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The guy who almost smacked me in the face with the coffee-shop door.
Zayan Amin.
CHAPTER FIVE
There are sixteen oranges sitting in the wire basket behind the counter. One of them is particularly round. A perfect sphere. I know this because I’ve been staring obsessively at it for the last two minutes while Zayan Amin stands in line, waiting to give his order. The brim of his baseball cap is tipped down as he stares at his phone, shielding his face from me, but that doesn’t stop my gaze darting over him.
He’s a lot taller in person, and less bulky – there’s a languid grace in his stance, like he knows exactly how much space he takes up in this world and doesn’t mind it. It’s hard to remember him as the little boy with chubby cheeks and witty one-liners from The Fairbanks; the guy standing in line is clearly not a little boy any more.
I turn my gaze back to the oranges, a blush making my cheeks hot. If I’d known this was going to happen, I would probably have mentioned my celebrity crush to The Tragedies before I agreed to the meeting.
When he first walked in, The Tragedies all but shoved me out of my chair, my insistent glare doing little to deter their excited smiles. I was running on autopilot once I left my seat, but halfway there, I finally realized who I was walking towards.
Zayan Amin.
Oh. My. God.
Terrible TV show aside, this guy was my celebrity crush. Embarrassingly, he was the guy I’d dream up fake romantic scenarios about in my head during maths class to make the time go by faster.
Once that thought really sedimented in my mind, I took a sharp right and went towards the counter instead, pretending I needed more napkins. That was when my obsessive orange-watching began.
The girl behind the counter has begun to look at me strangely. I’m running out of excuses to stand here. I can feel The Tragedies looking my way, their gazes weighty and desperate. I let loose a shuddering breath as I try to fight the festering nervousness that’s begun to infect every part of my being.
You can do this, Farah. Do it for The Tragedies. Do it for yourself. Do it for the stage.
The stage. I close my eyes briefly and, right in the centre of my chest, I remember that feeling – it’s faint, like wisps of smoke. I want to be there again. I want to stand in front of an audience again. I want to hear thunderous applause, so loud, so sonorous that it vibrates through me.
But are you good enough?
The question has stubbornly rooted itself in my heart. I want the answer to it. I could get one, if I was on stage again. If I had another chance to prove myself. That way, I’d know that the audition with LSDCATS was a one-off. I’d know that my dream of being an actress, a real actress, wasn’t just that – a dream and nothing more.
I open my eyes, determination taking away the glimmer of worry, but when I look over my shoulder, I see that the guy who holds the key to my lifelong aspiration is nowhere to be found. Panic hits me, and my gaze swings around wildly until I realize that he’s at the front of the line.
Right beside me.
I think I may have forgotten how to breathe altogether. My head refuses to turn and let me look directly at him, so I stare straight ahead and focus on his voice instead.
‘Hi, I’m good. How are you?’
Oh. My heart wasn’t prepared for that. Even while saying some generic, polite statement to a barista, Zayan’s voice sounds extremely pleasant. Like melted butter on top of pancakes.
I miss what the barista says next because my heart is being slingshot from my chest to my throat. I consider shifting closer to him, but my feet remain cemented to the ground.
‘What types of tea do you guys serve?’ I hear him ask.
‘Oh! We have a lovely chai tea if you’d like that?’
I wince at the reply. Chai is tea. Just like how naan is bread. To call it ‘chai tea’ is to essentially say ‘tea tea’. Maybe this eager barista thought he was giving some clever suggestion because Zayan Amin is clearly brown, but saying the wrong name probably won’t have endeared him.
I’m proven right when Zayan replies.
‘Right,’ he mutters uneasily. ‘Uh, just one cup of tea, please. With sugar and milk.’
For some ridiculous reason I find myself excited to know that, just like me, he takes sugar in his tea. I internally facepalm – I sound like thirteen-year-old Farah again, mooning over Zayan Amin’s latest movie. Thirteen-year-old Farah definitely couldn’t have conducted a professional meeting with him. I’m not sure eighteen-year-old Farah can either, but she doesn’t have much of a choice.
Zayan moves away towards a vacant table on the other side of the cafe. He’s balancing a tray with a massive blue cup and a sugar pot that looks like a sugar cube on it; he has his phone pressed between his cheek and ear.
People around him in the cafe have started to notice who he is.
