Chapter Two #2
I leaned across the table, chin propped on my fist, every nerve ending bristling. “You’re eventually going to have to meet my best friend, and if you get a single question wrong when she grills you, she’ll know something’s up.”
“Why don’t you just tell her the truth?”
Even though I’d been bracing for it, I hated how fast the shame rushed in.
“Do you think marrying you for the sake of moving out is something I’m proud of?
You think it’s something I want anyone but you and me to know?
It’s humiliating.” My voice snagged, but I forced the words out anyway.
“So please, just memorize the facts, and we can get this over with.”
“Well. Since you said please.” He flipped to the first page and cleared his throat. “Favorite color: pink. Shocking.”
“Are you going to memorize or editorialize?”
He ignored me, skimming further. “Pet peeve: people who chew loudly. Fair enough. Allergic to cats—tragic. Would’ve pegged you for a feline enthusiast.”
“I don’t like things that pretend to love you and then claw your face off when you least expect it,” I muttered, too quickly, and regretted it almost immediately when his gaze flicked up, curious.
He turned the page without comment. “Height: one hundred and eighty-two centimeters.” He peered at me over the top of the notebook, slow grin unfurling. “Ah. Taller than me. That explains the heels.”
Heat crept into my cheeks. “Why should I make myself smaller just to soothe the fragile egos of men like you?”
“I’m not insecure about my height. But I’d bet anything that you’re insecure about yours.”
I wanted to reach across the table and rip the criminally pleased expression right off his face. Instead, I stabbed my finger toward the notebook. “Keep reading.”
“Fine.” He scanned down the list. “Guilty pleasure: going to the hospital nursery and planning a future for each baby.” His head snapped up, eyebrows raised so high I thought they might disappear into his hairline. “You should feel very guilty about doing that.”
I blinked, affronted. “Why? It’s cute.”
“No,” he said slowly, weighing every syllable. “It’s not cute. It sounds like something psychopaths do to their victims before they kill them.”
“I’m imagining tiny humans growing up to be astronauts and ballerinas. That’s not psychopathic, that’s—optimistic.”
“It’s disturbing.” He leaned back in his chair, giving me that vexing, unreadable look. “Completely unhinged behavior. Which, I’m starting to discover, is pretty on-brand for you.”
“Unhinged?” I scoffed, folding my arms. “You’re unhinged. At least my guilty pleasure doesn’t involve—what—alphabetizing spices and staring broodingly out of windows?”
“Alphabetizing spices is efficient. And brooding is a lifestyle choice.” His eyes flicked down. “Favorite meal: pancakes at midnight. Soft spot for hospital vending machine coffee. Secret hobby: taking pictures of sunsets.”
“Don’t say it like that,” I snapped.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s stupid. Like I’m some open-book cliché you can analyze for fun. Like I’m some basic, shallow ditz who walks around with her head in the clouds, taking pictures of skies and pretending they mean something.”
He tilted his head at my outburst, the picture of peak judgment, and I instantly wished I could bite my tongue off. The words had slipped out before I could stop them, and now they hung there—awkward, pointed, idiotically revealing.
It was misdirected anger, landing squarely on the wrong person.
If my brain was my greatest gift, then my heart was my most consistent liability—loud, impulsive, forever hijacking my mouth before my critical thinking skills could catch up.
It was pathetic, really, how five seconds with my mother could rearrange my entire anatomy and turn logic into static.
Turn emotion into defense. Turn me into someone who felt like a culmination of everything she’d taught me to hate about myself.
He studied me for a long moment, the teasing stripped from his expression. His eyes darkened, deepened—like they were sucking every detail I hadn’t meant to give away, every secret I’d left between the lines of that ridiculous, color-coded notebook. “You wrote it down, Lillian. Not me.”
I swallowed hard, the air suddenly too thick. For a second, I almost forgot why I didn’t like him.
Almost.
“Just...memorize it. That’s all I need from you.”
“This is surface-level stuff. Favorite color, coffee order, your vendetta against men under six feet.” He pushed the notebook back across the table. “It doesn’t prove that we know each other.”
“It proves enough. It proves we won’t get caught.”
“You mean it proves we’ll sound rehearsed.”
“That’s the point,” I shot back. “Sarah doesn’t need our souls. She needs bullet points.”
“You really think relationships can be boiled down to bullet points?”
“This isn’t a relationship,” I said, stabbing the menu with my finger for emphasis. “This is a business transaction with occasional dinners where you insult my wardrobe choices.”
“Then you should at least be grateful I’m putting in the effort to make our fake love story convincing.”
“Oh, believe me. I’m positively swooning.” Then I added, “You should give me some of yours, too.”
“There’s no need. No one’s going to be grilling you.”
I shook my head. “Of course. God forbid Khalifa stoop to the indignity of being known.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant. Honestly, it’s no wonder someone with a personality like yours doesn’t have any friends.”
Something flickered across his face—quick, like a match struck and blown out before it could catch. Then the waiter appeared at our table, pad in hand, saving him from answering.
“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 our date three 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 that made 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, his movements 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.”