By the time Neeli met Hassan he was a nobody. His last successful film was almost a decade ago and even that hadn’t gone beyond two weeks at the box office. He didn’t get invited to the annual award functions, wasn’t part of any film associations, and had slowly slipped through the cracks, well on his way to invisibility.

“It takes so damn long to get anywhere in Florida,” Lidia said then bit her lip and saw that her boyfriend, mouth hung open, was sleeping, in the passenger’s seat. She stepped on the gas, revving the RPM gauge on the Swedish sedan up to six thousand revolutions. Even before the halfway point on Alligator Alley, all the decent radio stations started scratching static so she shut it off; in the quiet and desolation she could appreciate the engine’s steady hum. Manolo had fallen asleep as soon as they’d left Dade County and it was getting dark. 

I hated Boones, but Dev always got a bottle for Val anyway. Me with the cool sister who came home from SDSU for long weekends and bought us booze with her fake ID as long as we promised we’d only drink at home. That was fine by me and Val—Dad was usually traveling for medical conferences and Val basically lived at our house anyway.

Did I clarify that it was New Year’s Day? That the kiss was my mother’s last gift? She was dying of cancer. Breast, though no one but me and a doctor from a different island knew. I wasn’t allowed to tell a soul because cancer of the breast or the uterus or any of the part of the body we call private, intimate, sexual—the parts we use for love—cancer there was a shameful thing. And so I boarded that plane and climbed onto that bus, heading to my own death, knowing I’d likely never see my mother again.