A Latte of Love

【☕】6

"Wait! My clothes are in my luggage," I yelled out to him, making him stop in his tracks. He turned around to give me a "what do you want me to do" look.

"It's in the car," I spoke in a louder voice.

"It's raining too hard to go back out," Hamza said with a moody tone.

"You can't expect me to stay drenched like this!" I pointed to my dress, still standing in front of the door, afraid to move an inch further in case it might create an even bigger mess for me to clean up.

"Wear this." He threw a shirt and a pair of pants that seemed to belong to him onto the couch near me. He turned on his heel, leaving me alone again in the unknown place.

I spent an hour taking the extravagant clothing off of me and stepping into his unfamiliar smell.

His clothes stunk of a strong scent. I couldn't quite place my finger on it. I walked into the bathroom and took the air freshener off the cupboard and sprayed it all over me in hopes that it would go away. After a couple minutes of smelling okay, the horrid odor came back. "Weed," I grunted to myself while making my way back to the front door.

My lips trembled slightly as I forced myself to accept that this was a man I had to spend my whole life with.

Ahmed suddenly grumbles in his sleep, sucking me out of my thoughts. He shifts in his sleep and tries to get comfortable on our bed. I rub his arm lightly and whisper soothing words to him.

A doorbell rings in my head, taking me back to the day after our nikkah.

"Assalamu Alaikum," I greeted, opening the door to see my mother-in-law holding a baby in her arms.

"Walaikum Assalam. Can you get the bag from the trunk? It has some of Ahmed's stuff in there."  Her curly, aged hair popped out from her loose hijab and her beady eyes pointed towards the bottom of the twenty marble stairs.

I quickly went down the stairs and grabbed the first bag I saw from the trunk. I returned to the top of the steps where my mother-in-law was examining the house.

"What did you feed my child?"

"I gave him the cereal..." I paused right away when she whipped her head back at me. "It was the only thing left in the house." Unknowingly, I had given her an excuse. One which would haunt me for my entire life.

"Mother,'' I added, fidgeting with my legs crossed while looking down. I noticed right then that she walked into the house with her shoes on. And I had just mopped the whole house.

"At least you have some manners." She then sighed, dropping Ahmed onto the floor and pulling out her purse. Placing a credit card in my hand, she croaked, "How about we straighten this up. Go buy some stuff from the grocery."

My ears bled from her long list of very specific items from each store. My memory sucked as is, and my fingers couldn't type as fast as she blabbered. I decided to record her lecture which took about 4gb of space. No exaggeration.

"Should take about two hours," she added a nice little cherry on the top.

And I had to spend 4 hours listening to that audio on repeat whilst getting all the items. Since I didn't even know how to drive, I ended up carrying all the items by hand back to home, going up and down the steps to fetch each bag.

And I could finally delete that waste of space.

"SALWA!" She blasted into my ear. "What took you so long! I thought you ran away from home."

I just gave her a little laugh. Like I would have a choice.

I grabbed the grocery bags and placed them in the kitchen. Mariam, my mother-in-law, taught me how to prepare his breakfast step-by-step while I took down notes. Ahmed suddenly started to cry from his play area.