continues. “Ida. She… she had a hard time connecting with the other kids, like, she’d disrupt their games when she was trying to join in, and she could never sit still during the music hour, or at lunch, and stuff. But we’d read together, and then she’d finally calm down.” He smiles at the memory. There’d been many parts of working at the daycare that Yousef loved - chasing the kids around the playground, helping them with arts and crafts, listening to them try to make sense of the world around them - but his favorite moments were probably of sitting with Ida when the other kids were napping, because she could never quiet down and sleep, and reading book after book. “She never wanted to read stories, either, just books on space, and dinosaurs, and stuff like that. Once, we even started to read the encyclopedia. But we only got to B before nap time was over.” Sana laughs at that, and Yousef thinks that maybe she was like that, once, reading picture books about the human body rather than princesses and talking animals. “And I just… I just want to do something that helps people you know? And this is a way that I can do that.” There’s more to it then that, really - the sense of desperation when he had worked almost two years after graduating and still didn't know what he really wanted out of his life, the fact that they were permanently short staffed at the daycare, less than perfect grades, his supportive but stressed out aunt, a sense of responsibility towards the kids in that particular neighborhood who didn't always have the best adult role models. But in the end, he thinks, it comes down to Ida, and to the feeling of accomplishment he had gotten when the rest of the staff trusted him, the youngest, the least experienced, with getting through to her.
Sana nods, slowly, like she’s considering this, but doesn't answer him. They keep walking. Yousef is surprised to find that the silence isn’t awkward at all - it feels natural, comfortable. He glances at her again, and meets her eyes. They both smile, and neither one looks away. He wishes that he could stay forever.
When they reach Sana’s house they find themselves lingering. Yousef wishes he could say something clever, but he just smiles stupidly. It’s started snowing again, and the snowflakes are dotting Sana’s hijab, resting for a moment before they melt into the fabric. She smiles back, eyes crinkling. Sana has the best cheeks Yousef has ever seen. He never knew cheeks could be so important to him.
When, at last, Sana moves to go inside, she pauses in the doorway and turns back towards Yousef.
“See you at the library on Monday.”