Chapter Four
KHALIFA WAS LEANING against his black SUV when I pulled into the driveway, arms crossed, gaze fixed and perfectly impatient. The second I stepped out of the car, he snapped, “You’re late.”
“Sorry. I was busy bringing life into this world.”
He let out a low, incredulous hum. “You couldn’t have done that earlier in the day?”
“I’ll be sure to pass along your preferred delivery hours to the next uterus I meet.”
He rolled his eyes, gesturing a hand toward the front door. “Go inside.”
I hesitated mid-step, a flicker of longing threading through the crisp evening air.
I wished Sarah were here to look me over, to offer a compliment, to say I looked pretty without sarcasm.
A small, absurd part of me wanted Khalifa to do it too, even though logic screamed that it would be him mocking me in some elegant, infuriating way.
“Why aren’t you moving? Let’s go,” 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 little gotcha that said he knew exactly what that word did to me and had deployed it strategically, like a verbal elbow to the gut.
“Oh, shut up,” 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 she hoped—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 taken his dying 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 love at 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.”
“You don’t seem like someone who annoys easily.”
I gave her a pointed look. “You’ve known me five seconds.”
“And in five seconds,” she said smoothly, “I’ve learned you’re funny, quick, and very practiced at dodging questions.”
My chest felt tight, like she was testing me the way you test the seams of a dress—checking where the fabric might give.
“Well,” I said finally, meeting her gaze, “if you really want the truth...your brother and I have a talent for bickering. It’s practically our love language. Don’t worry, though. I don’t take him too seriously, and he doesn’t take me seriously at all. It works.”
Amina’s lips curved. “We’ll see.”
As she sipped, I caught the faintest flicker of amusement there, but it was threaded with what I feared—skepticism, maybe even protectiveness.
I balanced the tray and carried it back into the living room. Glasses of juice gleamed like amber jewels beside the neat arrangement of fancy chocolates and Arab sweets that my mother insisted on displaying during visits like this, as if sugared almonds could prove we were a respectable family.
I moved around the room, serving each person, their polite murmurs and thank yous blurring together. When I reached Khalifa, he took his glass with an unreadable look, his eyes flicking up to mine. He leaned in just slightly, voice pitched low enough for only me to hear.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
Two small words, but the way he said them—strangely soft, almost intimate—made me nearly drop the tray. My fingers trembled before I pulled them back, clutching the handle a little tighter as if that could stop the quick flutter that had no business existing in my chest.
I sank onto the couch, smoothing my skirt, trying to look unfazed. Which was, of course, the exact moment my brothers decided to pounce.
“So,” Hakim started, grinning, “what’s it like, marrying a girl who can eat more than you?”
Musa chuckled, elbowing Khalifa. “Seriously. I don’t know how you’ll keep up. At family dinners, she can out-eat all four of us.”
“Five,” Adam corrected, smirking. “Don’t forget Baba. She beat him once in a shawarma count.”
Hakim snapped his fingers. “That’s right—at least until Mama started making her eat in the kitchen by herself.”
“Like a dog that’s been bad,” Abdullah chimed in, like this were a perfectly reasonable family policy.
They laughed, but there was a bite beneath it—a familiar pointedness that had followed me all my life, hiding behind “jokes.” Teasing adorned as affection, meant to bruise under the illusion of love. I smiled like it didn’t sting, my cheeks stiff, my fingers gripping the fabric of my dress.
Khalifa didn’t laugh. Instead, he set his glass down, leaning back, his expression calm, almost casual. “And what do you all do?”
Hakim’s confidence hiccupped. “Uh, I’m a truck driver. Mostly highways and bad gas-station coffee.”