I choked on nothing but air.
“Zay!” I said through my coughing fit, and Zainab patted my back, cackling like a witch.
“What?” she asked when I managed to breathe and straighten up again.
I huffed.
“You’ve gotten way too comfortable, missy. Ever since you got all cooped up with your lesbian lover?—”
“Girlfriend, thank you very much.”
“Lezzzz-bian lover,” I repeated, adding emphasis just to mess with her. “You’re way too comfortable in your own skin. I don’t like it. Take it off.”
She chuckled.
“Someone had to be. And I’m not taking my skin off, thank you very much. Do you know how grotesque that would be? And Halloween was weeks ago. No one needs to see that.”
“Ha ha. You’re hilarious,” I mocked.
“Aren’t I? I should be a comedian.”
I rolled my eyes and stopped in front of the bookstore. My baby. My baby full of my feline babies that ran up to the glass display to greet and welcome me home.
“Please, don’t. I couldn’t handle the jokes about your stupid ex-husband.”
Zay stared at me and smiled.
“What about jokes about my queer ex-husband?”
I chortled, unlocked the door, and shut it in her face.
“Hey!” she shouted.
“Go to work. Leave me alone,” I shouted back through the glass.
“Fine. I’m never rescuing you again from any aunties or uncles ever again. See how you like that.” She wagged a finger at me and then turned around and marched off.
She appeared at the backdoor two seconds later.
“I thought I told you to go away,” I said.
“No, you told me to go to work, so here I am.”
I sighed, and I opened the store so we could welcome in the crowds again, thinking maybe it was a mistake to start a business with my ex-wife. Although, to be fair, as soon as she was done with her interior design degree and got some clients, she’d be out of here.
Maybe that was a reason I hadn’t moved on. Maybe I was still scared to do anything, because even though we weren’t married anymore—not even in the slightest—I still felt like I was married.
Or maybe, just maybe, I was making every excuse possible to delay the inevitable. Putting myself out there and getting rejected.
Because why wouldn’t they reject me?
I was a forty-one-year-old Muslim guy with a late-in-life coming out, a store full of books and cats, and an ex-wife as a business partner. Wasn’t I quite the package?
Who would ever want me?
I sighed and picked up Missy, the male ginger kitten I had picked off the streets just the other day, and who nuzzled up to me like I was his everything.
At least there was someone—or many someones—in this store that wanted me. That loved me.
