Page 19

Once Roland is safely zipped into his backpack house along with Agnes and Albert, Charlene, who looks like she was just reunited with her lost child, tells us she needs to get the mice home.

“No, stay,” I urge her. Despite this rodent fixation, a part of me is still kind of hoping Charlene and Miles could have something. Miles likes animals—or at least I think he does. He didn’t seem to have an issue with Zuri, even when she hissed at him.

Charlene shakes her head vigorously. “You don’t understand the trauma these babies have already gone through.

” She leans in to speak closer to us, presumably so the mice won’t hear.

“They came from the psychology department.” She shudders.

“I don’t know what studies they were in, but I know they have lasting damage.

I need to get them back to their safe space.

” She puts her backpack on and starts climbing up the hill toward the streetcar stop.

From the mesh screen on the front of the bag, I can see Agnes, Albert, and Roland looking at us. I wave goodbye to the mice.

“Your friend is a little strange,” someone with a faint European accent says. It’s one of the guys Roland stole the cheddar from. The people who were sitting between us and them seem to have left. Probably not mice fans either.

“Oh, she’s not really a friend,” I say. “We work near each other. I didn’t know she’d be bringing mice.”

The second guy, the smaller of the two, laughs. He’s really cute with curly black hair. “Honestly, it’s not that weird for Toronto.” This guy’s accent is pure Toronto local. “Remember, this is the city that birthed the Ikea Monkey.”

I continue to chat with the two guys for a bit.

The European one, David, is new to town—he’s from Denmark and moved to Toronto for a job.

The other one, Ali, has lived here his whole life and is an artist who owns a custom T-shirt business.

They’re on their second date and look so happy. We exchange Instagram handles.

When I tell the guys to enjoy the sunset and turn back to Miles, I fully expect him to say we may as well leave too. But he doesn’t. He looks at me curiously. The sky is doing that thing where it brightens a bit before the sunset, and the slightest pinky-orange color is high in the air.

“How do you do that?” Miles asks.

“Do what?”

“Make everyone your best friend after minutes of conversation.”

“I’m a people person. But”—I smile—“I didn’t make you my best friend when we met.”

He blinks. “Yeah, no one would ever call me a people person.”

“I think you are. You just need to warm up to people a bit.”

We’re both silent for a while. Maybe I’m not always a people person because I have no idea what to say to Miles about Charlene.

“So… Charlene seems… nice,” I finally say. “Really smart, right?”

He raises a brow. “Um, I don’t think bringing mice to a park is a very smart thing to do. What if someone brought a snake?”

“Okay, so Charlene has a small quirk, but you have to admit, I did better with her than Abbey. You two seemed to be getting along great until she opened her backpack. I now know your type. Next time I’ll do even better.”

He chuckles, stretching his legs in front of him. “I think the rodent obsession is more than a small quirk. And I don’t think there was much of a spark anyway. Before Roland’s escape, all she talked about was school. And she spends all her free time in the animal labs.”

“So, you’d prefer someone more well-rounded?”

He laughs at that. “You’re zero for two, Sana. I thought you were an excellent matchmaker.”

“I am an excellent matchmaker… I just don’t know you that well yet.

” I’m still positive I can find someone Miles will fall headfirst for and who will make him rethink his stance on love and romance.

I need to find someone smart and who has various healthy interests.

I reach into the container and take a cube of cheese.

“Well, I’m an open book,” he says. “Hey, that’s a really cool view.” I wonder if he’s been here before. He’s focused on the cityscape in front of him.

I feel like I could look at Miles’s face forever when he’s this deep in thought. There’s a lot of intensity in Miles’s eyes, but his jaw softens. Like his tension fades when he’s looking at something beautiful, like the sunset.

But lately he hasn’t been nearly as tense as when we first met. He laughs a lot now. He looks so… relaxed on this hill that I wonder why I ever thought he was an uptight grump.

“Where’s Cara?” I ask, mostly so I’ll stop staring at Miles’s face. I pick up my phone and text her. She responds right away.

Cara: Not going to make it. We’re at Hannah’s friend’s volleyball game. Hope Miles and Charlene are cozying up together! If it’s going well, you should leave the lovebirds alone too.

I sigh. I don’t even know if I should answer that. “Cara’s not coming,” I say.

