"Sabah al-khair."
That was one Arabic phrase Talia had down pat. Good morning. Its reply: still a work in progress.
"Sabah al-noor," Teta Salma greeted, smiling. She pulled out the chair next to her at the kitchen table and patted the surface, gesturing for her to sit. "How are you doing, Talia? I feel like I never see you around anymore."
"Why do you say that?" she laughed as she lowered herself to the wooden chair, grabbing the water pitcher from the middle of the table. She poured herself a glass and leaned forward to give her grandmother a kiss on the cheek. "I'm almost always home. Where else is there to go in this weather?"
"No, I know you are in the house, but..." Teta took a sip from her mug of tea, leaving Talia to itch in anticipation. "Someone has been talking to you more than I have been."
Talia kept her glass at her lips, smiling over the rim. "I'm sorry, I don't think I follow."
"Hm," she hummed and took another sip, "I must be hearing things, then."
Talia stood up and walked over to the breadbasket in the middle of the kitchen island. Seeing her grandmother still smiling in her peripheral vision, she changed the subject altogether, worried she'd lose her inhibitions and reveal the totality of her feelings towards a certain dweller of this house.
"Teta, I've always wanted to ask something. Can I?"
"What's wrong, habibti?"
She shook her head and held out a hand, not wanting her to think the conversation would go in a grave direction. "Oh no; it's nothing bad. I've just always wondered if it upset you when Baba stayed in California after college." She adjusted the setting on the toaster and turned around so she could face her again. "I always thought that distance wasn't that big of a deal—until this vacation, of course."
She sighed. "You know what, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't upset at first, because I knew I would only see him on breaks or holidays, if even. But I immigrated here for a reason: for the opportunities for my children and their children. Like you." She sent her a warm smile, and Talia's heart constricted. Her sacrifice had worked, after all; her father had earned two master's degrees and co-founded a technology start-up that let her family live comfortably in the ever-inflating Bay Area. "Besides, he never cut himself off from us or your uncles. Those phone calls always made feel like I was living right near you all."
"Oh, really?" she asked, having been unaware of how often he called. "Does he always update you on me and Calvin?"
"Of course," she gushed, giving her a funny look. "What grandmother wouldn't want to hear about her smart and hardworking grandchildren?"
She laughed through a bite of toasted bread, finding her too cute for her own good. "Forgive me for asking. I'm just wondering how much I won't have to tell you thanks to Baba."
"Well, there was one thing that surprised me." She froze mid-chew, glancing at her raised finger. "You father once mentioned that...that boy. You know, the American one your mother despises."
"Despised," Talia said, smiling through the pain or the embarrassment—she didn't even know. "He's not in my life anymore."
"Oh no, I'm sure he was a sweet person, Talia. It's just..." They stared into each other's eyes for a few moments, finding identical brown pairs. Talia winced and braced herself, knowing she'd heard this speech before. "What's wrong with a nice, respectful Arab boy?"
There it was.
"You too, Teta?" Talia squeezed her eyes shut, holding back a laugh. "Did Mama force you to tell me this?"
"No, and neither your father. But though I may be old, Talia, I can still see just fine. And I've seen the way you look at Zaid."
"Not so loud," Talia hissed, gripping the edge of the table. For all she knew, he was lurking somewhere in the foyer, listening in from fifteen feet away. Watching the growing smile on her grandmother's lips, she focused in on a single thought. "Wait a minute—does this mean Baba didn't know I wouldn't be alone with just you guys here?"
She nodded. "He's known about Zaid being here since he first arrived in the US. I will admit he was a bit...wary about letting you stay in a house with a boy your age, but he trusts my judgment." She planted her fist on the table, chin held a little too high. "You don't have to worry, anyway. Whatever is between you two is a secret safe with me."
Talia tried not to think about the fact she'd dug herself a pit and fallen into it by suggesting this stay with her grandparents in the first place, once believing she was so slick. At least she knew her father hadn't agreed to it to spite her, but some part of her coincidental encounter with Zaid felt a little contrived. Almost like her father had hoped that even if she refused to ever travel overseas with them again, she could still come to like a piece of the culture those trips came with.
