Chapter Twenty
I STAYED IN THE BATHROOM longer than any human should. Brushing my teeth twice. Washing my face three times. Folding and refolding my clothes into smaller and smaller squares like that might somehow shrink the discomfort waiting for me outside the door.
By the time I finally worked up the nerve to go back into the room, I was praying he’d fallen asleep.
He hadn’t.
He was lying on a makeshift bed on the floor, one arm tucked behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling like he was studying it.
The lamp beside him was off, just a faint spill of moonlight filtering through the curtains.
I slipped in wordlessly, turned off the last light, and crawled beneath the covers, every sound amplified—the creak of the mattress, the whisper of fabric, the drum of my heart that I swore he could hear.
It was quiet. Too quiet. And it was drilling into my ears until I had to say something, anything.
“Khalifa?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
Nothing.
Then, finally, “No.”
Against my better judgment, I chuckled. “Do you...want to have a sleepover?”
There was a beat of silence, a small rustle of blankets, and then the sound of him standing. My breath caught when the bed dipped beside me as he sat down, careful to stay above the covers, a safe ocean of fabric between us.
We lay there for a while, staring at nothing, the air pulsing with that exhilarating, impossible tension that refused to die no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.
“I finally figured out the answer to another one of my questions,” I said.
His voice was amused. “What question?”
“Your secret hobby.”
“Oh, really? Enlighten me.”
I squinted at his silhouette in the dark. “Model ships.”
“That’s not a secret hobby.”
“You can’t just let me have this one thing?”
That earned an actual laugh, warm and deep and completely unguarded.
“A real laugh,” I said, smiling. “That’s two now. We should have sleepovers more often.”
“Wait—another question. What else do you know?”
“You,” I said, with exaggerated seriousness, “have a chocolate addiction.”
He scoffed. “No, I don’t.”
“I saw the mountain of wrappers in your office, hidden away in the trash like a shameful secret.”
He didn’t say anything, which only made me smile wider.
“Dr. Khalifa Nasser,” I said, drawing out his name for effect. “Dark and hard on the outside, sweet as sugar on the inside.”
He made a sound somewhere between a chortle and a groan. “I’m not sweet as sugar.”
“No, you’re right. You’re more of a seventy-percent-cocoa kind of man. Brooding, complex, occasionally bitter, but still—” I pretended to think. “—dangerously addictive.”
He laughed again—softer this time, a little rusty from disuse—and for a second, it didn’t feel like we were in a house full of grief and goodbyes.
It just felt like we were two people who didn’t really know what to do with each other, but were trying anyway.
Maybe it was selfish, but something like pride bloomed in my chest because I’d made him laugh.
Him, of all people. Him, who’d probably spent his entire life walking around like he was carrying the weight of his family on his back, too proud—or too tired—to ever set it down.
After a long moment, his voice cut through the night. “You can ask me.”
I turned my head toward him, though I couldn’t quite see his face. “Ask you what?”
“Your questions, whatever they are. I might not answer them all, but you can ask, Lillian.”
I hesitated, his mother’s words flickering in my mind—be patient with him, habibti. Love him. A hundred questions were sitting on my tongue—what he’d been through, what broke him enough to build walls so high. But it wasn’t the right time, not when the ache in the air was still so new, so raw.
And if I was being honest, there was a part of me that wanted him to tell me those things because he wanted me to know them—wanted to confide in me—not because I’d cornered him into it.
So instead, I asked, “What’s your favorite color? Wait—can color-blind people even have a favorite color?”
“I’m not color-blind.”
“Mhm. That’s why you needed several labeled diagrams to tell the correct difference between yellow, orange, and red.”
A beat. Then, deadpan: “It’s green.”
“Green,” I repeated warily. “Very original. I bet you also like oxygen and gravity.”
“You asked.”
“And you could’ve said something unique, like burnt marigold or—oh, I don’t know—chartreuse.”
“That’s not a real color.”
“It is, actually. You’d know that if you didn’t live in grayscale. Okay, next question. If you could only eat one food—other than chocolate—for the rest of your life, what would it be?”
“You’re really going to waste your one chance at truth on that?”
“Absolutely. This is serious journalism, Professor.”
He thought for a moment. “Probably hummus.”
