“Are you two ready to order?”
“Yes,” Khalifa said, too smoothly, as if we’d rehearsed even this. “I’ll have the veggie burger with a side salad. And for her,”—he gestured at me without a glance—“the steak with a side of fries. Medium rare.”
The waiter scribbled, leaving before I could open my mouth.
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
He looked up from his water glass. “Something wrong?”
“You don’t get to speak for me,” I hissed. “And you certainly don’t get to decide what I eat. By the way, thanks for making it obvious you think I’m a fat slob.”
“I don’t think you’re a fat slob, Lillian,” he said evenly. “You spent a good amount of ourdatethree months ago discussing your love affair with red meat, so I assumed that’s what you’d want to eat.”
The words were reasonable enough, but it wasn’t about reason—it never was. It was about all the undisclosed judgments tucked into the corners of my life: my mother’s voice whispering from across the years, insisting I take the salad “just this once”,like having an appetite was something embarrassing that needed to be managed in polite company. Like choosing anything else required an explanation. Somewhere along the way, menus had stopped being menus and started feeling like tests—each item another chance to prove I had the discipline she always insisted I lacked.
Khalifa couldn’t know any of that—couldn’t possibly feel the old, familiar shame lurking beneath my choices—but somehow, even the faintest brush against that sore spot was enough to make me flinch. His assumption, logical and well-meaning as it might have been, scraped the raw bounds of every insecurity I carried like a secret companion.
I folded the napkin in my lap. “You assumed,” I said finally, “and you were wrong.”
But when the steak arrived, perfectly pink and sizzling, I ate it. Each bite was calculated, defiant, a small reclamation of my choices. Khalifa attacked his veggie burger with a precision thatmade him look absurd—fork and knife in perfect choreography, like some kind of culinary ritual I was too stubborn to understand.
We continued to bicker, our words looping around the table in lazy smoke rings, neither of us willing to admit to anything beyond superficial irritation. And as nonsensical—and inherently risky—as this entire agreement was, I thought, with a hushed, almost mischievous relief, that if I had to marry someone, at least it was the one person on the planet who didn’t shudder at the contents of my plate or silently tally my calories like a moral failing.
Somewhere between the steam of steak and the carefully sectioned salad across from me, the realization clicked. It wasn’t comfort or safety or even logic that made this arrangement remotely bearably. It was the rare, unexpected permission to exist exactly as I was, even if that permission came wrapped in sarcasm, barbed jokes, and an unhealthy amount of mutual exasperation.
By the time our plates were wiped clean—his with neat accuracy, mine with shameless carnage—the waiter dropped the leather folder on the table. Khalifa’s hand moved for it, but mine was faster. I slid the check toward me, tucked my card inside, and snapped it shut before he could protest.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
I smiled sweetly. “It’s okay, I’ve got this one. How much do history teachers make, anyway?”
The glare he leveled at me could have curdled the cream in my coffee. “Professor.”
I lifted one shoulder. “Same difference. Besides, I can guarantee you that whatever your salary is, you’d still have to add a few zeros at the end to match mine.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even roll his eyes, which I half-expected. Instead, he scooted out of the booth wordlessly, hismovements sharp as a slammed door. And then, true to form, when we reached the actual door, he let it swing shut in my face.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, catching it with my palm before it smacked me. But when I stepped outside, the word melted on my tongue. The sunset was stretched across the sky in impossible shades—lavender bruising into gold, streaks of coral bleeding into navy. For a second, it felt like the whole world had conspired to soften my irritation.
I dug my phone from my bag, angling it toward the horizon.
Behind me came the familiar sound of his disbelieving scoff. “You were serious about the sunset thing?”
“Of course I was serious.” I tilted the screen, chasing the strip of light that looked like a ribbon unfurling across the clouds. “The sky is pretty, so I’m going to take a picture of it.”
Then I flipped the camera, catching my own reflection in the glow. My hijab was fluttering lightly in the evening breeze, my cheeks flushed from arguing, my emerald eyes still a little sparkly with adrenaline.
“And now,” I said, framing the shot, “I’m going to take a picture of myself, because I’m pretty.”
He shook his head, already moving toward his car, his long strides cutting through the parking lot. “Try to stop staring at yourself long enough to make it on time to meet my family this Friday.”
I lowered my phone, calling after him. “Is there anything I should know to prepare myself?”
He stopped, the dying light gilding the lines of his profile before he turned, dark eyes unreadable, his mouth drawn in that almost-smile I was beginning to recognize as his version of a warning.
“Good luck.”
Chapter Three
