Read Online I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif - Free Book Online

said, suddenly. She felt Leyla watching her, trying to catch hold of her eyes to read what lay in them, but Tala remained intent on looking at the sky where thunder now lay crouched and grumbling. The smell of the coming storm hung in the air, metallic, strange.
    ‘Come, we should go,’ Tala said. ‘It’s going to rain.’
     

Chapter Five
    Leyla spent the drive home from the park veering between elation and uncertainty and it was the elation that was causing the uncertainty. She had just had lunch and a walk in the park with a friend. She should have been thinking of something else entirely by now, or at best reliving a couple of moments, not thinking over every nuance of every word and look that she had exchanged with Tala. In fact, she should be thinking of someone else entirely. Ideally Ali, or someone like him. But it was not Ali who was captivating her and this fact was one she had only just acknowledged openly to herself as she turned into her driveway and got out of the car. She had not had time to begin to consider the implications of the fact that she found the cadences of Tala’s accent beautiful. Or that she was constantly surprised by the incisive articulation of the thoughts behind those brown eyes. That every time they exchanged a glance of communication her stomach fluttered. Or that, without even meaning to, she had already begun to lie to her parents in order to see Tala. There was a familiar pattern here, this much Leyla was forced to admit. She had been the victim of a series of silent yearn-ings throughout her late teens and early twenties. Some of these had lasted a few days; the majority had lasted a period of months and a couple for even longer. What they all had in common was that the attraction was usually hidden, forever unspoken, and always unrequited. Although she had tried to think up other reasons why this had always been the case (for example, that the object of her desire was often married), she had now and then admitted the truth to herself, usually in the depths of the long Surrey night, under cover of the forgiving darkness – and the truth was that every one of these attractions had been to other women.
    The fact that most of these affairs remained locked away in her own mind, occasionally struck her as a little feeble, but she found it easier to keep it all inside her than to try and disseminate it to those around her. And grasping this particular reality would be like taking hold of a cobra by its grinning face. The consequences would be so far reaching; the debris after the explosion would splinter into every part of her life and hurt everyone she knew. Not that this potential meltdown was a reason to lie to herself, she knew, but up until now, it had happened that all the women she had liked in that way were unavailable, uninterested or entirely unconscious of the situation and this had largely removed from Leyla’s shoulders the burden of deciding what to do in the event of an actual relationship. She had no idea how one met women that might be open to such a union without responding to internet postings, or sifting all one’s acquain-tances according to various unreliable stereotypes. And if she did that, it seemed too ridiculous that Ann Framer, her friend in the last year of school, should potentially be classified in the wrong box because she was good at tennis and liked cats. What she wanted, what she one day hoped for, was a simple, mutual attraction. A moment of understanding. An overwhelming impulse that revealed the hidden passion to be right and true.
    ‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
    Leyla jumped, then sighed, relieved to be greeted by her sister, despite the fact that Yasmin seemed highly irritated.
    ‘What’s the bad news?’
    ‘Ali – who you were supposedly out with today – called to ask if you wanted to go over and watch the rugby.’
    Leyla closed her eyes. ‘Oh, no. Tell me you answered the phone?’
    ‘Well, see,’ said Yasmin.