Logan
3 months later
"Hey, you're not coming to grandpa's place?" Noah barges into my bedroom.
One of the downsides of living in New York was seeing too much of my dad's family. That includes Family reunions every Sunday.
Thankfully, Em and I exceptionally scheduled our call at one pm my time, which is eight pm her time. In other words, I am allowed to skip this family reunion since my mom considers talking on the phone with Em a legit excuse. Unlike having a midterm or a severe cold.
Em and I have gotten closer the past couple of months. What started with weekly calls turned into daily ones which then turned into bi-daily ones.
We're still friends.
Just, you know, friends who have hour-long conversations and talk about every single detail of their lives, and sometimes even fall asleep on the phone. But just friends, of course.
I shake my head at Noah. "Nope, I need to call Em at one."
Noah smirks. "You're so whipped. When are you going to tell her that you're like, head over heels for her?"
I roll my eyes at him. "The second you tell Amy that you've been head over heels for her for like, the past ten years."
That earns me a glare but thankfully makes him leave without giving me more shit.
Yes, I like Em. Okay? I do, I might even... I might even be in love with her. But I know we can't have a relationship when I'm oceans away. So, I don't want to lose her. I'd rather have her as a friend than not have her at all in my life.
Speaking of...
My phone's screen lights up with a text. Em.
My heart speeds for a second.
It's a picture of her with a bunch of younger girls hiking. She's taking them hiking at the Qurna Sawdaa mountain; the one she took me to.
She's wearing large sunglasses or mountain glasses, whatever you call them, so it's difficult to see her eyes. Her beautiful smile makes my stomach tighten. I can't help but send back a bunch of emojis that include hearts in every color.
God, Noah is right. I am whipped.
I look at the clock and groan when I notice that it's still ten in the morning. Three more hours to go...
I could go to the gym. Or do my laundry. Or... I could cook something and then send a picture to Em.
Okay, we're going with option three.
I walk to the kitchen and try to ignore Noah who is making coffee for the third time today. This guy has severe caffeine addiction issues, I swear.
I open the fridge, only to be met by empty shelves. "Why do we not have any food in the fridge?"
"Because we always order and never cook?"
I pause to think about it for a second. Yes, I have been eating microwaved pizza for the past week but do I really never cook? I don't remember that. At all.
"Alright, well, I'm ordering groceries. What do you want?" I say as I take out my phone.
Noah frowns. "Did you fall on your head or something?"
"Why? Because I decided to cook?"
"Yes."
I glare at him. "No. I'm just sick of heating frozen pizza. I'm going to make some lasagna."
Noah's smirk turns into a grin. "Is this about your girlfriend? Are you, like, trying to impress her or something?"
"She's not my girlfriend and I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm just trying to eat healthy."
"And lasagna is the answer. Of course."
I shake my head at him, deciding to disengage from this conversation and turning my attention to Google.
Lasagna Recipe.
The first option is a recipe that takes two hours. Fuck, I'm not standing two hours in the kitchen. No way.
The second one is an hour and a half. That's also way too long.
The third looks ugly. Extremely ugly. No chance I'm eating something that looks like this.
The fourth looks like it's a painting. AKA I could never make it seem this delicious.
Ugh.
I retype my Google search.
"Lasagna recipe Fast and Easy Under thirty minutes"
Your search - "Lasagna recipe Fast and Easy Under thirty minutes" - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure that all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
I groan in frustration which makes Noah laugh.
"Just make a shrimp stir. It's the easiest thing you can get away with."
So I end up having to go to the grocery store considering we have nothing in the fridge and my UberEats is suspended again because Mar keeps cancelling orders from my account. She has a thing whereby she never goes through with a food delivery.
I spend forty-five minutes in traffic alone. So yeah, by the time I get home, I'm already on edge.
Strangely, cooking actually takes my mind off things for a while. Things that I've been thinking about for a while, such as my useless degree or my life here in NYC. No matter how much I try, it doesn't fit me.
I wish I could go back to Lebanon. I miss those days so much. I find myself remembering the small things all the time, like our morning rides to work, filled with metal music that gave me a headache for the rest of the day. I reminisce about our dinners, hikes, deep conversations and silly fights.
I just miss being there.
Before my mind spirals any longer, the phone rings. Finally, it's Em.
"Hi!" I waive the camera. She is breath-taking as usual. Her hair is up in a pony tail. Her sweet brown eyes smile at me, and I'm a goner.
"Hey, you. What happened to your hair?"
I self-consciously run my fingers through my hair, letting out a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, I was cooking."
Her jaw drops. "You. In the kitchen."
"Yup."
She smirks, nodding her head at me with approval. "I'm impressed, Emerson. Six months ago you couldn't even make scrambled eggs."
"Well, for your information, I made quite the shrimp stir."
"Oh, that doesn't count. That's the easier than scrambled eggs."
I gasp. "It is not! Do you know how many tears I've shed, peeling those onions over there?"
She laughs, making my stomach flutter. "Come on, all you had to do was cut some veggies and throw them in a pan with seasoned shrimps."
I sigh in exasperation. "Fine, you win. It was not perhaps the most difficult dish. It was still delicious though."
She smiles. "I'm glad. I actually had some fish too for dinner. Adam and I tried to make sushi."
"No way! Now that, I could never do. Was it any good?"
"Nah, we gave up and just ended up eating the salmon and the crab."
I laughed, picturing the entire scene in my head. "Fun. How was your hike with the girls? Did anyone pee themselves or die?"
Her lips turn upwards. God, I love making her smile. "Thankfully, no. It was very smooth, not a lot of whining. But it did take two extra hours for us to finish since the pace was extremely slow. What about you? How was yesterday?"
I shrug. "Believe it or not, I didn't go to that party because I ended up falling asleep at around nine."
Her jaw drops. "No way."
I groan in frustration. "I know. Don't even ask me how. That assignment literally had me beat by the time I finished it. I fell asleep on the sofa, until Noah woke me up."
"What did you end up writing about?"
That's one of the things I love the most about my conversations with her. She cares. She asks me about the most mundane things. Like what I wrote about in my Ethics assignment and actually listens as I ramble and gives me her opinion.
We can talk about everything and anything and it never gets boring. So I tell her that I ended up talking about how self-driving cars should not be causing any ethical dilemmas because we can, in fact, design our roads in a way that will reduce potential disasters.
We spend the next two hours talking. And as she falls asleep, I can't wipe the smile off of my face for the rest of the day.
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a/n 1 chapter left + epilogue!!!!!