“Why aren’t you moving? Let’sgo,” he said, voice clipped.
“Wait.”
“What now?”
I took a breath, feeling suddenly conspicuous under the porch lights. “How do I...look?”
Immediately, I wanted to grab the words and shove them back down my throat.
He stilled. Then, and it almost made me stumble, his face softened—not much, barely a glimmer, but enough to make my chest tighten. “You look beautiful, Lillian.”
Something bloomed under my skin that I didn’t have a name for—not warmth exactly, more like a strange, uninvited sensation my body hadn’t consulted me about. It spread anyway, curious and inconvenient, settling somewhere behind my ribs before I could jam it back where it belonged.
For one dangerous second, it almost felt real. And then—of course—I caught it. The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth, a smug littlegotchathat said he knew exactly what that word did to me and had deployed it strategically, like a verbal elbow to the gut.
“Oh, shutup,” I scoffed, storming past him.
Khalifa chuckled behind me as I opened the door, the sound low and private, like he’d found some small victory in my hesitation.
Everyone was in the living room, waiting for us—our parents, my brothers, his sister. His family having fewer members should’ve been a relief, lessening the number of eyes judging me, but somehow it didn’t. His sister made me more nervous than a sprawling, boisterous clan ever could. Being the only girl in a house filled with boys had shaped my upbringing in ways I couldn’t quite measure. I’d grown up with brothers, yes, but the kind of sisterly intuition and protection that Arab families prized was foreign to me. Besides Sarah, I didn’t know how to do girl talk; every word I spoke felt careful, untested, weighted. And I knew it was common for sisters to hover over their brothers in a way that bordered on absurd, even slightly eerie. I didn’t feel that with my own brothers, but did his sister? Did she possess that fierce, territorial love, the kind that could turn a small glance into a warning?
My gaze drifted past her to his mother, frail and delicate in her wheelchair. Her thin hands rested in her lap, the skin almost translucent, veins like pale rivers beneath it. The guilt came fast. She had traveled all this way, with her sickness and her discomfort, because she believed—because shehoped—that her son was in love. That he had chosen someone who could, somehow, match the world he inhabited. And now here I was, standing in the threshold, every thought in my head drafting a hundred petty revenge fantasies about sticking it to my mother, instead of acknowledging how much effort it must’ve takenhisdying mother to claw her way here tonight.
I swallowed, heart tightening in a way that had nothing to do with nerves. This—her presence, their expectation, the careful choreography of introductions—was bigger than a first impression. It was a reminder that even in a life as measured and deliberate as mine, some stakes existed that I couldn’t control, no matter how well I smiled or how perfectly I adjusted my hijab.
Khalifa cleared his throat. “This is Lillian,” he said kindly, as if he hadn’t just accused me of being personally responsible for delaying a laboring woman’s contractions.
I stepped forward, smiling rigidly as I extended my hand to his sister. “Hi. It’s so nice to meet you, Amina.”
Amina’s grip was firm, her smile sweet in all the right places, but her eyes were calculating, gathering data points and filing them away for later use.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.
Then his mother reached for me, her feeble hands surprisingly steady as they cupped my face. I froze, then leaned in as she kissed both of my cheeks, her voice warm, lilting. “Thank you, habibti. Thank you for wanting to marry my son. You are beautiful, Masha’Allah, so beautiful. I prayed he would find someone like you.”
The guilt surged again, swift and biting, but I smiled anyway, nodding, murmuring the right words, knowing she deserved sincerity even if the circumstances weren’t built on it.
Khalifa, meanwhile, was shaking hands with my parents, with Hakim, Musa, Abdullah and Adam, every move dipped in a sudden, startling charm. He was gracious and polite and disgustingly chivalrous, the human equivalent of a cinnamon roll someone else got to eat. Watching him bow his head slightly as my mother spoke made me want to grab one of the decorative throw pillows and fastball it straight at his maddeningly courteous face. Where was this version of him when he was with me? Where was this smooth, crowd-pleasing mojo when we were bickering about menus and chronically late arrivals? Apparently, his charisma had a strict “not for personal use” policy. It was an act he saved exclusively for audiences who were not me.
I perched on the edge of the couch, trying to exhale the tension from my shoulders, but one sharp glare from my mother had me springing to my feet again. Right.Hospitality. I forced a smile, excusing myself to the kitchen under the guise of refreshments.
Amina followed, of course.
The moment we crossed into the kitchen, she leaned against the counter, arms folded. “So,” she said, stretching out the syllable, “how did you and Khalifa meet?”
I swallowed. “My mom set us up. One thing led to another.”
“That vague, huh?”
I made a noise that technically qualified as laughter, but only by definition. “What can I say? Romance looks boring when you narrate it out loud. I guess you had to be there.”
“It wasn’t love at first sight?”
I busied myself with the juice pitcher, pouring carefully to avoid looking directly at her. “Does anyone actually admit to loveat first sight? I’m pretty sure that’s a marketing ploy invented by the greeting card industry.”
She smirked. “You didn’t answer the question.”
“Because the answer’s boring,” I said, setting a glass in front of her with a little more force than necessary. “We met. We talked. He annoyed me. I annoyed him. Somehow, we’re here. Riveting stuff.”
