The Morning After
I wake up in Sami’s bed, wrapped under a giant blanket. I nudge myself up onto my forearms and look around at his things.
In the corner is a shelf filled with an impressive collection of cookbooks. I grin when to my delight I notice the spine for
Microwave Cooking for One. Sami must’ve taken it from the little library.
His nightstand is overflowing with used notebooks and journals with handwritten, dog-eared pages.
Sami shifts beside me, rising to see what I’m looking at. “What do you write in there?” I ask.
“Mostly things about my customers. Their orders, their favorite dishes, stuff like that.”
My eyes widen. “Are you sherious?”
He nods and continues, “Their hopes and their dreams. Whether they’d survive a zombie apocalypse. Who among them I would die
for. You know—the usual.” He wags his brows. “I plan to compile all the data to choose an heir for my restaurant empire. You
just earned yourself some major points last night.”
I jab him in the ribs with my pointer finger.
He cups my hand. “Okay, it’s just recipes.” He grins and leans closer to me, nose tickling the shell of my ear. “I should
get a real system for them.”
“I like your place,” I whisper. His entire home exudes this warm, lived-in charm, the kind that comes from decades of family life layered together.
Compared to my own space, even the simple touches—like plants in the windows and art adorning the walls—are enough to leave me impressed.
There’s an emphasis on comfort, with lots of thick rugs, warm wood tones, and soft blankets.
I burrow deeper into his pillow and add, “I really like your bed.”
I guess I always pictured him living in one apartment with his parents, but above the restaurant stairwell is a hallway that
splits into two separate units. Apparently Sami’s family rented this place out to various tenants through the years before
Sami took over the rental. So at least I don’t have to worry about Abu and Ava coming home and seeing us.
Sami reaches for his phone on the nightstand and reads something. “Abu is handling opening this morning.” He rolls back to
me, his warm lips brushing my temple. “But unfortunately, we have to take Ernest out. I’ll make us coffee.”
“You can’t make me leave.” I curl closer to him, underneath the ditch of his shoulder. If I leave this bed, if I leave the
warmth of his arms, if I leave the coziness of his apartment . . .
He pulls one of my hands into his own, interlocking our fingers. I point to a scar on his wrist. “What happened here?”
“Kitchen guy things,” he murmurs. I’ve noticed he never refers to himself as a chef.
“I see. And is that callus from knife things too?” I touch a rougher patch of skin on the inside of his thumb.
“I believe so.” He shifts and sits up. “We should get going. Ernest’s circadian rhythm is eerily good.”
“Yes, Chef,” I reply. As soon I get out of here, then time will start to pass. I’ll be letting everything I’ve set in motion,
everything I’d been working so hard for, unfold.
He twists around me to grab my shirt from where it ended up slung over the headboard and hands it to me. I take it reluctantly
while he stands up to get a white tee from his drawer. Once we’re both fully dressed, Sami heads into his kitchen to make
us coffee and I follow him, sitting at the little bistro-size table in the corner.
That’s when my phone buzzes from the oak side table, new messages flashing across the screen with each second.
Only one person texts me like that. I reach for it and hold back the urge to sigh as my screen is covered in a wallpaper of:
Mom: It’s a big emergency
Mom: Urgently!
Mom: Mona. Please. Mommy needs you.
The sigh I let out comes automatically. It’s probably something minor, but despite all my logic telling me to maintain boundaries,
I can’t bear to let her spiral. “Hey, Sami, I gotta make a quick call.”
“Of course.”
I sink into the super-plush navy couch in his living room. Before I can dial, my mom’s FaceTime request comes in. I answer
and instantly her voice fills the room.
“There you are. It’s a big emergency, something bad.”
Sami’s ears perk as he pours the coffee into two thermoses.
My heart drops into my stomach.
“I’m getting the car oil changed, and this guy is saying we need to change the brake pads because they’re not road legal,
but they make things up. Should I sue this kir?”
Sami can’t suppress his smirk, probably cause he understands she just called the guy a dick. I’m sure the guy on the other
end can also guess she wasn’t exactly complimenting him in Farsi.
This is something my dad would’ve helped with. I don’t know shit about this kind of thing, but she’s about to get into an
argument with a service worker again, and the weariness is too much to bear. I’m about to reason with her casually like I
always do, but as I look at her face I’m suddenly so tired of it all. A wave of dread overwhelms me as I think about the many
years in which this will continue.
“Mom,” I sigh. “I don’t know much about this.”
