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Mariam put her arms out for a hug. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned in to give her a quick embrace. Whatever spark of attraction had existed between them was extinguished now; it felt as if he were hugging his cousin.
“Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for at Samir’s wedding,” Mariam said. “You’re still going, right?”
Lucky nodded. He had toyed with the idea of inviting Mariam, but his best friend Samir had never warmed up to his girlfriend—a red flag he had chosen to ignore, if he was being honest. Maybe Mariam was right to call time of death on their relationship. Maybe she had been braver than he had been, which wasn’t a surprise. When it came to matters of the heart, he had a tendency to drift along, preferring when women approached him. It was easier that way, and less likely to result in misunderstanding—or heartbreak.
“I leave for Toronto tomorrow,” he told Mariam now.
Lucky’s friendship with Samir was easy. They met when Samir hired him to do a bathroom renovation in his condo a few years ago, and the two men had hit it off. When Lucky discovered that Samir’s family were the owners of Crescent Construction, one of the largest private home construction and contracting firms in Chicago, he was shocked. An embarrassed Samir had been forced to explain that he preferred to hire outside the family empire for his personal jobs, to avoid the involvement of his very opinionated parents, Yahya and Rabia Kazi.
But when Samir had shared with his parents how happy he had been with Lucky’s work, they had insisted on inspecting the bathroom renovation and then offered Lucky a job, first as a subcontractor, then a project manager, and more recently as a site coordinator.
He had accepted but made it clear he would still take on projects of his own; Lucky had grown to enjoy his work as a contractor and wasn’t sure he wanted to give it all up to work for a company, no matter how lucrative.
Lucky had a good life; he worked for himself, taking jobs that paid well and that he found interesting. He spent his few leisure hours with family or hanging out with Samir, playing basketball or video games, chatting about their lives. Lucky knew that Samir’s family was supportive but had high expectations for their only child, and Samir knew that Lucky had been forced to quit school to help his family. Beyond that, they kept things light. Which was why he hadn’t been overly surprised when Samir told him about his upcoming nuptials only six months ago. Before that, Lucky had had no idea that Samir was even dating someone. He had thought nothing of it until the wedding invitation arrived, with Samir’s fiancée’s full name: Hania Haq, daughter of Azeez and Nasrin Haq. Which made her sister to Dina Haq, the girl who had broken his heart six years ago. Sometimes their community felt very small: every desi Muslim in North America could play “six degrees of separation” with ease.
It was fine, ancient history at this point. Dina Haq had moved on and was now married to Arshad. He had moved on and was . . . currently single and happy. Or at least, content.
It would be fun to return to Toronto. Seeing Dina again would be fine. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting with Arshad, but he would deal. Everything about the wedding would be absolutely okay.
He wondered, not for the first time, if it was too late to back out.
“Samir would never forgive you if you didn’t show,” Mariam said, as if reading his mind.
“I know,” Lucky said, resigned. “He asked me to be his best man.”
“You’ll be okay?” Mariam asked, with the first flash of compassion she had shown during this entire excruciating conversation. “I know things have been tough these past few years, with your dad and after what your uncle did.”
“I’ll be fine. No doubt about it,” he said, and left her house for the final time.
Lucky drove straight to a storage facility half an hour away from his home. He ascended to the third floor and unlocked a unit. Once inside, he turned on the lights and stood contemplating the tools laid out before him: knives, paint, gold and silver tinsel. Grabbing a paintbrush, he plunged it into a sample can of bright-green paint, then flicked it toward the large stretched canvas set up at the back of the storage unit. He contemplated the wide arc of the paint on the canvas, then flung some more paint at it. Thinking of Mariam’s words, the ease with which she had informed him that he wasn’t husband material, he picked up the green paint can and heaved the contents onto the canvas. The result was a goopy, dripping mess, and he sighed. This painting was going nowhere. He wasn’t in the right headspace to create.
