An emotion of great delight

“What’s this, Shadi?” He closed the remaining distance between us and suddenly he was right in front of me, suddenly I couldn’t think straight.
My heart seemed to be screaming, pounding fists against my chest. I wanted desperately to touch him, to tell him the truth, to admit that I fell asleep most nights thinking about him, that I found his face in nearly all my favorite memories.
But I didn’t.
Couldn’t.

My eyes were filling with tears. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Please. Please. I can’t do this.”
He was silent for so long it almost scared me. I watched him swallow. I saw him struggle to collect himself, his thoughts—and then, quietly—
“You can’t do what?”

“Isn’t that strange?” he said. I saw the tremble in his hands before he pushed them through his hair. “I thought this sort of thing was supposed to make people happy.”
Something unlocked my tongue then. Unlocked my bones.
“What sort of thing?”
He turned to face me, his arms dropping to his sides. “You know, I don’t even think I know exactly when I fell in love with you. It was years ago.”

“(…) I keep waiting for this feeling to go away, but it’s just getting worse. Sometimes I feel like it’s actually killing me.”
He laughed. I couldn’t breathe.

Three times he opened his mouth to speak, and each time he came up short. Finally, he said:
“Please. Say something.”
I was staring at him. I couldn’t stop staring at him. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I was horrified to hear my voice shake when I said, “Because I’m scared.”
He took a step closer. “Why are you scared?”
I whispered his name and it was practically a plea, a bid for mercy.

My mind wasn’t entirely certain what was happening, but my body—my faint, feverish body—had no doubt. Even my skin seemed to know. Every inch of me was taut with fear, with feeling. I had the strangest desire to find a shovel, to bury myself under the weight of it all.

We found a patch of shade under a tree, stood in it. I looked at leaves, branches. Wondered how fast a heart could beat before it broke.
Ali was staring at a stop sign when he said, “Shadi, I can’t do this anymore.”
Impossibly, my heart found a way to beat faster.
“But we’re not doing anything,” I said.
He met my eyes. “I know.”

It was one of those rare golden hours, full of promise.

I quickly lost track of time. We were sitting on a bench outside the building, talking about all manner of nothing. At one point I laughed so hard at something he said I nearly choked to death on Nerds, after which I tried harder to be serious, an effort that only made me nervous—and that forced into stark relief the unnamed body of truth that sat between us.

Something had changed between us that morning, and I still didn’t know what it was, had not yet figured out how to define it. But I could tell, just by looking into her eyes, that my mother had unclenched an iota. She seemed relieved—relieved, perhaps, to no longer be living with such a crushing secret