My parents would hate him.
That's all I can think about as I'm running my hands through his dark hair, my smile reflecting his as his even darker eyes scan around the field as the junior varsity soccer team is warming up. My boy is too good for junior varsity.
But he's wearing his silvery uniform shirt anyway, proudly displaying his lucky number 24 on the front and back in starched maroon numbers, hanging on his thin frame just right and setting off his warm middle eastern skin tones.
His raven-colored eyelashes are so irresistibly long, especially when he brushes them against my cheek and tries to tickle me with a butterfly kiss, which only makes me raise my blonde eyebrows and pull him in for a real one.
I dig my hands into the pockets of the team sweater labeled 24 on the back as well, inhaling its sweet scent of grass and cologne when I think he's not looking and pretending sometimes that he doesn't have to lend it to me every single day to wear it. Even though he knows that I love how well he takes care of me.
And yet, my parents would hate him.
At his feet is his duffel bag containing stained cleats and extra shin guards, spare shoelaces and old homework too, each with an A+ hastily scrawled all over it. I tell him he's too smart for me all the time, that he's too good for me. He just rolls his eyes like I don't know what I'm talking about, making me feel like I've missed something.
No, grades aren't an issue with my boy. Drugs and alcohol and partying aren't either. His parents are probably the most strict people I've ever met, but they're so welcoming at the same time.
I remember the first time I went to his house to catch a movie and I ran into them. His mother, a beautiful Pakistani woman and his father, a handsome middle eastern man with a bushy mustache. They would pretend to scold us whenever we were within two feet of each other, and keep an eye on us whenever I was at his house.
Cheating isn't the issue, either. My boy is just so shy---so shy that I had almost not noticed him during the first day of biology had it not been for a stray elbow of mine that just happened to knock into my binder, causing paper to go flying everywhere.
His coffee colored hands picking up my papers touched my stark albino ones, and we both lept apart and stared at each other at the same time; mint green eyes meeting dark chocolate ones. In fact, he was still so timid and quiet that I hadn't heard him the first time when he'd asked me out two months into the school year, either.
But on the field is when his timidity disappears and a new person takes over, someone who isn't afraid to stare down the opposing midfielder and guide that spinning black and white orb through the legs of bewildered rivals and into the pearly white net.
It's just something amazing to see his face light up, especially when he's chugging down bottles of Gatorade and he looks over to the bleachers to find me, the loud blondie, screaming her head off for number 24 and waving her white and maroon pennant in the air.
I love sneaking glances at him in biology while pretending to be taking notes on the human genome. I love how he rakes his hands through his hair when he's concentrating so hard, and how he taps his pencil on the edge of his desk to the beat of the latest Foo Fighters song. It's too cute.
I love it when he drops me off at work at the local coffee joint, always driving so damn carefully, making sure to flick on every little turn signal and parallel-parking successfully on the first try.
And I love it when I have to wave at him a million times before I go into the coffee shop, throw on an apron and serve the drive-in window, only to see him pull up in his car with a silly smile on his face to order a white vanilla cappucino and a kiss.
If only my parents could see the way that he shuffles his feet when I'm mad at him or the way that he bites his lip slightly when I'm upset, angry with himself that he can't make my problems go away, even if he is the problem. But we both know it's only a short time until we bashfully tell each other we're sorry and make up.
If only my parents could know how I feel when some poor mediocre guy tries his chances with me, only to turn around and find my boy tapping his foot impatiently. If only my parents could just see the way he tries to slow dance at school social functions when he really doesn't know how to at all.
But my parents can't. Because the only thing they can see or ever know of him is his dark hair and dark eyes and middle eastern heritage and his Muslim religion.
We've talked about it, actually, my boy and I. I know that he's not sure about the whole religion thing and that he's struggling to find some sort of sense in the world as it is, so I take him to youth group sometimes and he teaches me about fasting and the Koran. We spend hours on the phone (while my parents think I'm talking to my lab partner) wondering aloud about maybe there was something more to life and maybe there wasn't.
When I was old enough to make decisions for myself in Sunday school, I remember thinking that if Jesus loved and accepted everyone, then why couldn't my parents do that? If they were the devout Catholics that they considered themselves to be, why couldn't my parents understand that I was in love with such a confused, yet perfect boy?
My parents don't know about him yet though. But that's exactly how they would act once they found out about my boy. They would try and try and try to separate us, but they can't. Not ever.
Because my boy and I love each other. We have for so long, even before I shyly breathed those three fateful words I love you into his ear one day before soccer practice, the same practice where he'd missed five passes in a row because of a lack of concentration because of those three words.
I wish that I could show my parents the hurt look on my boy's face when he watches the news and it's all horrible news about people killing people, and how some kids label him as an evil 'terrorist' at school just because he happens to be the same nationality as the real ones. Only I know how much it hurts him because his family has been loyal Americans for eight generations now in the U.S.
And my parents just wouldn't ever understand how I could love someone who hasn't figured out that he's been saved by Jesus Christ and everything. They wouldn't understand and they would accuse my poor innocent boy of trying to convert me, trying to push all those 'pagan' thoughts in my head.
My parents don't get it. My boy would never do that. My boy would never want to hurt me or try to make me do anything that I wouldn't want to. We would be perfectly happy to just sit and hold each other for all eternity.
My parents don't know that.
But if they knew that their darling Catholic daughter had dared to defy their strict rules for the past half year, I don't know what would happen. But luckily, they don't have a clue about my little secret.
And I'm keeping it that way.
<3
Thanks for reading! What do you guys think?
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