Coming Home (English Version)

39. Too Close

I avoid the bedroom and instead decide to head to the dinning area to leave my hat and coat there but I freeze when I see her on the living room couch, wearing jeans and a black top.

"Hey," she says to me, putting her phone down.

"Hi," I reply, leaving my stuff on the table.

We stare at each other for a moment and it seems like we're still not going anywhere, so I scratch my head.

"I'll go change," I say.

"Can we talk first?" She requests, right when I'm about to turn around.

Yes! Finally! Yes! Let's talk!

"Sure," I reply casually.

As I'm walking towards her, I realize I haven't kissed her yet and I always do when we see each other after being apart, so I kiss her on the forehead before sitting next to her. She brings her leg up on the couch to turn her body in my direction and I do the same. Her face, her expression looks entirely different from yesterday and that gives me hope.

"Okay, first of all, there are a few things you need to know," she begins.

"Fine, go ahead."

She clears her throat. "I had already met Nafisah before, years ago."

"What?" I frown. "Where? Why didn't you say something?"

"We were just kids and I didn't say anything because I was terrified of her and I think I still am," the emotion soon can be heard in her voice.

I scoot closer to her with immense curiosity about where this is going, and she starts telling me the story of her multiple encounters with Nafisah. Turns out the princess wasn't a sweet one and used to make fun of Layla.

"But what did she make fun of?" I wonder, unable to comprehend how anyone could do that to Layla.

"Anything and everything!" She says, lifting her palms briefly and then letting them fall back on her legs. "My clothes, my hair, the fact that she was a princess and I wasn't royalty... She used to claim I had an accent when speaking Arabic and that she couldn't understand what I was saying."

"You did not have an accent!" I deny, this is ridiculous, that woman... well, that girl back then was insane.

"That's what she claimed!"

"Where was I when all of this was happening?" I ask her.

"We were not that little, I don't think she and her sisters were allowed to play with you guys, the boys," she explains. "Same way we were not allowed to play with her brothers."

Little by little, everything starts making sense, but I still have more questions.

"But maybe that just was kid stuff, maybe she's different now," I suggest.

Layla shakes her head. "The thing is, it really affected me. I couldn't understand why she didn't like me, it made me wonder if there truly was something wrong with me. I always got along with the other girls at school, it didn't make any sense to me. And the worst part is that I cared, you know? I wanted her to like me for some bizarre reason. One time, she called me fat for eating so much chocolate and told me I was going to get even more fat if I kept eating like that."

As she relieves the memories, I stop seeing grown up Layla in front of me and she somehow transforms into that little Layla I used to know, the one that suffered all this bullying.

"And I believed her," she continues. "I stopped eating sweets. Of course that only lasted for like two days but still," she chuckles in the midst of the tears about to leave her eyes.