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It’s kind of incredible, when Tahani thinks about it, how swiftly and completely Eleanor Shellstrop has taken over her entire life.One day, she hadn’t even known Eleanor existed. And now, scarcely two months later, Eleanor is all she thinks about. Even as she’s strolling along the streets of London, she’s eight thousand kilometers away, thinking about Eleanor, wondering about Eleanor, picturing Eleanor’s reactions to the streets around them, imagining the feel of Eleanor’s hand in hers. Wishing she were in Phoenix.Tahani loves her, of course. She’s loved Eleanor since the second day she’d known her. She hadn’t recognized it at the time, but in retrospect she can pinpoint the exact moment, down to the second, that she’d become utterly smitten. There had never been any hope for her, honestly.They’d been on the roof of the Neighborhood, just after Eleanor had told Tahani her life story. She’d already known, then, that what she felt for Eleanor was different from anything she’d felt for anyone else before, though it would take her another three weeks to brave giving it a name, the only name that it could possibly have—love.Eleanor had gone quiet, when she’d finished telling Tahani her life story. Tahani had been so overwhelmed by emotion, so full of love and grief and hope and joy, that she had only been able to thank Eleanor. She’d already figured out that Eleanor had a much better talent than she for declarations, though it had, oddly, not made her jealous. Just overwhelmingly fond.And Eleanor had told Tahani she was worth it. Worth her time, worth her attentions, worth her energy, worth her. And Tahani had looked at her, and thought, Fuck it. It had been a while since her last love affair, and Eleanor was obviously wanted her. She’d leaned forward, intent on claiming the kiss that Eleanor, for whatever reason, seemed hesitant to give her.And then, just as she’d been about to close that last bit of space between them, Tahani had started crying. She hadn’t been able to help it—she had never been told she was worth anything before, much less the kind of effort that Eleanor was putting into knowing her, keeping her. It was overwhelming; the only possible response was to sob.In retrospect, it had been the exact moment she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with her.Consider, as Tahani does, an emotional landscape. Tahani’s has always been neat, strictly managed, almost sterile, tended and weeded with absolute detachment and brutal incisiveness. Nothing unplanned grows there, nor anything not carefully inspected and approved. It is a calm, clean, empty place. Everything has its place, and stays there, because anything else would be anathema.Or it had done, until she’d met Eleanor. When she’d met Eleanor, the precisely curated garden of her feelings had been assaulted by an entire lifetime’s worth of aborted spring blooms, decades of control and repression released all at once, feckless in the face of Eleanor’s existence.On that roof, two months ago, Tahani had felt the warmth of Eleanor’s smile, her heart, her hands, her chest firm against Tahani’s back, the strength of her will like armor around Tahani’s own fragile being, and she had been done for. A lost cause. It was over before it had even begun. Trying not to love Eleanor is like trying to extinguish a wildfire by blowing on it—she just makes it worse, most of the time, feeding oxygen to famished flames.All the bits of her heart she had kept so carefully protected had opened, exploded with new growth, and each one brought her another meter closer to total chaos. Every time she learns something new about Eleanor, the manicured plots of rosy doubt and tulip-yellow fear and delicate bloodred orchid-veined loneliness are mowed down. And they’re replaced—without even the barest inkling of rhyme or reason or logic—by spiny Arizona cacti, budding and sprouting and flowering all at once to a wild and unstoppable wholeness.The problem, the thing that makes the love so all-consuming, the thing that has stripped Tahani of all power over her emotional architecture, is that she hadn’t just fallen in love with Eleanor the once and had done with it. She keeps falling in love with her, over and over, and more deeply each time. It ought to be impossible, because she already loves her so much that she feels entirely unrooted. But each time Eleanor texts her a silly meme about Englishmen or calls her out of the blue just to tell her about Jason’s latest antics or opens East High’s doors and hugs her like she’s home, it’s springtime in her heart all over again.And she knows she affects Eleanor the same way, or something like it. She doesn’t know much about who Eleanor was in between meeting Chidi and meeting her, but if Tahani, who had understood very little of the mechanics of love before unwittingly being enrolled in a crash course, had fallen in love with her so quickly and hopelessly, then it stands to reason that any number of people—all of them, probably—have pursued her, and continue to do so. As far as Tahani knows, Eleanor hasn’t dated anyone since they met—surely that means something. Mustn’t it?But it’s been two months, and still nothing has happened. Tahani’s going a little bit mad, honestly. Eleanor fills her with a kind of terrible and wonderful tenderness, a