And damn was Zaid a fine piece of—
"It's not a secret in the first place," Talia lied, fiddling with a stubborn jar of jam. "Because there's nothing between us."
"There's nothing between whom?"
The lid slipped out of her fingers and clinked against the ceramic plate. She didn't need to look up to know that Zaid had overheard their conversation—or at least, the only part that mattered.
Teta stood up, coming to Talia's defense. "It's not important, Zaid."
He nodded and attempted to hide his growing smirk with a yawn. "My apologies for asking." He slid into the seat across from her, shooting her a warm look. "Sabah al-khair, ya Talia."
She mumbled the greeting back and sent him a sarcastic smile when Teta wasn't looking, hating that he infuriated and enamored her in a way that she didn't know was possible. Perhaps because everything he did was so subtle and striking at once, always centered on this pathological need to be right.
Teta cut into the silence, offering him food and tea in a panic, already at the stove. "Do you want me to make you anything? Breakfast? Tea?"
"Oh, no, thank you." He cleared his throat into his fist, sounding a little more hoarse than usual. "I'm feeling a bit under the weather."
He probably had nothing more than a minor cold based on how he looked, but her grandmother's eyes widened in a panic. There was something humorous about Arab women towards boys; girls had to be mature by ten, yet twenty-year-old men were still ten-year-olds at heart.
"Salamtak, ya habibi," she gushed, offering him her well wishes. "You know what, I'll go make you some tea. You can't refuse it now."
Talia turned to Zaid, fighting a smirk. "Salamtak, ya hmar." She leaned forward and mocked him with her panicked words when Teta was far away enough, clutching her chest with both hands. His eyes turned into slits at the "donkey" insult, but even she could tell he found her teasing funny. "So much for handling the cold better than me, huh?"
"I would stop laughing right now before this becomes you in two days," he said, shrugging. From behind his glass of water, he added, "You are the one still invading my personal space right now."
"For all I know, I'm probably already carrying your disease." She replayed that kiss in her head, bringing her fingers to her lips. "We shouldn't invade each other's personal spaces for some time."
"Shame," he said, voice dropping, "I kind of enjoyed it."
Talia looked down and found his fingers just touching the edge of her palm. Making sure her grandmother still had her back turned, she turned her hand upside down and gripped his own, warming his icy fingers.
They pulled away as soon as Teta turned around, sharing a small knowing smile.
***
Zaid had spent most of the day in bed, leaving Talia bored out of her mind. She hadn't realized how much she relied on him for her personal entertainment, even if most of their conversations consisted of endless banter.
She perched herself on a corner of the couch in the living room and opened her laptop for the first time in days, taking a moment of silence for the unread messages in her university email inbox. Semester Bill Available, Spring Term Advising Hours, Housing Update, Welcome to Intermediate Accounting II...
Already? She groaned to herself and explored the page for that accounting class, finding her closest earthly equivalent to Hell. She liked her math classes far more than any of her business ones, but the employment prospects of both degrees combined pushed her through the endless monotony of financial statements and group projects and guys in navy suits.
Actually, the last one wasn't so bad.
Now, to convince Zaid to put one on before I leave, for research purposes, of course...
"I'm going to head to the supermarket in a bit," Teta Salma announced, rifling through the growing pile coats on the armchair next to Talia. She found her short red one and shrugged it on. "Would you like to come with me?"
Talia closed the lid of her laptop and smiled. "You know, I'd love to, but I'd hate to leave Zaid all alone. You know, in case he needs another cup of tea, of course." She caught herself before Teta could confirm that Talia enjoyed his presence, noting the small nod of approval.
"Okay, I'll ask your grandfather, then." She ambled across the living room and stopped by the entrance to the foyer, calling out, "Ya Fouad!"
"Shoo fee, ya Salma?" His voice came from the smaller second living room, the kind that was off limits in Arab households. Grunting, he repeated the question in English. "What is it?"
"I'm going to the supermarket, and Talia doesn't want to join me."
