Ten
“I really liked your friends,” said Burak, turning his head to face her in the back of the taxi. True to Enes’s suggestion, they had stayed out longer than intended and the wine had flowed slightly more freely than Jasmine had planned. She was warm and relaxed as she reflected on the evening they had shared.
“They liked you, too.” She put her hand on top of Burak’s and gave a soft squeeze before catching herself and sliding it back to her lap and looking out the window again. “And I think we’ve got a solid plan for the colony now. It feels a little silly, doesn’t it? Like, we probably could have just looked it up online and watched a video. We didn’t have to rope in a whole veteran…veterin…veterinarian.” She giggled as she stumbled over the word. “We should get started soon. Tomorrow, maybe.”
When she glanced over, Burak’s shoulders were up in an exaggerated shrug, his inhibitions at least as relaxed as her own. “I can forgive us for that,” he said. “It was too important to just leave it to Google, you know? It’s…I mean, it’s their family , Jas. We can’t mess that up. Separate the cats from their families, break up their bonds…” He shook his head, and she could see from the curve of his brow that he was deadly serious. “I would feel like such a monster if we did that. You would, too.”
“I would?” She tried to ignore the way his shortening of her name, the affection and intimacy of it felt, flicking around in her lower belly.
Burak nodded. “We aren’t so different, you and me. I mean, we aren’t the same, either. Case in point, I like you more than you like me. But we both like cats.” He tipped his head back and forth as if weighing his next words. “You might be a little more overt about it, what with the whole cat cafe thing. And I might pretend I’m not as big a fan of them as you are, but we both know that’s not really the truth.”
Jasmine picked the safest statement of his to respond to. “You never had me fooled. From the first time I saw you, you were feeding a whole flock of cats and then it only got more obvious from there.”
The taxi pulled up in front of her building, and before she could wish Burak a good night, she saw that he was already opening his door as well. Ever the gentleman , she thought, realizing that he was going to insist on seeing her safely to her door, perhaps going on to walk home from her apartment, now that his car was tucked in for the night on the other side of town.
As they walked towards the door together, the words burst out of her. “You like me more than I like you?”
Burak nodded. “Obviously.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “No. You just like to flirt, and maybe my grandmother got into your head about some potential sparks between us.” She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean you like me. Maybe you’re just bored. You need a hobby. Or an actual crush, because then you’ll realize that isn’t what this is. You know what I mean?”
Burak only shook his head, his expression as serious as she had ever seen it. “I’m afraid that not even you can tell me what I feel, Jas.” He gestured towards himself. “I contain multitudes. Depth of feeling you can’t even imagine contained in this body of mine.”
A shiver teased its way up Jasmine’s spine, and she clamped her lips together to stop herself from dismissing Burak and his words, playing off the way they had impacted her. “Okay,” she said finally, her voice small.
“Okay?” he asked, cocking his head slightly to the side. “Is that you giving me permission to like you, or…?”
Jasmine sighed. “I don’t know what it is. Me accepting that there’s a chance that could be true, I suppose. Not trying to talk you out of it.”
“Entertaining the possibility?”
She gave him a small nod, which caused a smile to spread across his lips.
“So, will you let me take you out tomorrow? I mean, on a date, just to be clear.”
“A date where we relocate a colony of cats?”
Burak shook his head. “No. After that. A date where the two of us go out and have fun together and we don’t pretend we aren’t interested in something more.”
“I wasn’t—” She let her sentence drop off at a look from him that seemed to go right through the outer layers of her persona. “Maybe I was,” she admitted with a sigh. “Maybe I have been in denial this whole time just because I don’t want my grandmother to be right. Just because I’m stubborn.”
“That’s one of my favorite things about you.” He held up a hand. “And before you can say that I don’t know you well enough to have favorite things about you, please keep in mind that I was hearing about you daily for six months. Every time I crossed paths with your grandmother at the bakery, in fact. I had plenty of time to come up with a list of theoretical things I might simply adore about you, and it only took a few moments to confirm that my intuition on that matter had been, frankly, exceptional.”
There wasn’t much Jasmine could think of to say in response to Burak’s proclamation. She nodded at him, grateful for the relative darkness that was covering the flush of her cheeks. They continued the remaining steps to her apartment, and as she pushed the front door open, he leaned in. He pulled her body to his for the quickest of embraces, murmuring, “See you tomorrow then,” as his lips grazed her temple.
“See you tomorrow,” she replied, turning to face him and seeing only his retreating back. She pulled her jacket closer against the chill in the air and jogged up the stairs, ready to be alone with her cats and process the evening that had left her feeling uncertain about so many things.