yearning passion, an entirely alien enthusiasm for every new day to begin, because each new day is a day that has Eleanor in it. She’d thought she was British enough to be above such irrepressible emotion. Apparently not.She thinks everyone who’s ever known Eleanor must be at least a little bit in love with her. It’s difficult to imagine any other occurrence. How could anyone, anywhere in the world, meet Eleanor, know her, and not plummet?Perhaps it’s not always romantic, the love she inspires, but having seen Eleanor interact with her friends, she knows it to be true. Chidi still tends to her, even as he loves Simone—Tahani has seen him watching her more than once with a look so awed and fond it could probably topple empires. Simone watches her with the same fondness, mixed with a unique kind of sisterly indulgence which Tahani vaguely remembers from the earliest days of Kamilah’s childhood. Jason vies for her attention; Janet always has some new fun fact they picked out just for Eleanor; Michael keeps her in his sights whenever she’s around, like he’d move mountains to protect her. He probably would.And Eleanor charms all of Tahani’s friends effortlessly, just by being herself. (Except dear Dwayne—she still burns with embarrassment at the memory of having to leave the particular wine tasting at which Eleanor had called him a traitor and challenged him to a fistfight.) She’s delightful, but not vacuous, which makes her enough of an oddity to draw attention. Her stories of Arizona horror invariably leave rooms full of celebrities overwhelmed by laughter.Everyone loves Eleanor. Of course everyone loves Eleanor. She’s the heart of the world, the center of the universe. At the very least, she’s become the center of Tahani’s. Tahani really has no choice in the matter. Enough of this, Tahani thinks disgustedly. She resolves to go home, though she isn’t sure whether she’s going to wallow or book a flight to Phoenix. She’ll figure it out when she gets there. She turns and starts back to the chippy where she’d left the driver, determined to either stop brooding about Eleanor or to just see her.And then she sees the ring.It’s an unassuming piece of jewelry, all considered. A plain, thin silver band, with diamonds inlaid around the outside. Understated, but with a hint of elegance. It reminds Tahani of Eleanor, in that it’s beautiful without any need to assert that beauty—anyone who looks at it will know, because that much is obvious.(Tahani will tell Eleanor, later, that the engagement ring is an addition to the ruse of their fake relationship, yet another way to enrage/infuriate/disappoint her parents. This will be, in pedestrian’s terms, a big fat lie.) Do not do this, Tahani, she chides herself. You’re not that much of a romantic idiot. Alright, you’re madly in love with her. That’s not going to change. Fine. But you don’t have to buy her a bloody engagement ring. You’re not even dating her. Going in there would be the most ridiculous thing you’ve done in the course of a highly ridiculous two months. Do not go into that shop. Tahani goes into the shop.It’s a nice little place, cozy and brown-toned, three counters lining its interior walls. The displayed jewelry is nice, but not extravagant; a far cry from Mother’s personal jeweler, whose studio is littered with gems and precious stones. One other patron is quietly looking through the counters. Tahani pays them little mind.A shopgirl is sitting behind the counter. She’s white, blue-eyed and blonde-haired, chubby, and has a tiny jewel in her nose—sapphire, Tahani thinks. She’s a very pretty young girl, though not as pretty as Eleanor. But then, Tahani’s biased—nobody has measured up to Eleanor since she met her. In all likelihood nobody ever will again.“Miss Al-Jamil!” the shopgirl says loudly, a hint of nervousness in her voice. Apparently she recognizes Tahani. Well, that will make this easier. Or more difficult. Perhaps both. “Um, hi! Welcome to the shop! I’m, er, I’m Daisy. How can I help you today?”“That ring, there in the display,” Tahani says. She points to the back of the display, where it rests. Taunting her. “May I have a look at it, please?”“Of course! Yeah! Of course,” Daisy exclaims, and scrambles out from behind the counter to fetch it.As Tahani turns it over, examines it, she tries to be objective, but it’s little use. All she can think about is the way it would look on Eleanor’s finger. What it would mean, to see it there. To have Eleanor be hers, irrevocably, forever, and to have that be known to everyone who saw her. They would know she was taken, that she belonged to Tahani. That Tahani belonged to her, and would never belong to another. I’m so bloody infatuated, Tahani thinks morosely.“Miss Al-Jamil?” Daisy says hesitantly. “Would you like to—”Tahani can’t stop the words from coming out of her mouth any more than she could have stopped herself from falling in love with Eleanor. “I’ll take it.”