After 22-year-old Birdie moves to New York City for grad school, she starts retelling her chaotic college years to a new friend over tea . From tangled love triangles to soul-deep friendships and one too many coincidences involving two Persian exes, Birdie’s past was full of magic…and mistakes. HUMMINGBIRDIE is a funny, heartfelt coming-of-age novel about the people who shape us, the love that doesn’t last, and the friendships that do.

HUMMINGBIRDIE is a 75,000-word New Adult coming-of-age story that blends humor, heartache, and nostalgia. Geared toward New Adult college-aged readers and older Young Adult audiences, this novel explores the deep friendships and messy romances that shape us—and how, even after they end, they linger. The novel is fit for fans of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Morgan Rogers’ Honey Girl, and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot while also appealing to anyone who loves Greta Gerwig’s films and any TV adaptation of Jenny Han’s books.

To get into the groove of Hummingbirdie, take a listen here on Spotify.

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First Three Chapters of Hummingbirdie:

Now  

Birdie now took her tea hard. No sugar. She thought it made her a little mean. But that’s how they did it here.  

In Manhattan, it was always iced tea, never sweet tea. Of course, she could get iced tea with simple syrup at pretty much any restaurant or cafe or coffee shop, but it wasn’t the same as her grandam’s long-steeped sun tea with (likely too many) unmeasured scoops of sugar. They used to brew it together on their porch in the North Carolina mountains.  

Luckily, there was one Turkish restaurant, in Midtown of all places, that put honey in their tea and then iced it, just for her. Adem’s one hundred and ten-year-old grandmother took the rich brew out of her onion-domed, double-decker pot, squeezing the sweet stuff and swirling it into the steam. Birdie liked to watch the honey dissolve, to get lost in her mind just as the honey lost itself in the tea. 

One time, Adem sent her back to her apartment with the whole bottle of honey and a cup of iced sweet tea, along with some baklava. He always gave her baklava. She loved to let it melt on her tongue. She’d gone back to the Turkish restaurant at least once every few weeks since stumbling in there by accident for the first time, right after her move to the city. But this story is not about New York. It’s just where Birdie is now. And where she met Adem.  

To know Birdie’s story is to listen to her tell it to Adem. Once sitting in his family’s restaurant in her regular booth, Birdie could talk to her friend about Reza without feeling guilty. And Rama too.  

✶ 

Reza likely did not think of her. At least Birdie thought he did not think of her. Not even when they were together, honestly. In her memories, he’d write her poems and call her “wifey.” When she saw him in real life, Reza used to look at Birdie as if she were some rare star. Really though, Reza was the star: the type that only flickered into view every few thousand years, burning brightly until it disappeared.  

In all fairness, that was probably, deep down, what Birdie liked the most about Reza: that empty, yearning feeling that she was the one wading for him, lost in a sea of fog, his name on her lips, his ears closed in some far, far off abyss, the evil eyes on his earrings looking back at her. Of course, Birdie could not admit that she enjoyed the sickly longing she held for him. 

That deep, all-consuming, seductive melancholy was something, at least, that she could not tell Adem. Instead, she laughed, covering up the way Reza lived in her head.  

At the same time, Birdie could not think about Reza without also considering Rama. In her mind, the two were irreparably intertwined. Not because they were both gorgeous and both Persian. But because their times in her life intersected a little too perfectly. Rama was so very different from Reza, but he made her feel that same alluring grief. His stubbly cheeks, his Chow Chow that Birdie wished she could hold just one more time. But, we’re already getting too far ahead.  

As Birdie smiled and her eyes locked on Adem, she held all of these feelings deep inside her chest and she told him story after story of her college years. Birdie was careful, though. She would not tell Adem the truth of how his brown eyes looked just like Rama’s, how the lilt of his slight accent scratched her brain the same way Reza’s did. Birdie was one of those people who never got over anything. Ever.  

“So, you’re telling me you were the other woman?” Adem said, filling her tulip-shaped glass, cringing that no steam fogged his glasses.  

She held the cup up to her face, pressing it into freckled skin. The chill of the cup turned her cheek strawberry. “No, it’s worse! I’m telling you I was the other BIRDIE. How many girls do you know named BIRDIE?” 

Adem snorted, “I can’t say that I know any.”  

“So, there I was, texting Rama, and he was like ‘Reza had a girlfriend at that time.’ And I said ‘yea, the girlfriend was me.’ And he said, ‘NO his girlfriend was a DIFFERENT girl named Birdie.’” 

“No!” 

“Yes!” 

Adem shook his head, “There is no way.” He couldn’t hide the rising amusement in his eyes, or the way Birdie seemed to magnetically pull him closer.  

“I can promise you there was a way,” Birdie nodded and took a sip, savoring the chill on her lips. 

