“A few months. I’m in the management training program.Inshallah, I’ll be the general manager one day.”
“Inshallah,” Ali and I both repeated. God willing. We chatted briefly, catching up on his family and promising to make plans to get together soon.
“Good to see you both,” Hamza said before getting back to work.
Later, as we waited for the hotel valet to bring our car around after the wedding, the conversation about Rula and Marwan played over in my mind. “What would you do if I cheated?”
“Why?” He shot me an amused sidelong look. “Am I boring you?”
“Hah! As if that could ever happen.” Besides me genuinely liking my husband as a person, the physical attraction between us remained strong.
“Why are you asking?”
“I was just thinking about what you said about our friends earlier.” I didn’t want to mention Rula and Marwan by name in case any of their family and friends walked by and overheard. “If he does cheat, I wonder if she knows and pretends to be oblivious.”
He chuckled. “I could never get away with that with you.”
“I’m glad you realize that, buddy.”
“One woman is enough trouble for me.”
“How romantic.”
He grinned. “All I need is you, baby.”
I considered his words. “What if we stopped having sex?” I lowered my voice as the crowd around us grew with people waiting for their cars.
“Why would we stop having sex?”
“Just hypothetically,” I said. “Would you cheat then?”
“I guess it would depend.”
“On what?”
“On why we weren’t having sex. If you were sick, God forbid, obviously I would never cheat. But if you just suddenly arbitrarily decided you weren’t into it anymore, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Ali liked to have sex regularly, so I understood where he was coming from. “You’re saying I have nothing to worry about as long as we keep it moving in the bedroom?”
“You have nothing to worry about period.” His tone turned more serious. “Some men are the cheating type and others aren’t. I’m not the cheating type.”
“Lucky for me because I don’t think I could handle it if you were unfaithful,” I told him. “I wonder if I’d leave you.” That last part I said more to myself than to him.
“Is it even a question?”
“It would be hard to let another woman sink her claws into you. It might be easier to shoot you.”
He laughed. “So you’d murder me. Got it.”
“Yes, I think I’d rather you were dead than with someone else.”
“I’m learning so much about you. I never took you for the jealous type.”
I wasn’t. Or at least I hadn’t been. “We’ve been together so long now that I guess I’ve become territorial.” I lightly pinched his upper arm. “You’re mine, and don’t you forget it.”
“Right back at you. I’d kill any guy who tried to lay a hand on you.”
“Ha! Look at the difference between us. I’d kill you, and you’d kill the man.”
