Other Side

03 | Don't Cry Over Spilled Coffee

Boston was freezing.

Talia didn't need to wait until she stepped outside the confines of Boston Logan Airport to comprehend that fact. She scoffed at the irony; Logan had somehow managed to follow her across the country.

The natives to this part of the country seemed unfazed, some even sporting flip flops and Patriots T-shirts. She noticed a few give her the side-eye for the 49ers cap, so she threw a few questionable looks right back at their summer attire.

Excitement coursed through her veins as she checked her texts, warming her shivering body. She hadn't seen her grandfather, Sido Fouad, in a year and a half, and she knew he was only getting older. Poking her head above everyone else's, she found him on the other side of the baggage carousel.

"Talia!" She threw her arms around him at the greeting, so close to snapping him in half. He was a rather lanky man but could still command a crowded room with his self-assurance, always just a hair shy of smug. "How are you, ya albi?"

"Oh God, I missed you so much." She let him go and noticed he'd already found her suitcases, adorned with lilac ribbons. "I'm a little freezing, I have to admit. Please tell me it won't be this cold the whole month."

He chuckled, patting her on the back. "Welcome to winter in New England. Took me thirty years to get used to it."

She took in the scenery as they walked out of the airport exit. Bony, leafless trees, covered in a thin layer of snow, and a deceptively sunny blue sky stared back at her. She almost slipped on an invisible patch of ice in the parking garage, saved at the last minute by her grandfather's hand.

"Watch out for the black ice," he said, fishing his car keys from his coat pocket. "Your grandmother almost broke her back on it last week."

Talia gasped. "Is she okay? I can't wait to see her."

Her grandmother, Teta Salma, was the cutest old woman she'd ever met. Hardly five-foot-three and with an accent that would never fade, she'd spoiled Talia rotten as a kid, not caring that she wasn't one of her many grandsons.

Fouad threw her suitcase in the back of his SUV as she slid into the passenger seat. Even without the heat on, it was still miles warmer than the second ice age outside. She kept her eyes glued to the window as they drove out of Boston and continued west to its quaint suburbs and small towns. Eventually, they made it to their four-bedroom house in Newton, its front yard blanketed in a layer of dry snow. The children next door tried and failed to form a crumbling snowman, but they were far too young for Talia to crush their dreams.

"Talia, habibti, come here!" Teta Salma crushed her into a hug in the doorway, harder than Talia had hugged her husband. She held her out in front of her, trailing her eyes up and down her body. "My God, you have gotten way too skinny since the last time I saw you. You need to eat!"

Well, your daughter-in-law would disagree, Talia thought, rehearsing the times her nit-picky mother had subtly shaded her weight. Laughing, she said, "I imagine you'll feed me well this next month."

Teta Salma helped her settle into her quarters upstairs, a banal guest room decorated white and beige. The bed was as comfortable as she'd remembered. She threw herself down on the comforter and breathed out a sigh of exhaustion, over eight hours of travel catching up with her, if she included the layover. She closed her eyes and took a quick ten-minute nap before deciding to freshen up in the en suite bathroom.

She groaned as she fixed her disastrous thick hair in the mirror, trying to get the frizzy pieces to stay down. She never understood why she bothered straightening her hair so much, knowing it would always try to revert to its curly form after a few hours. Besides, if she was trying to impress anyone, it sure as hell wasn't the rest of the senior citizens in this neighborhood.