“Well, I’m sure you were prettier.” 

“Actually, we looked about the same. That was the troubling part. We had the same hair, same eyes, same clothes, pretty much the same everything. Except she was really tall. It was back when I would dye my hair red, but I think hers was naturally that color.”  

“Wait, you said the name Rama too. Who is he? Another boyfriend?” His face cinched, “Let me guess, he was a deadbeat poet too?”  

Birdie shook her head. “Not a deadbeat, no. Noncommittal, yes. But not a poet. He was Reza’s mortal enemy. I’ll get to him in a minute.”  

“Damn so you got played by a guy who was two-timing two Birdies? What are the odds? I’m thinking…two Birdies one stone?” A disbelieving smirk painted his face. “I think you should be investigating the fact that you have a doppelgänger rather than being hung up on someone back home.” 

Birdie rolled her eyes and reached a hand up to her cheek, then her ear. “I know I know. Like I said, I haven’t even talked to him in months,” she twirled her earring in-between her fingers, “I don’t even know if I’m hung up on him. I mean, I don’t think I want to be with someone who turns me into an accidental homewrecker, especially one that homewrecks a fellow Birdie.” 

“So did you purposefully move on to his mortal enemy, or was that just by chance?” 

Birdie did not reply. 

“Okay, another thought: if you were over it, do you think you’d be telling some random waiter about it?” Adem said while sliding into the booth beside Birdie, grabbing a glass for himself. 

“You’re not just any waiter, you’re my friend! And…” she poked at him and paused “…you’re probably right.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, reveling in his warmth. Despite her thick sweater, the restaurant was still cold. Adem didn’t flinch. She snuggled in just the slightest bit more. 

“Wait, let me back up,” he turned, looking into Birdie’s baby blues, “how did Rama know that Reza was cheating on you?” Birdie deadpanned. “My bad. How did Rama know that Reza was cheating on the other Birdie with you Birdie.”  

“Well, the other Birdie was roommates with Rama’s girlfriend.” 

“I thought you were Rama’s girlfriend?” 

“I was later on, kind of. But when I was with Reza at first in January, Reza was dating the other Birdie. Rama, who I didn’t know yet, was still with his ex, who just so happened to be the other Birdie’s roommate. Are you following now?” 

“I think I need some red string to connect all of this. Maybe a few flow charts too. And some pictures…So, okay, you were dating Reza and Rama at the same time?” 

“Yes. Well, not exactly. For part of the summer, but not the whole time. And not at the start.” 

Adem chuckled, “I’m going to need a timeline. Oh, and a promise that this is all real because somehow, I find it hard to believe the story of two Birdies and two Persian men in the middle of bumfuck North Carolina.” 

“You’ll probably need a lot more than that, but I promise, it’s all true,” Birdie laughed, reaching for the cold tea pot to fill up Adem’s glass. He stopped her, standing up to grab hot tea for himself. His feet shuffled across the floor of that old, New York building, the characteristic divots and scratches in the wood from years and years of use. Birdie studied the planks beneath Adem’s non-slip shoes, noting the old growth pine that made up the joists before he took a place in the chair across the table from her.   

They clinked their cups together, contents sloshing and glowing under the warm lights of the sleepy restaurant. Their eyes met, and Birdie’s heart felt a little fuller. “Okay then, let me hear it.” 

Birdie studied Adem’s face, his curls so very much like Reza’s, his dimpled chin so very reminiscent of Rama’s. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and sipped her honey-sweetened tea, the cold chilling her teeth.  

And hear it, he did. 

January, Sophomore Year of College 

I met Reza first, and he was beautiful, in a way that only few men are truly beautiful. He was pretty, gorgeous even, with these big tea-colored eyes full of poems and perfect curls that draped only slightly over his forehead. When I looked at Reza, I could feel “Dies Irae” playing in my mind. I had never felt so enamored in my life. 

I wanted to know what the inside of his hand felt like; I wanted to know if he washed his hair, face, or body first when he got in the shower; I wanted to know if his dominant eye was his right or left; I wanted to shrink down, walk inside his ear, trek along his mind, and finally descend so I could take a nap inside of him, using his ribs as a hammock. 

The way I looked at Reza was the same as that blonde girl looks at the boy beside her in Pierre- Auguste Cot’s “Springtime.” Most of the time, I was infuriated with myself for looking at him like that. It made me feel like some doting idiot. I couldn’t help it, though, and I am working on being kinder to myself and my memories. But I was no better than that ogling blonde girl. I mean, I even have the same curl pattern as her: loose, waving, and frizzy when the humidity goes above 1%. 

Reza, darkhaired like the boy on the swing, was proud to be Persian. Before going to college, I of course knew about Iran from world history classes, but I’d never met anyone who stuck out their hand, grinned, and said “Hi I’m Persian. What are you?” 