“Hummus?” I teased. “That’s not even a real answer. That’s like saying ‘air’ or ‘water.’”
He faced me, and I could almost see the ghost of a smile. “It’s versatile.”
“Fine,” I said. “Then mine is fries. Not versatile at all, but they’ve never disappointed me.”
“That explains a lot,” he murmured.
I gasped, feigning offense. “Are you implying I’m basic?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. It was implied in your tone. Favorite season?”
“Autumn.”
“Predictable. Next.”
“You didn’t even process the last one.”
“I processed it. I just decided it wasn’t interesting enough to dwell on. Who’s the guy in all your pictures?”
He froze. “Uh...my best friend.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have best friends?”
“He passed away.”
“Oh.” My chest tightened. “I’m sorry. Allah yarhamu.”
He nodded once, like that was all the space he wanted to give it. Then, casually, “I guess you’re kind of my best friend now.”
A weird, jittery thing knocked against my heart.
Under the covers, my hand had drifted toward the middle of the mattress at some point.
His was resting on top of the blanket, palm down, the fabric dipping between us in a ghost of contact.
Warmth filtered through layers of thread, the almost of it.
Close enough to register, not close enough to claim.
I found myself wondering what it would feel like without the barrier, or polite stretch of cotton, or plausible deniability. Just skin meeting skin, heat answering heat.
I didn’t move.
Neither did he.
“You mean your only friend,” I said lightly, because deflection was my cardio. “What about your biggest fear?”
He hesitated long enough for me to know he wasn’t going to answer. I filled the silence before it got too heavy. “Mine’s pigeons.”
“Pigeons?”
“Yeah. They’re so shifty. And they have that look, like they know things.”
He laughed again, louder this time. “Are you serious?”
“Totally serious. You’ve never been cornered by a pigeon before. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re so weird.”
“And you’re finally smiling,” I said, feeling it more than seeing it. “So I’d say my work here is done.”
He let out a low, content hum that filled the room.
“Do you think I’m annoying?” I blurted, because my brain had never once encountered a vulnerable silence it didn’t feel compelled to ruin.
“Yes.”
The answer came so fast it nearly stole the air straight out of me. I turned to him, scandalized. But then his dimples popped, his teeth flashing in the dark as he nudged his knee against mine. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he’d meant it and, somehow, didn’t seem to mind at all.
It was embarrassing how easily Malik’s words had taken up residence in my head, looping there nonstop. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he felt that way, that most people probably did. If I was being honest, I’d thought it about myself more than once.
But for some reason, the idea that Khalifa might’ve thought it too bothered me in a way the others never had, like his opinion carried a weight the rest of the world’s somehow didn’t. And I hated that I cared. Maybe even more than I hated the possibility that they all might’ve been right.
He was watching me a little too perceptively for comfort. “Who said that to you?”
I blinked, caught off guard. “No one.”
“Was it Malik?”
Heat rushed up my neck. “No.”
Another stretch of quiet settled around us, making every noise in the room louder—the drone of the heater, the faint ticking of the clock, the slow rhythm of his breathing beside me.
Finally, he said, very matter-of-factly, “He has the lowest ranking on Rate My Professors, so I wouldn’t take his opinion seriously.”
I snorted. “Of course he does. What’s your rating?”
His mouth twisted smugly. “One hundred percent.”
“Only because all your female students are obsessed with you,” I tossed back casually. “If I were a student in your class, you definitely would’ve gotten a one from me.”
His brows lifted, amused. “So you admit you would’ve taken my class?”
A loud laugh burst out of me before I could stop it—entirely too inappropriate for a house full of sleeping people. I clapped a hand over my mouth, eyes widening as the echo vibrated under the door and down the hallway.
He leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Careful. Wouldn’t want your one-star review to wake up my whole family.”
I chuckled faintly. After a while, I said, “One last question.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your favorite sound?”
He didn’t reply right away. Then, softly, “Waves.”
“Why waves?”
His liquid caramel orbs seemed to shine in the lack of light as they bore into mine.
“Because they never sound the same twice,” he said.
“They’re steady, but not predictable. Loud enough to drown things out, calm enough to let you breathe.
It’s like...they crash, and they fall apart, and then somehow, they always come back.
No matter how far they pull away, they find their way to shore again. ”