She kissed his cheek, her lips cool despite the heat around them. His torso twisted and his knees buckled. When she moved away, he straightened and touched his cheek despite himself.

She punched his arm, an almost sisterly gesture, as though she were trying to erase what had happened. Or maybe not. Maybe she was underlining the kiss, claiming him a second way.

“Want to go for a ride?” he said. He leaned against the wall to appear steady.

She walked to the car, which he’d parked at the curb, opened the passenger door for herself, and hopped in.

They drove north, sea to the left of them. He leaned on the open window. Between them, the bench seat was as wide as the Red Sea.

“Where shall we go?” he asked.

“Drive.” She unrolled her tinted window.

“Someone might see you.” He motioned as though he were rolling the window back up. “You’re not wearing a scarf.”

“I’m not?” She patted herself on the head. “Oh, I’m not!”

She was funny, but also infuriating. He rotated his hand until she rolled her window up, but not without complaint. “You’re the one who let me into your car.”

He regretted displeasing her, but he wasn’t sure how to reverse things, to please her. He took off his shimagh and handed it to her. “Wear this and roll the window back down if you want.”

She let the cloth fall in her lap. “I love the sea,” she said. “I don’t know if I could live without it.”

“In Ohio, there’s a lake,” he said, immediately wanting to take the words back because they implied he wanted her to go to Ohio with him.

She must have felt a little less annoyed with him, because she opened the window and draped the cloth over her head. She looked like a boy.

“Is Ohio like California?” She wrapped the shimagh across her mouth, like a Bedouin or a bandit. The answer was easily no, but she didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I’d rather go to Cairo,” she said through the cloth.

He lay his arm along the back of the seat, his fingers just shy of her head. Time stretched out like an expanse of shoreline. She reached over and tapped his fingers. He squeezed her fingers and let go.

They parked at a small, empty park near the edge of the sea. She leaned an arm on her open window. The minutes since they left seemed like a beautiful eternity.

“We’d better head back,” Saeedah said. “The wedding.”

He sighed, long and low like the sea. “May you be next,” he said in a falsetto meant to mimic an annoying auntie or uncle.