“But can you check into the laws? I can’t afford these prices.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’ll pay for it, okay?” The words come out almost against my will—from the part of me that has
zero fight left. I guess I was due for a financial blow—the streak we were on of her not asking me went on long enough.
Sami walks past me to grab Ernest’s leash off the hook on the wall. A tiny bit of his shoulder manages to pass through the
frame on the screen.
“Is that a man in the room?” She’s peering at my screen deeply.
“No!” Sami looks at me questioningly. “I’m just at my local diner,” I joke, half smiling at him.
“Are you on a date?” I furiously shake my head, begging Sami with my eyes to forgive me. “Yes you are! What kind of date runs
away when your mom is asking to see him?”
Before I can make this stop forever, Sami comes closer. Grimacing, I turn the screen just enough to capture his arm. He leans
forward and says, “Sami Zeker, here, nice to meet you.”
And my heart tightens at his polite mom-friendly smile.
My mom’s eyes light up even more than Sami’s. She switches to Farsi and Sami replies. They break out into laughter, while
I stare at them hating all of it. Having a guy around who my mom can speak to without me is a whole other layer.
He catches my eye and switches to English. “What shop are you at?”
She mentions the name and Sami says, “Oh, they’re in Crowfoot, right? Yes, I’ve heard of them. They’ve got a good reputation.”
My mom speaks excitedly in Farsi again, but Sami replies in English, still watching me out of the corner of his eye. “Yes
well, I have a little restaurant near Mona’s building. We’ve been friends for a while. We just had dinner—” He stops short
and winces at his mistake. “I meant, breakfast.”
The dread that floods through me is immediate. Sami and I are going to be over the second it becomes public Lana’s sold the building, but my mom is never going to shut up about this for the rest of my life. I shouldn’t have slept with him. I knew this all along.
“And are things serious? Mona is always working.”
The cheeky grin Sami gives me is a nightmare. Before Sami can answer, my Mom rapid-fires another question: “What do you do
for work?”
“I own a restaurant.”
“A restaurant! I love food!” But then her head turns just slightly off-screen, and she yells, “This guy who also owns a business
says you can probably knock one hundred off your prices.”
Enough. I take the phone and hang up on her. “Shit, Sami, I’m so sorry about that.”
His eyes search mine, puzzled and a little wary. “Was she selling me out to another business owner somehow?”
I nod. “Pretty much, yeah.”
It is kind of a relief when he shakes his head with a dumbfounded grin.
“I’m sorry, I usually try not to expose people to my parents.” I pause, then amend, “Or I guess just my mom now.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I mean, you’ve endured enough harassment from the weirdo man who raised me.” Sami’s grin is wide.
“That’s different.” I shake my head. “Abu is a national treasure. And he at least has his life together. With my parents,
it’s like I was always fixing and figuring things out for them. It just never ends.” I exhale—I haven’t talked to anyone about
this in such a long time. The words come tumbling out. “I just, I never felt like I had a home. I couldn’t have friends over.
I was embarrassed to go with them. My mom, she always believed him when he said he was better, but I knew the truth.” I shake
my head at the memories.
“You mean your dad?”
My head flies up. I didn’t mean to say that much. “Sorry, I’m getting worked up.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Sami takes my hand and rubs my wrist. “I’m listening.”
His gaze deepens on mine. “I know you don’t share a lot with just anyone, and I like being that someone, so please . . . rant
away.”
And it’s like his words, his comforting touch, unlocks something inside me I’ve kept buried for longer than I can remember.
“It wasn’t just the drinking, it was everything he did—every missed event, all the money he wasted. I felt so angry. Like so angry that even when he was sober and working
hard to stay that way, even when I had the chance to forgive him, I”—my voice tightens as I shake my head—“I just had to get
out of there. As soon as I was old enough to move out, I did, and I never wanted to go back. I worked as hard as possible
every day to make sure I wouldn’t need to go back there.”
Sami nods thoughtfully. His gaze softens. “That must’ve been stressful.”
I wrap my arms around myself. He shouldn’t feel bad for me. I’m not the victim here. “No, it’s my fault. I know he regretted
it. He’d always apologize later. Every time he fucked up, he’d get me a Pez dispenser to say sorry and . . . I just got so
mad as I got older. I couldn’t forgive him anymore, and I hate that.”
“How are things with your mom now?” Sami asks.
I sigh and shake my head. “Not great. I know you’re so close with your family, and this makes me sound horrible. But I just
can’t handle it when she drags me back into the chaos. I just want to get as far as possible from it.”