Talia parted her lips, not having expected her grandmother to say it in such a disappointed fashion, but she ignored her.
A moment later, Fouad's voice boomed again. "Okay, yalla, bye!"
Talia held back her laughter at his curt reply, wondering if Teta had expected he would chase after her. Huffing, she grabbed her purse from the kitchen table and marched out through the garage door.
She reopened her laptop and perused the syllabus, trying to get her brain back in school mode, as she'd sit in a classroom once again in only two weeks. After thirty seconds, her eyes glazed over, and her brain became a mess of words ending in -ity: equity, liability, security, liquidity...
Just when she thought this class couldn't get any worse, she clicked on the roster and scrolled through the names, bracing for the worst. She almost missed it the first time, but soon that name became as clear as day.
Logan Summers.
Last year, it had been easy to avoid an identical schedule, as he had declared accounting as his major and she finance, and they'd picked different sections of their one shared class. But the options for professors had been so unappealing for this accounting class, she should have expected they'd have chosen the same instructor, boasting a solid 4.9/5 on ratemyprofessors.com.
Now, all she had to do was not sit next to him on the first day of class, the whole reason they'd met in the first place.
She sighed and took her mind off one guy with another. Soon enough, she stood at the top of the stairs, just a few feet from Zaid's room. She hesitated before tapping her knuckles against the closed door, wondering if he was asleep or worse, not in the mood. If he was anything like her brother when he was sick, then he'd hibernate in his room for three days and make her family question multiple times if he was even alive.
She pushed her doubts to the side and lightly knocked on his door. She heard nothing the first time and then tried again, making out a low yes. Sucking in a breath, she gripped the handle and pushed open the door, traces of lemon and mint meeting her nose. She zeroed in on Zaid relaxing in his bed, the covers just pulled up to his chest: his bare chest.
Well, hello...
"Shit, I thought you were Fouad." Zaid ran a hand through his tousled hair and adjusted his bedsheets. "You didn't end up leaving the house?"
"No, I declined my grandmother's riveting grocery store offer," she said, leaning against his shut door. "You know, in case she needed someone to coddle you for her."
"I'm not even that sick," he grumbled, but his scratchy voice spoke otherwise. "More tired than anything. I haven't been sleeping well lately."
"What's wrong?"
The edges of his lips curled downwards, weighed down by some emotion, but he shook his head and brushed the subject off altogether. "What are you really doing here?"
"Do I have to have an answer?"
"No," he said, letting his head fall back to his pillow. He took off his reading glasses, making her take notice of the small book by his side. "But now you're just breathing my recycled air."
"I thought you weren't 'that sick'?"
He smirked, a certain twinkle in his eyes. "Come here, Talia." Heat coursed through her body at his tone, low and suggestive. She blindly listened, following his hand gesture until she was just at the foot of his bed. "Can you get me that pillow?"
Jaw dropping, she grabbed the chunky black pillow from the ground and chucked it at his head. He reached out to grab it and ended up in the middle of his mattress, sheets falling away like a curtain. Holding her breath, she let her greedy eyes trail down his shirtless form, realizing his sweaters and jackets hid everything.
He was somewhere between a regular gym goer and a standard soccer player, with bulky and veiny biceps but faint indents for abs, grooves begging her to run her hands down them. She'd once speculated his skin tone resulted from the hot Middle Eastern sun, but now she could believe he was the naturally tan kind of Arab, all one glorious light bronze that put her pasty winter complexion to shame.
She stopped gawking and took a step back. "If I can't be of anymore domestic assistance, I'll just get going."
"No." He blurted the reply and caught himself. Clearing his throat, he grabbed the crewneck strewn over the headboard and recovered with, "I mean, you're welcome to stay, of course."
He shrugged it on and then reduced some of her motivation to loiter.
She tilted her head towards the half-concealed book. "Are you still enjoying your weird poetry? Maybe you can read some of it to me. Granted I'll probably end up falling asleep, not you."
He smiled and uncovered the small book, deeper into it than the last time. "Would you even understand what I'd be saying? It's in fusha—Classical Arabic, I mean."
