She sat up too, brushing dust off her slacks. “Want to go plan baby futures?”
That earned a real smile out of me. “Of course I do.”
We stood and left the floor behind, trading existential crises for tiny socks and strollers, pretending for a little while that the world wasn’t such a complicated place to keep your heart open in.
I STOPPED OUTSIDE THEdoor, my hand hovering over the handle, and took a few steadying breaths. It was ridiculous, I knew. I was just walking into my own home. But lately, the air inside that place had become way too charged.
When I finally pushed it open, the familiar smell of garlic and olive oil simmering on the stove hit me. Khalifa stood in the kitchen, sleeves rolled to his forearms, stirring something in a pot with that effortless calm he wore like a second skin. The overhead light caught on the curve of his jaw, and my pulse immediately betrayed me—fast, uneven, loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
He turned toward me, smiling an easy smile that instantly made my chest turn into mush. “Hey,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
I nodded mutely, toes curling in my shoes as I bent down to unlace them.Focus on the floor, on the door, on anything but him. I slipped them off and tucked them neatly into the closet.
He made a surprised sound. “What’s wrong with you?”
I froze mid-motion. “What do you mean?”
“You put your shoes away,” he said, feigning horror. “CleanLillian must be a side effect of something deadly. Are you sick?”
My jaw dropped. “Are you serious right now?”
He grinned.
I scowled, marched back to the closet, yanked the shoes out, and tossed them dramatically into the entryway. “Happy?”
His grin widened, perfect teeth flashing as he stirred the pot again. “I was kidding about the mood swings disorder thing, but maybe you should actually get checked out. I promise I won’t divorce you if it comes back positive.”
I glared at him, but he just chuckled.
“Wow,” he said. “No rebuttal? Youmustbe sick.”
I turned on my heel and muttered, “You’re insufferable,” before heading to my room.
Once the door clicked shut behind me, I leaned against it, pressing a hand to my chest. My heart was still beating too fast, my palms damp. I told myself it was just stress, exhaustion, nerves, adrenaline residue. But then I caught my reflection in the mirror: hijab mussed, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.
No, it wasn’t stress. It was him.
The memory found me before I even realized I’d stopped breathing. The bathroom, his voice,You’re my light, Lillian. He told me I was beautiful,radiant, that if he could open his heart for anyone, he’d choose me. And I’d lay there, still and stupid, my heart folding itself in half because what else was I supposedto do with that? What did a person do when someone said something like that and then never mentioned it again?
He had to have meant it. He wasn’t careless with his words; if anything, he wasstingywith them, like every sentence cost him something. But then why hadn’t he said anything since?
Maybe hewasincapable of being with someone. Maybe that was the tragedy of him—he could offer tenderness only in flashes, never long enough to be real. Or maybe he was waiting formeto make the first move.
Except girls weren’t supposed to. There was an unspoken rule, buried somewhere deep in every romantic ideal of womanhood and restraint I’d ever been fed: don’t say it first, don’t need it first, don’tfeelit first. Wait. Always wait.
That was the reason, wasn’t it? Why I was so determined to keep my mouth shut? Because if I never said it out loud, I couldn’t make it real. And if I didn’t make it real, and he never felt the same way, then I couldn’t get hurt. It was self-preservation disguised as dignity.
But maybe I’d already broken that rule just by feeling this much. And once you broke it, there was no going back. Because saying something out loud wasn’t what made it real—feelingit did. Letting it melt through you, liquefy in your veins until you couldn’t function without it. Letting it spread into every hidden corner of your body and soul—that’swhat made it real. And you couldn’t unfeel something like that. Once the seed was planted, the roots were there for good.
The thoughts tangled until my head began to throb. I pressed my fists against my temples, trying to crush the words away, to steady the spin of it all—his hands, his silences, the impossible gravity between us. It was starting to feelphysical—this wanting, this ache to know what it all meant. The pain bloomed beneath my skin, raw and pulsing behind my ribs.
There was a sudden knock, pulling me from my spiral.
“Dinner’s ready,” Khalifa called through the door. “Come eat.”
His voice sounded so normal, sodomestic, making everything so much worse.
I exhaled shakily, eyes fluttering shut.Dinner, just dinner.
