CHAPTER 10
A House We Hadn't Bought Yet
Safiya had wondered more than once when Solomon would decide the time was right.
It did not.
Not because he staged hints or turned marriage into a performance. He did not.
He had only told her, privately and without ceremony, that he had gotten a ring.
He never showed it to her.
She knew it existed because he had said it did, and because privacy mattered to both of them, she did not turn that sentence into public news.
He had not given her a speech. The fact that he had taken the step was enough.
Safiya still had to remind herself that intention was not the same thing as readiness.
A ring could represent intention.
It could not repair communication.
Could not create boundaries.
Could not make salah consistent.
Could not make Safiya less afraid.
Could not make Solomon less overwhelmed.
So the ring stayed wherever Solomon kept it, unseen and undiscussed most of the time.
Safiya tried not to build a countdown around it.
She started asking whether the life beneath it was becoming ready.
What steadied her more than the ring were the smaller things: the questions he asked before making plans, the way he included her when he talked about money he had not earned yet, and the seriousness in his voice when they discussed the kind of Muslim home they wanted to create.
He did not keep saying he wanted a wife.
He kept behaving like the future required preparation.
Their first truly protected date after the week of space was almost boring.
Perfectly, beautifully boring.
They bought food and sat in the car.
Solomon pulled up a video about property development.
Safiya laughed.
"What?"
"This is literally what I was begging for."
"You was begging for a video about zoning?"
"I was begging for you, idiot."
He smiled.
Halfway through, the prayer reminder sounded.
Neither moved at first.
Then Solomon paused the screen.
"Come on."
They prayed.
No dramatic revelation.
Just two prayer rugs beside a parked car and two imperfect people trying to remember the order of things.
Allah first.
Then self.
Then each other.
Then everything else.
Afterward, Solomon sat back in the driver's seat.
"You hungry?"
"Always."
He started the car.
Safiya looked at him.
For months she had believed peace meant making herself easy to love.
Now she understood something else.
Peace was not the absence of needs.
Peace was being able to speak them without turning them into weapons.
And being loved by someone willing to hear them without treating them as chains.
? ? ?
Months later, Safiya and Solomon toured another house they could not yet afford.
Dreaming remained one of their languages.
Solomon pointed toward the living room. "TV there."
Safiya stared at him. "We already discussed this."
"No, you declared it."
"Prayer area."
"The whole room?"
"Allah needs square footage."
He laughed.
Safiya loved that laugh.
Her phone buzzed.
Zahra.
For a fraction of a second, Safiya's body remembered the old panic.
Then she looked at the message.
A picture of Layla holding a school certificate.
Safiya smiled.
Tell him Auntie said keep going.
Then she put the phone away.
No questions about Solomon.
No updates about Zahra's boyfriend.
No sideways information.
Friendship.
Simple.
Possible.
Solomon looked at her. "You good?"
"Yeah."
And she was.
Not because she had controlled every variable.
Because she had stopped trying.
They walked through the empty rooms.
In the kitchen, Solomon opened cabinets like somebody might have left money inside.
Safiya imagined prayer rugs. Children's backpacks. Her copy of The Ideal Muslimah on a shelf with notes falling out. Solomon complaining she owned too many books. Zahra visiting without belonging to every problem in the house.
A future with walls.
Not walls to keep everybody out.
Walls to tell love where home was.
Solomon leaned against the counter.
"You know what our problem was?"
"Which one?"
He laughed. "We was trying to build everything at the same time."
Safiya nodded.
"And forgot the foundation."
He reached for her hand.
"Exactly."
For months Safiya thought building meant businesses, houses, money, marriage, children, plans.
Now she knew better.
Building was also a Tuesday night with nobody else invited.
A private conversation that did not need an audience to be real.
A boundary respected the first time.
A prayer interrupted by life and returned to anyway.
An apology without humiliation.
Space without abandonment.
Trust without surveillance.
Friendship without possession.
Love without disappearing inside it.
? ? ?
The next crisis arrived through Solomon's children.
A late-night call after Isha.
A situation that required travel.
Something nobody could solve from a parked car.
Safiya watched Solomon's face change while he listened.
The old fear woke immediately.
Distance.
Silence.
Abandonment.
She felt all three.
Then Solomon looked at her.
"I have to leave for a few days."
Safiya breathed.
"Okay."
"I'm telling you before I go because I don't want us repeating old stuff. I need to deal with my children. I don't know what the next few days look like. But I'm not disappearing on you."
This was what change looked like.
Not the absence of chaos.
Different behavior inside it.
"Handle your babies," Safiya said.
He reached for her hand.
"And Safiya?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't stop building while I'm gone."
She smiled.
"I won't."
At Fajr the next morning, his side of the room was empty again.
But this time Safiya knew the difference between absence and abandonment.
She prayed.
Then she opened her laptop.
On the screen was the beginning of the women's learning app she had once sketched because she was afraid of losing focus.
Prayer tracker.
Lessons.
Reflections.
A section for converts.
A note to herself: Teach return, not perfection.
Her phone buzzed.
Solomon.
Landed. Kids good. Make dua for us.
Safiya smiled through sudden tears.
Always, she typed.
Then she returned to the screen.
The ring had not been given.
The wedding had not been planned.
Zahra had not vanished.
The children still needed their father.
The businesses were still fragile ideas.
Safiya was still learning how to be a Muslimah without turning growth into performance.
Solomon was still learning how to lead without carrying everyone until he resented them.
Their future remained unfinished.
Good.
That meant they were still alive inside it.
Safiya opened The Ideal Muslimah and found the note Solomon had once written inside another book tucked between its pages.