"I know what that means," she grumbled, hating that he still had a point. "Fine, I'll guess I'll return in twenty years when I'm finally fluent."
"Oh, come on, can you at least write your own name?" She froze, unsure she wanted to admit that she lacked even the most basic literary skill in that language. Surprisingly, his face softened. "How about I teach you, instead?"
"Okay," she said, nodding, "but I promise nothing on my end."
He smiled and pulled out a pen and paper from the drawer of his side table. He flipped through the small notebook, past pages and pages of blurred writings in equal amounts of Arabic and English. Talia had never met a guy that liked the written word as much as he did, and in some odd way, it made him even more attractive than he already was.
"Come here," he said. When she narrowed her eyes, he added, "I've run out of pillows, Talia."
Chuckling, she conceded and took a seat on the edge of his bed. He adjusted his position so they were sitting next to each other instead of across from each other and brought his pen to the paper. He connected the letters of her name from right to left, looking like nothing more than fancy squiggles to her.
"Your name is quite simple to spell since the Arabic alphabet contains all of its sounds, unlike—say—Paige or Valerie." She knew there was no letter P or V in Arabic, as her mother's side of the family had scrutinized her father's choice of the name Calvin. "It's ta-alif-lam-ya-alif."
"What?"
He blinked. "The letters, Talia. That's how you spell your name."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, but where does the Y come from? I spell my name with an I."
"It's not a direct translation; it's an equivalence of sounds. My name, for example"—he wrote it out on paper—"is three letters: zay-ya-dal."
She took the notebook from him and stared down at the names. Then, she looked up at him, bewilderment growing. "You're assuming I know the alphabet, right?"
"No."
Okay, then.
She sighed and handed the notebook back to him, not meeting his gaze. "This is nice of you, but I don't want you to waste your time. I'm starting from below square one, Zaid."
A finger under her chin made her meet a sympathetic smile. "You know I, at one point, was in this position with English? It wasn't my first language, just like Arabic wasn't yours."
"Obviously," she mumbled, still feeling bad about herself.
"Granted, I was about three, but it's never too late, Talia.
She whacked his sweater-clad arm to get rid of that shit-eating grin, but he gripped her hand instead. The pen was soon dropped into her palm and brought to a blank corner of the paper.
"I won't let you leave here until you at least write your name."
"Fine." She studied the first string of letters he'd written, not seeming that hard to replicate, just sticks of different sizes. She sighed and dragged the pen across the paper, hand shaking ever so slightly, hating how Zaid made her nervous even in the most relaxed environments. When she finished, she eyed his wary expression. "What do you think?"
"What about the rest?"
"The rest of what?"
"The dots, Talia." He pointed to the blank areas on the first and fourth letter. "They're not optional."
"Oh." She stabbed her pen against the paper and added the missing marks. "Better?"
"Yes." He plucked the pen from her hand and added another dot to the first letter. "If you're okay with being called Nalia, that is."
Talia stared at the ceiling, allowing laughter to overtake her humiliation. Zaid chuckled with her and shoved the notebook back into his bedside drawer, realizing, as much as she did, that one of them was soon going to go insane in this failing teacher-student scenario.
A few seconds passed before she felt a light hand in the middle of her back.
"Hey, don't feel so bad about yourself. I'm not good at a lot of things."
"Like what?"
He sucked in his cheeks and took a few moments to think. "Actually, I can't think of anything on the spot, but there has to be something. Give me a few more seconds."
Used to his arrogance, she groaned and lay down horizontally on his bed, arms by her sides like a scarecrow. Looking down at her still form, he brought his hand to her right arm and moved it to the side. She almost clambered off his bed in embarrassment, until she realized he was moving it out of the way to lie down next to her.
"Nice space you left there," she said, eyeing the foot-and-a-half between them. "Very conservative of you."
"I saved some room for your modesty vow," he deadpanned, moving over a little more. "I recall you don't interact with boys outside of marriage."
Yeah, fuck that vow, she thought and rolled over into his personal space.