When I was younger, I thought that maybe their expectations were an integral part of our culture and our religion—but now that I’m older, I know that’s not true. It would be foolish to blame it on those things, when the real root of the issue is my parents themselves.

There are so many other families who look like mine but don’t treat their children the way my parents treat me and Anam. Nafiza and Syeda’s family is a perfect example of that—the unconditional love they all have for each other haunts me late at night if I think too much about it. So many people get to have amazing, supportive, loving parents.

But there are no happy endings in my story.

And now, because of my parents, I feel such a disconnect from my identity. Sometimes I feel like I’m not Bangladeshi or Muslim enough because there’s so much I don’t know—being diaspora is a huge part of that, but even bigger is the fact I can’t sit down and have a heart-to-heart with my parents like other kids get to have with theirs. There’s only so much I can learn peripherally and from the internet.

Maybe one day, when I’m out of this house, I’ll be able to reconnect with my Bangladeshi roots. Maybe I’ll be able to improve my relationship with Allah. I want both of those things so badly it hurts. I hate feeling like a stranger to my own beliefs. I want to know more and learn more and be more.

I just hate that I have to do it alone.

I roll my neck in a stiff circle, trying to get rid of the tension building between my shoulder blades. There’s a time and a place, and this isn’t it.

“Hey,” I say, and Emmitt looks up.

There’s a moment of silence where we just stare at each other, his eyes taking in my haggard expression. I wait for him to make some kind of ill-timed comment, but he doesn’t say anything.

Instead, he quietly rises to his feet and meets me at the edge of the platform. “So where are we off to, love?”

“Rockefeller Center,” I say, checking Google Maps for when the next R train is arriving. Two minutes away. “We’ll walk from the Forty-Ninth Street station.”

Emmitt furrows his eyebrows, absently toying with the three earrings lining his left ear. “We’re going to...lie down at Rockefeller Center? On a Thursday?”

I turn to him in exasperation, some of my discomfort melting away. “Can you just be patient? And trust me?”

A hazy smile curves his lips. “Only if you trust me in return.”

Before I can reply, the subway pulls up, hot wind blowing my pigtails back. I grimace, picking out a strand of hair from my mouth.