You don't have to become her overnight.
Build her.
She smiled.
Then wrote beneath it in her own handwriting:
Not for you.
Not even for the ring.
For Allah first.
And if we are written for each other,
may what I build in myself become mercy in our home.
Safiya closed the book.
Outside, morning light filled the room slowly.
The future could wait.
Today had salah.
Today had work.
Today had a woman who finally understood that love could be enormous without becoming the only thing holding her up.
And somewhere miles away, Solomon was doing what he needed to do for his children.
He had told her he would return.
For the first time, Safiya did not spend the morning trying to predict exactly when.
She trusted the next prayer to come when it came.
For now, that was enough.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Majhool Kodi writes emotionally intimate fiction about faith, love, accountability, ambition, family, survival and becoming.
"Majhool" is used here as a pen-name concept meaning unknown or unidentified.
When Everybody Needed Him is fiction. Its characters and events are deliberately composite and fictionalized, and Book One leaves parts of Safiya and Solomon's future unresolved so the story can continue.
? ? ?
The week of space began with Safiya wanting to negotiate the definition of space.
She wanted terms.
Rules.
Clarification.
Were they still together?
Could she text good morning?
What counted as an emergency?
Would he call if something happened with the children?
Was she allowed to send an Islamic reminder?
Could she say she missed him?
Solomon looked tired before she finished the first three questions.
Safiya stopped.
"This is me trying not to manipulate the situation."
"I know."
"I hate this."
"I know."
"I don't want space."
"I know."
Every I know made her want to cry.
She looked at him.
"Giving you space doesn't mean I'm letting you go."
Solomon's face softened.
"I didn't say you were."
"But what if you like life better without me in it?"
There.
The real question.
Safiya hated how naked it sounded.
Solomon was quiet.
She immediately wanted to take it back.
"Never mind."
"No."
He looked at her.
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Say the real thing, then snatch it back because you scared of the answer."
Safiya swallowed.
"Okay."
Solomon leaned forward.
"I need a week because I don't like how I'm feeling."
"About me?"
"About everything."
She waited.
"I feel like I'm failing everybody at the same time."
Safiya's anger dissolved.
Solomon continued.
"My kids need me. Work need me. School. People calling. You need me."
His eyes met hers.
"And I don't even know what I need because I don't stop long enough to ask."
Safiya looked down.
She wanted to say, Then let me help.
That was exactly the problem.
So she did not.
"Okay."
This time okay was not thrown.
It hurt, but it was honest.
During the week, Safiya woke before Fajr more than once.
Not because she had suddenly become spiritually disciplined.
Anxiety woke her.
She would lie there reaching for her phone before remembering.
Space.
She made wudu instead.
One morning she opened The Ideal Muslimah.
The highlighted pages looked different now.
She had marked so many passages about wives, character, patience and faith.
She noticed how often her notes mentioned Solomon.
Would he like this?
Ask Solomon.
Talk to Solomon about this.
She turned to a blank page in her notebook.
At the top she wrote:
WHO AM I BECOMING IF NOBODY APPLAUDS?
The question sat there.
Safiya stared at it until tears blurred the words.
She loved Solomon.
Space did not change that.
She wanted his pride.
Space did not change that either.
But Allah had to be more than the One she ran to when Solomon was unavailable.
That realization embarrassed her.
Then freed her.
She went back to therapy and, this time, refused to edit herself into the easier version of the story.
She told the truth about the little lies.
About how she sometimes managed conversations to control outcomes.
About how fear of abandonment could make her demand reassurance until the demand itself pushed people away.
About Zahra.
About legitimate boundaries she had failed to communicate until resentment poisoned them.
About Solomon's failures too.
Her therapist did not let her make herself the sole villain.
"Accountability is not self-erasure," she said.
Safiya wrote that down.
At work, she functioned.
That surprised her.
She laughed at something a coworker said.
Ate lunch.
Completed tasks.
The world did not end because Solomon was not texting her.
That felt both relieving and disloyal.
By day four, she missed him differently.
Less like panic.
More like grief for ordinary things.
His voice when he was half asleep.
His ridiculous confidence about directions.
The way he stole the blanket and denied it.
His "Safiya" when she was about to tell ninety percent of the truth.
The way he prayed.
The way he sometimes did not.
The way he loved his children.
The way he challenged her ideas.
The way he could irritate her into laughing.
She missed her friend.
That was the part she had not known how to explain.
On day six, she saw him unexpectedly.
Not long enough for a conversation.
Just enough for their eyes to meet.
Safiya's heart reacted before her dignity could intervene.
Solomon gave her a small nod.
She returned it.
No dramatic reunion.
No running into his arms.
No punishment.
She went home and cried anyway.
Then prayed Isha.
On day seven, the phone rang.
Safiya stared at his name.
She let it ring twice.
Not as a game.
Because she needed one breath before answering.
"Assalamu alaikum."
There was a pause.
Then Solomon's voice.
"Wa alaikum assalam."
Safiya closed her eyes.
"Hey."
"Hey."
Neither knew how to begin.
That was okay.
For once, Safiya did not rush to fill the silence.
Solomon did.
"You ate?"
She laughed through the tears that had already started.
"That's what you called to ask?"
"I'm asking."
"Yes."
"What you eat?"
Safiya wiped her face.
"Why do you need details?"
And just like that, something familiar entered the room between them.
Not fixed.
Not finished.
Familiar.
Sometimes rebuilding did not begin with a declaration.
Sometimes it began with the same old question, asked after a week of silence.
TO BE CONTINUED