When I met Reza, he asked me if I even knew where Iran was on a map. I was insulted. Of course I knew where it was. He was surprised, so he followed up by asking if I’d ever had tahdig, and I said no. He asked if I had ever swirled a crystallized saffron sugar stick in my tea, and I said no. Then, he said that I might as well not know where Iran is on the map.  

I almost took Farsi that same semester of college just to prove a point and just so I could understand him better, even impress him. I dreamed of the day that I’d meet his parents and be sitting there, awkward and nervous as I always am—like the true bird that I am—and I’d hear his parents speaking quietly in Farsi to gossip about me. Then, I’d find the perfect time to speak up and say something with flawless grammar and intonation, making his parents fall in love with me instantly. 

Everything about Reza screamed that he was special and proud, especially his poems. Reza, for better or worse, was an artist with his words and the stories he carefully crafted in them. I read his poems in English. He was an English major just like me. But, he wrote in Farsi too, and I deeply, desperately, wanted to read them. I was a southern girl, and the thought of speaking Farsi with my slight Appalachian accent sounded so seductive.  

It never happened though, and I am fairly certain that it never will. Not for me at least. 

Things with Reza, however, were not as easy in real life as I made them out to be in my imagination. Sure, he did eventually make me tea with crystalized saffron sugar, and yes, we wrote poems together. But being with him was scalding, even if it was artistic and sickeningly sweet. Being with Reza was difficult on a good day and impossible on a regular day. But the way those brown eyes bore into mine, full of paintings and honey, made the burn worth it.  

Nothing was as easy as being with Rama, though, especially compared to Reza. Being with Rama was like sitting in a tub of perfectly warm water, soaking in scented Epsom salts until being lulled to sleep by Chopin’s Nocturnes, playing just far enough away that it had to tune of a lullaby. But I am getting ahead of myself. Reza came into my life first.  

✶ 

Reza and I met at the beginning of January. I was a baby sophomore in college, and he was a year older than me. We had the makings of a classic Romeo and Juliet story, and by that I mean he went to Duke and I went to UNC Chapel Hill (sworn enemies for those not in the know). Oh, and I think both of us were at least slightly suicidal, also like R&J.  

We met for the first time at Durham’s American Tobacco Campus: a beautiful outdoor-indoor space created and revitalized by using historic tobacco factories and the funds from historic tax credits. I loved it there because it was far enough away from school that I could breathe. He loved it there because the old buildings told him stories. 

The old tobacco factory chimneys watched over us on that fateful day. That night, he came over to my apartment. We drank wine on the floor. I still haven’t had the heart to throw away the corks, even though years have passed. I keep them in an old Cuban cigar box that my grandfather gave me once, when, after my grandmother died, he placed her wedding ring inside it just for me. I think the whole thing used to be filled with my grandma’s family jewelry. Now, it holds my little, miscellaneous keepsakes, including two corks from two $3 bottles wine. 

On the floor, Reza read me James Joyce’s letters to his wife, staring into my eyes as he did. He told me not to smile or laugh, but if you’ve read those letters, it’s hard not to. And if you’ve read those letters sitting on your own floor while making eye contact with a handsome, near-stranger, it is especially difficult not to smile. At one point, I almost let a mouthful of wine spray out of my mouth onto his face because I couldn’t hold back the laughter bubbling up inside of me. Instead, I asked if I could kiss him. His lips felt like sunlight.  

After, we walked outside into the parking lot of my apartment complex, sitting on the curb listening to The Strokes while Reza smoked a cigarette. I hate to say it, but it was hot. I am adamantly opposed to lung cancer, especially when young people nowadays seem so intent on getting it. I didn’t smoke or vape or put anything other than fresh air into my precious lungs. But I let it slide when it came to Reza. He was an exception in so many ways.  

He’d pulled on sneakers that had strawberries embroidered onto them and threw on a handsome blue coat as I followed him outside in my barn jacket and knitted hat. More family heirlooms. 

“Are you cold?” 

I looked around as evidence of the frigid North Carolina January touched everything in sight: the frost on the car windshields, the clouds of my breath (not to be confused with the clouds of his smoke). 

“A little,” I said, almost a whisper. The bones of my butt felt stuck to the icy curb beneath us, my hands in my pockets. He was so pretty I almost choked on the seven letters. 

He laughed. “Come here,” he motioned before wrapping an arm around me and stomping on the cigarette with a foot. 

I can’t remember what else we talked about, but I remember that moment, smelling of stranger and smoke, captivated by his eyes and accent, the way everything that came out of his mouth must have been in iambic pentameter. I see the silver rings on his fingers clearly in my head, the way I wanted to grab his hand with my own. I can still hear “Call it Fate, Call it Karma,” ringing in my head when I think of that night, the cold air, his warm face pressed into mine. The way we never ran out of words. 