Lucky had stumbled into painting after one of his more indecisive clients had bought over fifty different paint pot samples in her quest to find the “perfect whole-home color theme.” Once she had settled on a rather ho-hum white, she had gifted him the collection of samples, which he had accepted reluctantly. The paint samples sat in the storage locker he rented for his tools for a few months until, on a whim, he had decided to buy a small canvas from the dollar store and paint something for his niece as a surprise. The gift, a painting of a crooked unicorn in front of a rainbow, had been a hit (granted, Nisa was easily amused). He enjoyed the process and found the practice calming. He had even managed to sell a few of his creations online, as his paintings evolved from illustrations that would appeal to the toddler demographic into something that seemed pulled from his very soul. He started visiting museums and art galleries, then dropping in on student showcases, just to stare at the art. Lucky still felt shy about what he did in this storage unit, and his family had no idea. When he had eventually admitted his interest in art to Samir last year, his friend had insisted on purchasing his largest canvas for his parents and paying more money than Lucky had ever thought possible for the piece. Samir was a good friend.
Mariam was right—Samir would be beyond disappointed if Lucky bailed on the wedding. Not to mention his family. They had all been looking forward to returning to Toronto. If he didn’t show up at the airport, his brother would never let him hear the end of it.
Speaking of his brother, his phone lit up with a message from Saleem:
Where are you?
Lucky responded: On my way.
Saleem: Mom is freaking out. We have to be at the airport soon!
Saleem was younger than Lucky by five years, but in many ways, he behaved as if he were older. He worried and fretted about everyone, a habit that had only grown after he married his high school sweetheart, Jiya, and they had their first child, the irrepressible Nisa. The entire family was wrapped around four-year-old Nisa’s adorable pinkie finger, and she knew it.
His brother was still in school, finishing up his master’s degree in engineering, while Jiya worked shifts as a nurse. They all lived together in the same small bungalow, though Lucky had converted the freestanding garage into a small studio apartment four years ago, before his brother’s marriage, reasoning that the young couple would be more comfortable in the main house. He knew his brother and Jiya hoped to get their own place nearby after Saleem graduated. After what happened to their father, Huma wanted to keep her children close and fretted if she didn’t know where they were at all times. Lucky was thankful she had never heard of Apple’s Find My app, or he would never get any peace.
Lucky packed up the paint cans, rinsed off the paintbrushes in the bathroom down the hall, and moved his ruined canvas to the side, to be disposed of later. Then, after taking one last look at his tool closet / makeshift art studio, he turned off the lights and headed out. He had procrastinated for long enough. He needed to pack and drive to the airport to meet his family, Samir, and the rest of the bharat, the groom’s party. Considering the curveballs life had thrown him since moving to Chicago, surely he would be able to survive seeing Dina Haq again.
Chapter Four
Chicago O’Hare was packed as usual when Lucky ran inside the departure lounge in the late afternoon. He made it to the Air Canada counter, where his mother stood by herself, a worried expression on her face. Huma was a petite South Asian woman in her late fifties, but she looked older, her thin face lined with worry and exhaustion, her figure gaunt. She always dressed in dour colors—today in a black shalwar kameez—but her face brightened with relief and happiness when she caught sight of her eldest child. She masked her clear affection for Lucky by immediately scolding him.
“We were supposed to leave the house together only, Luqman. Why did you not pack last night as I told you?” she asked, grabbing hold of his arm and pulling him toward the small group huddled by a bank of seats. “Here, have a kabob roll. I made from home and brought. Airport food is expensive.”
Lucky accepted his mother’s homemade sandwich with a grin. His mother’s love language was cooking for her family, and she hated wasting money on food she could make better and more cheaply at home. He bet she had packed a bag of basmati rice, a tin of spices, and her rice cooker inside her suitcase. He made a mental note to try to dissuade her from filling their hotel room with the aroma of frying onions, though she was unlikely to listen.
Huma was not done lecturing. “It was your idea to attend this wedding, nah? And you don’t even show up on time, always rushing, rushing. It should be your wedding we should be attending, not Samir’s, though he is a very sweet boy. Your brother married at twenty-three years!”