“Right!” Daisy says. “Okay, so, is it for you, or—”Tahani doesn’t say: It’s for a friend of mine. She doesn’t say: It’s for the woman that I’m hopelessly in love with, in the hopes that she might someday love me. She doesn’t say: Please don’t ask. I am about this close to losing my bloody mind and if I think this through I will almost certainly do something so rash it would give my parents heart attacks where they stand. She doesn’t say: It’s for the love of my life. Tahani does say: “Someone else.” She pulls out her phone. “One moment, please.”She’ll have to text Chidi. The man is an encyclopedia of all things Eleanor Shellstrop, knows her in a way that only a lover does. A soulmate, as Eleanor puts it. Tahani quite likes Chidi as a person, but she isn’t too proud to admit that he makes her jealousy flare up like a solar emission. Eleanor has explained their odd relationship to her, and he seems quite happy with Simone, but, well, Tahani’s only human. She wonders, sometimes, if Eleanor and Chidi will look at each other and want what they had once had. All the more reason not to buy her a bloody engagement ring. What’s Eleanor’s ring size? she sends.Chidi gets back to her almost immediately with an answer, though he follows it up with, Do I want to know why you’re asking? Probably not, Tahani responds. Thank you. She repeats the size to Daisy. “Okay, Miss Al-Jamil! We’ll get that done for you by Friday!”Tahani thanks her and leaves. The next few days are an exercise in attempting to ignore overwhelming anxiety, at which she has middling success. When it’s complete, she picks it up at the shop, pays and thanks Daisy with horrifying awkwardness, and then shoves it into her pocket and tries not to feel the burning ember of its presence.When she gets home, she spends a good hour just staring at it, thinking about various scenarios in which proposing marriage to Eleanor might become feasible. She probably should tell her that she loves her first, but still the visions come.Tahani and Eleanor, out in the mountains. Eleanor laughs, and suddenly Tahani can no longer contain her feelings, brings out the ring, drops down on one knee. Marry me. Tahani and Eleanor, at East High, laughing over nothing and everything, the joy and wonder of the unlikely beauty of their own privilege, that they’ve had the fortune to exist in the same time and place, overcome the odds of history to find one another. And then Tahani pulls out the ring, cuts her heart out and gives it to Eleanor, because she already owns it. Marry me. Tahani and Eleanor, nowhere and everywhere, together, and anywhere they are together is a place where Tahani loves Eleanor so much she can barely stomach it. She’d spend the rest of her life in a landfill if Eleanor were there. And she’d want her, and want to ask her the same question. Marry me. Marry me. Marry me. Please. I could make you so happy. I could make you as happy as you make me, if you’d just let me try. The problem with Tahani’s imagination is that it twists these daydreams into something terrible, contorts them until they all end with Eleanor’s horrified face and a violent rejection and a falling-out which would make Caesar flinch in discomfort. Why would Eleanor agree to marry her? Tahani doesn’t even know if Eleanor loves her, or in the same way. In a way that says, quite clearly: This is it. This is the one. The only one, ever, for me. Without any doubt at all that no-one else could ever compare, not if Tahani lived another thousand lifetimes beyond the one she’s been given. Stop it, Tahani thinks at herself furiously, and buries the ring deep into her nightstand and resolves not to think about it. So what if she has an engagement ring now? That doesn’t mean she has to do anything with it. It can just stay hidden, a reminder of her own pathetic cowardice. Best to leave it there, lest any of her imagined scenarios come to pass.(Later, Tahani will have what is probably the most ridiculous idea she has ever had, and she will remember the ring, and she will think, Oh. And it will look as perfect on Eleanor’s finger as she had imagined.)(Later still, Eleanor and Tahani will love one another freely. Tahani’s feelings will escape her the way she always feared they would, but rather than rejection and heartache they will be met with the same feeling, and Tahani will wonder why she ever waited to confess. Tahani will, over time, lose all the fear that her heart has held onto. She will know that she deserves this kind of love, and will be stronger for it.)(Later still, Eleanor will look at the ring and decide to wear it on another finger. “I think… everything we’ve gone through,” she will tell Tahani. “I want to remember it. So we don’t make the same mistakes. So we appreciate each other. When we do get married, I think we should pick out something new.”She will take Tahani’s face in her hands and kiss her, and it will be a kind of kiss Tahani never had the strength to imagine before, because it will be fond and quick and affectionate. There won’t be desperation between them—just warmth and sureness, the kind of sureness that Tahani had never before had the heart to want, because she had never thought she could deserve it. She will not think all of this, because she will not have to.And Tahani will hear that when and she will not be overcome with emotion, because she too will know where they are going, and will not doubt that beautiful inevitability. And she will say, “Yes, dear.”)But all that is still to come. For now, Tahani just attempts to put the whole ludicrous mess out of her mind. She shoves the ring to the very back of her nightstand. She goes ahead and books another flight to Phoenix, because that’s apparently who she is now.And she thinks, I am so. Bloody. Fucked.