After we went back inside, he fell asleep on my bed, and I didn’t have the courage to wake him up or to sleep myself, for fear of him becoming a horrible monster and killing me. Oh, to be a twenty-year-old woman.  

I stayed up all night, dozing in and out, beside Reza. A vanilla-lavender candle burned dry on the nightstand beside us. I was too scared to reach over him and blow it out, for fear of waking him. I’d never had anyone over like this before, let alone let them stay. But Reza…Reza was so different. He smelled like sandalwood and cinnamon and body heat. His face was soft yet scratchy, his lips full and comprised of secrets that my body—all of it—was begging to know. 

But we did not have sex. Not that day. We kissed, I held him in my hands, and the rest of that day, I couldn’t shake the smell of him from my skin. At one point his hand pressed down on my throat, the glinting silver of his rings burying itself into my skin. I pretended to like it, but I don’t think I did. In hindsight, I definitely didn’t.  

February, Sophomore Year of College 

After our first date-turned-sleepover, I didn’t see Reza again for a month. I stayed up late waiting for texts and calls that did not come. He did whatever English majors who live in Durham do who are too busy to reply to English majors in Chapel Hill. I got the occasional message, and I would come up with absurd things to talk about just to keep our nonexistent conversations going. I asked him about astrology and if he believed that pendulums actually worked for answering all of our cosmic questions. He facetiously replied that he loved pseudoscience, and that was the end of that conversation. I concluded that yes, he was, indeed, a Taurus. 

I did not spend all my hours pining after Reza’s magnetism, though. My whole world was not as boy- centric as it may seem. But, that is what this story is about. Yes, this is a tale that takes place with a university backdrop, but the only thing I wanted to study was all of the inner and outer mechanizations of Reza. 

I spent my days in class and my evenings with friends at basketball games, in the Cook Out drive through ordering Cheerwine floats and Cajun fries, or attending themed parties with my neighbors in the backyards of their college houses. We’d sit on the grass outside of Laurel’s house, a projector casting its shining sheen on a white sheet hung on the exterior’s brick wall with tape.  

We’d watch The Bachelor, Married at First Sight, and any other reality show that struck our fancy. We’d watch football too. And by “watch football,” I mean we’d get belligerently drunk and dance around the backyard littered with red cups, ping pong balls, and crushed cans. It was magnificent all of us dressed in blue and swaying. Laurel really did have the best backyard, and sometimes I wish I could walk through the overgrown grass again just to feel the memories creep up on my ankles like its poison ivy used to do. Perhaps I am too sentimental—but maybe don’t decide for yourself just yet.  

One unseasonably warm February night, we had a Joe Party in the yard. Though I am not patriotic, I dare say that I looked very sexy in my camo shirt, which, coupled with eye black, turned me into G.I. Joe. One of my friends dressed up like a soccer mom, calling herself “Joe Mama,” and the others were Trader Joe, like the grocery store, and Joe Biden, like the president. I’m sure there were many other Joes that night, but just like them, I too blacked out. 

Another night, this time inside my apartment, all of us dressed up as slutty versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory characters. I was Uncle Joe, if he actually got out of bed and helped Charlie like he should have. Ironically, Uncle Joe did not appear at the Joe Party. That night, my closet friend, Lila, was the golden ticket. She put on a golden crown and carried around golden Christmas baubles that she’d bought on sale.  

Another day, we had a white lies party, in which every person showed up in a white t-shirt with a lie about themselves written on it. Mine should’ve said “I am not thinking about Reza and the singular night we spent together” on it. Instead, mine said “I am my parents’ favorite child.” Again, something to unpack later. Hopefully with a professional. 

Those nights, despite my hazy memories, were some of the best of my life. I miss the days of hearing “Birdie, can you be in charge of the music? Your playlists are the best” and “Birdie, I want you to be my beer pong partner!” and “Birdie, I love you so much you’re my best friend I can’t wait to attend each other’s weddings and be there for each other’s kids and grow old together and stay friends forever.” 

College is the kingdom where, at the beginning, everything and everyone lasts forever. 

Lila and I passed many days sitting at the pool at our apartment complex, though it was still too cold to do so, and other days we huddled with our friends on the couch watching trashy television till the cows came home. Lila and I shared the apartment with two other girls, Celeste and Kirby, but after a while, they kept to their own, separate clique. It hurt at first. It stung for years, actually. More to deal with in therapy. 

But eventually, Lila and I got an apartment just us two, and then we both later moved to New York City, so I’d say it worked out. Though, she lives in Midtown, which is something I, in jest, cannot quite forgive.