So I let it go.
After a week, I stopped asking.
I just wanted to enjoy his company.
There was another breakdancing battle happening that next weekend, not long after Ocean and I first started, officially, spending time together, and I was excited. I wanted him to come with me, to see what it was like to attend one of these things in person, and, bonus: it was an outing that’d already been parent-approved, which would make any additional lies to my mom and dad much easier to believe. I had absolutely no interest in telling my parents the truth about Ocean, as I could imagine literally no scenario in which they would happily send me off into the night with a boy who wanted to kiss me, and I was very okay lying about it. My parents weren’t the type to care about Ocean’s race or religion; I already knew this about them. No, they would’ve disapproved no matter who he was. They just never wanted to believe that I was a normal teenager who liked boys, period. So it was kind of a relief, actually, not to tell them anything. This whole thing was dramatic enough without my involving my parents and their inevitable hyperventilations.
Ultimately, I thought I’d come up with a pretty solid plan; it would be a fun way to spend a Saturday night. Plus, Ocean could officially meet Navid and the other guys, and I could show him around this world I loved. But when I pitched it to Ocean, he sounded surprised. And then, polite.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Sure.”
Something was wrong.
“You don’t like this plan,” I said. “You think this is a bad plan.” We were on the phone. It was late, really late, and I was whispering under my covers again.
“No, no,” he said, and laughed. “It’s a great plan. I’d love to see one of these battles—they sound so cool—it’s just—” He hesitated. Laughed again. Finally, I heard him sigh.
“What?” I said.
“I kind of wanted to be alone with you.”
“Oh,” I said. My heart picked up.
“And you’re inviting me to go out with you and, um, four other guys.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Which, I mean, is totally fine, if that’s what you want to do, but, I just—”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m so dumb.”
“What? You’re not dumb. Don’t say that,” he said. “You’re not dumb. I’m just selfish. I was looking forward to having you all to myself.”
A pleasant warmth filled my head. Made me smile.
“Can we do both?” he said. “Can we go to the event and then, I don’t know, do something afterward, just you and me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”
The event was late, long after sunset, so Navid and I had already broken our fasts and had dinner before we headed out. I drove over with Navid, and when we got there, Carlos, Jacobi, and Bijan found us in the parking lot. Ocean showed up soon after, but we had to find each other inside with the help of several text messages.
The place was packed.
I’d been to a few more battles since the first one I’d attended—we’d been going almost every weekend—and this one was, by far, the biggest. The crews here, tonight, were better; the stakes were higher. I looked around the room and realized my parents must not have known what kind of event they’d been approving all this time; I couldn’t imagine them walking through here now and giving it the thumbs-up.
This wasn’t really a scene for high school kids.
Nearly everyone around me looked like they were in college—or at the very least, nearly there—but even though they looked like kind of a rough crowd, I knew they weren’t. There were looks you’d expect—piercings, tattoos, infinite hoodies and sweatpants—but then, it wasn’t always obvious who was secretly the best. People would surprise you. I knew, for example, that the Korean dude in the far corner who rarely spoke and always showed up to these things in the same unassuming white shirt, cargo pants, and wire-framed glasses, would later strip down to a pair of metallic gym shorts and do air flares like nobody’s business. There was always time, after the battle ended but while the music was still going strong, when people from the crowd would form cyphers—impromptu breaking circles—and blow your mind. There was nothing official about it. It was all adrenaline.
I loved it.
Ocean was taking in the room, his eyes wide. The crews were getting ready, the judges were taking their seats, and the DJ was hyping up the crowd, the bass so loud it made the walls vibrate. We had to shout to hear each other. “This,” he said, “is what you do on the weekends?”
I laughed. “This, and homework.”
The room was so tightly packed that Ocean and I were already pretty close to each other. He’d been standing behind me, because he didn’t want to block my view, and it didn’t take much for him to close the remaining inch of space between us. I felt his hands at my waist and I took a sudden breath; he tugged me backward, gently, pulling me close. It was a subtle move; I’m not sure anyone else even noticed it. The crowd was so loud and wild I could only barely make out Navid’s head a couple of feet away. But I spent the rest of the night with my consciousness in two places at once.
The event was amazing. I always found these battles exhilarating. I loved watching people do things they were really good at, and the crews who came out like this were always at the top of their game.
But it wasn’t the same for me this time. I was only half there.
The other half of me was focused, in every moment, on the warm, strong body pressed against me. It didn’t seem possible that something so simple could’ve had such a profound effect on my cardiovascular system, but my heart never slowed its pace. I never relaxed, not really. I didn’t know how. I’d never spent an hour standing this close to anyone. My nerves felt frayed, and it was all somehow more intense because we didn’t really speak. I didn’t know how to acknowledge, out loud, that this was insane, that it was crazy that any person could make another person feel so much with so little effort. But I knew Ocean and I were thinking the same thing. I could feel it in the subtle shifts of his body. I heard it in his sudden, slow inhalations. In the tightness in his breath when he leaned in and whispered, “Where the hell did you come from?”
I turned my head, just a little, just so I could see his face, and I whispered back, “I thought I told you I moved here from California.”
Ocean laughed and pulled me, somehow, impossibly closer, wrapping both his arms fully around my waist, and then he shook his head and said, even as he was smiling, “That wasn’t funny. That was a terrible joke.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said, and laughed. “You just make me so nervous.”
“I do?”
I nodded.
I felt him inhale, his chest rising with the movement. He said nothing, but I heard the slight shake in his breath as he blew it out.
24
Twenty-Four
Navid really came through for me that night.
He bought me an extra hour after the crowds cleared out so that I could go off on my own, somewhere, with Ocean.
“One hour, that’s it,” he said. “That’s all I can swing. It’s already late and if I get you home any later than eleven, Ma will kill me. Okay?”
I just smiled at him.
“Uh-uh. No,” he said, and shook his head. “No smiling. I will be back here in exactly one hour, and no smiling. I want your happiness level to be, like, medium, when I come back here. If you have too much fun I’ll end up having to kick someone’s ass.” He looked at Ocean. “Listen,” he said, “you seem like a nice guy, but I just want to be clear: if you hurt her, I will fucking murder you. Okay?”
“Navid—”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Ocean laughed. “It’s fine. I get it.”
Navid studied him. “Good man.”
“Bye,” I said.
Navid raised an eyebrow at me. Finally, he left.
Ocean and I were suddenly alone in the parking lot, and though the moon was a mere crescent in the sky, it was beautiful and bright. The air smelled fresh and icy and like a particular type of vegetation I’d never learned the name of, but the scent of which seemed to come alive only in the late evenings.