If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan Read Free Book Online Page B

everything and be happy about all the attention she is getting. She’s getting what she wants, isn’t she? The kept life, a doctor husband who is good-looking. And her parents will finally love her the way she wants to be loved. She will have a wonderful life.
    “Can you go talk to her, Sahar?” Mrs. Mehdi pleads. “She’s been in such a bad mood lately.” I nod and try my best to take slow steps to Nasrin’s room instead of sprinting like an Olympian. Loud music pours from her room; it’s one of our standard methods for masking our conversations—and other activities.
    I knock on Nasrin’s door and she opens it. She grabs my arm and pulls me in, then slams the door shut and throws me against it, locking it from the inside. She crashes her lips urgently to mine. This is the most passionate I have ever seen her. My eyes open in shock as I take her in. Her teeth are bared and her tongue begs my mouth for entrance. I close my eyes and allow her in. Her hands are grabbing my neck, and I don’t know if she might choke me. I don’t care. If there’s a way to die, this should be it. When I hear her moan I push at her shoulders. She stops for breath, panting and looking at me with predatory eyes.
    “Where the hell have you been?” She lunges forward, merging our mouths together in such a feral, animalistic way that I push her shoulders more forcefully.
    “Stop! Stop it,” I whisper. She looks at me with confusion and annoyance, a wild tiger hunting the next meal, smelling blood in the air. “What about him?” I can’t say his name. I’m amazed I’m even thinking of him at all, but she is marrying him. We both breathe heavily, and she shrugs.
    “What about him?” Nasrin says it with such indifference, I almost think she doesn’t know whom I am referring to. I gape at her and she grunts in frustration.
    “You’re getting married! Or have you forgotten?”
    “Oh, shut up, Sahar.” She backs away from me and slumps onto her bed. We stare at each other, each waiting for the other’s next move. She asks, “Where have you been?”
    “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you.”
    “It’s been over two weeks!” She says it with desperation I have never seen from her before. She’s been counting the days. I am thrilled.
    “I thought it would be better . . . It might be easier for us, if I didn’t see you for a while,” I say.
    “For someone who is supposed to be so clever, you are such an idiot,” Nasrin says and I can’t believe it, but she’s crying. Her mascara is about to run, her cheeks are flushed . . . and is that snot? I walk over to her bed and sit down next to her. She wipes at her eyes and curses herself under her breath. Throughout our friendship, Nasrin has always been the cool one, slightly aloof, even indifferent at times. That I followed her around like an idiot . . . Well, it was embarrassing sometimes, but that’s just the way it always has been. This is different.
    “You’re getting married. What did you think was going to happen?” I ask.
    “I didn’t think you’d leave! That’s not the plan!” There is a plan? The only plan ever mentioned was my scheme to run away to some remote village.
    “But you’re going to be his wife.”
    “So?”
    “So, kissing me—that’s cheating, isn’t it?”
    Nasrin looks at me like I am the biggest fool in the universe. She puts her hand over mine and grips it. “I don’t care about him. I need him, but I want you.”
    I have to remind myself to breathe, because it isn’t often that Nasrin voices her feelings. Especially concerning me. Nasrin takes her other hand and wraps it in my hair, tugging me toward her lips, and I hungrily accept. It means so much just to hear her say what I never expected her to.
    Only, she’s choosing him anyway.
    I stop responding to her kiss and she looks at me in confusion.
    “Nasrin, this isn’t normal.”
    “I know it isn’t. Believe me, I wish I didn’t have these feelings for you.”
    “No. I