My jaw dropped. The audacity. Thegrammar-checkedaudacity.
I set the phone face down on my desk, exhaled hard, and muttered, “Great. A double life speedrun.”
WHEN I FINALLY DRAGGEDmyself home to change, the sky outside the window was melting into shades of orange and lavender, that particular hour where the world looked both exhausted and breathtaking. I paused in the living room, keys still in hand, and pressed my nose against the glass, just to watch it for a minute.
I never got to see sunsets anymore—too many shifts that bled into nights, too many surgeries that ended with me stumbling home under fluorescent streetlights. And standing there, staring out at the fiery horizon, I felt the unfairness of it nip at me. The world could be so beautiful, and I was missing it while I pulled out tiny humans.
A voice behind me broke the spell. “You’re going to make us late.”
Khalifa was leaning against the wall like he had nowhere better to be, though his appearance said otherwise—shirtbuttoned neatly, slacks pressed, hair pushed back and still damp from the shower. He looked surprisingly put together, which was rude, considering I looked like I’d crawled out of a laundry basket.
“Do you ever stop being on time?” I lobbed at him.
“Do you ever start?”
I opened my mouth to retort, but then my gaze focused on his outfit. “What,” I said carefully, “are you wearing?”
He glanced down, then back at me, expression blank. “Clothes. Why?”
“Why?” I repeated, the word breaking into a strangled laugh. “Because none of the colors match.”
He straightened a little, suddenly on guard. “What are you talking about? I’m wearing navy blue and green. Perfectly normal combination.”
I just...stared at him for a second. “No,” I said, like I was explaining photosynthesis to a toddler. “You’re wearing navy blue and burgundy.”
His brows pinched. “It’s green.”
Groaning, I spun toward the kitchen, grabbed the reddest apple from the fruit bowl, and held it up as Exhibit A. “What color is this?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Brown.”
The apple slipped from my hand, thunking back into the bowl, and I pressed my palm to my forehead. “Oh. My.God. You’re color-blind.”
He looked genuinely affronted. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, youare.” I jabbed a finger at him. “Trust my medical degree on this one. If we’re debating world history, I’ll sit down and let you educate me. But when it comes to rods and cones,Professor, I win.”
He blinked, slow and suspicious, like I was trying to swindle him in a card game.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered, brushing past him toward his room. “You’ve survived your entireancientlife not knowing you’re color-blind? That’s a miracle. A genuine, Prophet Musa-parting-the-sea miracle.”
“Ancient?” he echoed, following me down the hall with an offended huff. “I’m only four years older than you.”
“Yeah,legally,” I shot back over my shoulder. “But I have the soul of a whimsical twenty-two-year-old. I’m basically a child bride.” I threw open his closet and started flipping through hangers. “I put up with the vegan thing. I put up with the short thing. But I draw the line at going out in public with a man dressed like a clown.”
He stood behind me, still radiating bewildered indignation. “I’m telling you—it’s green.”
“Oh, shutup,” I snapped, yanking out a crisp white shirt and a blazer that actually matched. I tossed them onto his bed, stormed out, and stalked toward my room, still grumbling under my breath about how I’d somehow ended up as the personal stylist to a husband who didn’t even believe he needed one.
The restaurant was buzzing when we arrived, full of chatter and rattling glasses, the kind of trendy place with Edison bulbs and menus printed on recycled paper that screamedhip but expensive.
Khalifa’s colleagues spotted us immediately—a table of five, waving us over with smiles that were too wide to be anything but nosy.
“There he is!” a man in his forties called, beard trimmed within an inch of its life. “And Mrs. Khalifa, finally revealed!”
“Mrs. Khalifa?” I echoed pleasantly. “Oh, no, I didn’t survive medical school and twelve years of caffeine dependency just to be reassigned like office furniture. I go byDr. Lillian Tariq. My friends call me Lilly,” I added lightly, “but based onthat charmingly sexist greeting, I’m not entirely convinced you qualify.”
There was a brief, awkward beat. I could’ve sworn Khalifa coughed to hide a laugh behind me, but that might’ve just been the sound of my dignity trying to escape the room.
