“Remind me, one day I’ll take you out to see all the underrated sights.”
Reena bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that. She should be distancing herself from him, not offering to be his Toronto tour guide. “Why do you want to go back to Africa?”
“I don’t know. I feel the most…me, there. I told you I pick up dialects easy, right? I think I’m a little too adaptable. I acclimate to environments so easily that I forget who I am, sometimes. I think I’ve only felt like me, really me, at home in Tanzania.” He looked down. “I’m not making sense. Ignore me.” He sipped his drink.
Reena smiled sadly. She understood exactly what he meant. She was also the adaptable one. The amiable one. The one who made friends easily whenever she changed jobs. Adapted her interests to whoever she was dating. Cosplay, hockey, barbecue, tabletop gaming. She even played in an axe-throwing league once with a boyfriend. She never faked interest—she honestly enjoyed those things. But she understood what Nadim meant when he said he didn’t feel like himself. She only felt like herself when baking bread.
She felt for him. But at the same time, his revelation raised new questions. Like: Why did he move here if he wanted to be in Africa? And more importantly, did her parents know that this potential husband wanted to return to Africa at some point? Was this their way of shipping Reena off the continent?
She took a gulp of her gin.Can’t ask those questions. She closed her eyes, feeling a sharp prickle behind them.
She. Fucking. Lost. Her job today. Shecouldmove to Africa, and no one would care.
A squeeze of her hand jolted her eyes open. “Hey,” Nadim said, concerned. “You okay?”
“Yeah…just really crappy day. Let’s talk about something else.” She gently removed her hand from under his.
“Okay.” He grinned. “Can I ask questions then? Don’t feel youhaveto answer them.”
“Deal.”
“Why do you make so much bread?”
She shrugged. “I love bread. Always have. There is nothing like the feeling of creating something so complex with my own hands. Sourdough bread is pretty much three ingredients—flour, water, and salt. But when you play with the other variables: hydration, fermentation, wild yeasts, temperature, or flour types, you can create something that tastes nothing like—and is nutritiously nothing like—the original ingredients. Bread is truly magic.”
“I fully support and enable your habits, so long as you share.”
She smiled.
His hand waved in the direction of her head. “Another question: How long does it take you to do that with your hair?”
“Do what?”
“Make it so perfectly curly.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t do anything. Just a bit of hair product. It grows out of my head this way.”
“Bullshit. My ex used to curl her hair with this weird hot cone-shaped thing.”
Reena laughed. “I assure you, my curls are natural. I don’t need a curling iron.”
“But yours are like,perfect. They’re like little springs. Like bungee cords.”
Well, that was a new one. “Bungee cords?”
“Yeah. Look.” He picked up the bottom of a ringlet near her face and held it on the top of her head. “You could bungee jump with your hair.” Still holding the end of the curl, he mimicked bungee-jumping by launching the hair up and then down, pulling it taut before letting go and watching the curl spring back in place.
Reena frowned. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re very strange?”
“It’s been mentioned, yes.” He sipped his drink.
“You asked two questions. My turn. Why are you so buff?”
He laughed, head falling down to his arm on the table. Clearly, he was as drunk as she was. Also, he had thick hair. It looked soft. As did the skin on the back of his neck. She was resisting the urge to touch when he finally raised his head and leered openly before answering, flexing his biceps to give her a show. “Glad you approve. I try to lift every day at lunch and on most mornings. I love the rush of weight lifting.”
“Oh, god, you’re one of those ‘do you even lift, bruh?’ guys, aren’t you?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