Miles lifts an eyebrow at me. I understand his way of communicating now—that means, Oh really?

I text a quick, Okay see you tomorrow to Cara, then toss my phone onto the tarp. “Question,” I ask Miles. “What do you do when you suspect your friend is walking into a train wreck but you know she won’t hear it?”

He exhales long. Sounds like Miles has experience with this exact problem. “You don’t like Hannah for Cara?”

“I barely know Hannah. But… I get the distinct impression that Cara is more invested in making Hannah happy than the other way around.” I sigh, wrapping my arms around my knees.

“I don’t see Hannah… cherishing Cara the way she deserves.

And Hannah doesn’t seem to want to get to know Cara’s friends, which, I guess is her prerogative.

” I think about the lighter colors Cara has been wearing when she’s with Hannah.

The outfits that look nothing like her usual style.

“But what do I know about healthy relationships? None of my past relationships have worked out. Maybe completely losing yourself is what’s supposed to happen. ”

“I got the impression last week that Hannah didn’t want to be there with us. And no, you’re not supposed to lose yourself completely in a relationship. Trust me.”

I glance at him. It almost sounds like Miles is going to open up to me there, but he doesn’t. He takes a long sip from his water bottle, then looks back at the view.

“Well, it looks like tonight’s festival meeting is a bust just like your date,” I say. “If you want to leave, I get it.”

He shakes his head. “I’m staying for the sunset. It was on a list of the top ten cheap things to do in the city. I paid a dollar twenty-five for this tarp, and I want to get my money’s worth.”

“Okay, then.” I smile and put the snacks between us. “Hope there are no more rescued lab mice with psychological trauma to steal our cheese.”

He laughs again and pops a cube of cheese into his mouth. I can’t believe how many times Miles has laughed tonight. He’s got such a cute laugh. Who would have thought that the grumpy Pink Chai Guy I first met at the BOA meeting would be such an easy laugher?

“So… what’s your origin story?” I ask.

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what’s your cultural and ethnic background?

I know it’s an awkward question because usually when people ask me that, they mean ‘why aren’t you white?

’ But we’re both Brown, and I already told you that my mom’s family is South Asian from East Africa.

My dad’s the same, except he was actually born in Uganda. ”

“My mom’s Indo-East African too,” he says.

“Her family is also from Tanzania. Dad’s family came from India—he was eleven when he left Mumbai.

Oh wow… that’s amazing.” He gestures to the sky.

It’s turning darker shades of pink and orange with grayish-blue clouds near the horizon.

The buildings of the downtown skyline are glowing as they reflect the light of the low sun.

“Seeing the city like this reminds me how lucky I am that I get to live here,” I say, leaning back on my hands to tip my head up to the sky. “Did your parents meet in Canada?”

“No.” He sighs. My dad’s family lives in Florida, and they met there.” He sounds a little dejected, so I look at him. He’s looking at the sky, but his jaw is tense.

“Mine met in the prayer hall here in Toronto,” I say. “We’re Ismaili Muslim.”

He turns to me, a small smile on his face. “I thought so—my mom’s Ismaili. I’ve heard the name Merali before.”

“Seriously?” I ask, smiling. I’m surprised. It’s a small sect of Islam, and the name Miles isn’t common in the community. Neither is Desai, actually. But I suppose he got his surname from his father.

He nods, still smiling. “My mom’s whole family is Ismaili, and I was raised in the religion too. My dad’s Hindu.” He leans back on his hands like me and stares in front of him.

The Ismaili community is pretty close-knit in Toronto, so I ask him some questions to see if we know any of the same people or are even (god help me) related, but we can’t find any connections.

He grew up in the suburbs, while I’ve always lived in the city.

We talk a bit about growing up in the religion and about how both our mothers seemed to grow less devout as they got older.

He asks me if I consider myself religious.

I shrug. “That’s a tough question. I loved growing up in a tight group, and it’s nice to have…

answers for questions about the universe.

But I was nine when my parents divorced, and Mom was judged pretty harshly by the community and Dad’s family, so the two of us kind of pulled back from the religion. ”

“Why was your mom judged?”

“Oh, you know. Gender double standards. Dad was the upstanding member of the community, and Mom’s always been…” I sit up straight. I don’t want to say “a free spirit,” because whenever someone calls Mom that, they mean it as an insult.

“What?”