When Talia and her grandmother returned home, hands and stomachs full, they found Zaid and Fouad engaged in the undying debate of football versus soccer as a game of the latter blared on the living room TV.
Zaid, of course, was wholly convinced of his incontestable opinion, appearing smug as he lounged on the couch, arms above his head and legs wide apart. He trailed his eyes up Talia's chest to her face as she dropped off her bags in the corner of the living room. Fouad kept droning on even as Zaid lost interest in both the game and his argument, soon cut off by Salma's hand pulling him into the kitchen.
Zaid rose from his seat and walked around the coffee table to stand in front of Talia. He kept a distance, as her grandparents were still in view, but there was less reticence on his side as he brought his face closer to hers. He flickered his gaze over her perfectly lined eyes and contoured cheeks sprinkled with highlighter.
"Would it flatter you if I said I missed having you around today?"
She bent down and shoved the small shopping bag into a much larger one full of sweaters. "No. Because I didn't." Zaid's eyebrows knitted together, and the corners of his lips dropped. Looking up, she snorted. "Gosh, Zaid, I'm only teasing. I thought you were the blueprint for this kind of shitty humor."
"Yes," he bit back, glancing at the bags at her feet, "when I am using it." He noticed the mountain of winter clothing inside. "You planning on staying here for longer? I figured you'd be stalking up on shorts and T-shirts."
"California isn't that warm," she said, though she knew he didn't care to talk about the weather. The slight acrimony in his tone hinted that he was thinking about their parting—and he wasn't happy. Sighing softly, she folded her arms over her cream-colored sweater and glanced up. "Why...do you want me to stay?"
He said nothing, eyeing her grandparents heading to the stairs, and then picked up the remote from the coffee table. He changed the channel to the evening news and sat down again, pretending to be interested in a story about a local grocery store bankruptcy.
She sat down on the armchair across from him. "You're not going to ignore me, are you?"
"I'm not mad at you," he said, tilting his head away from the screen.
"I never said you were mad, Zaid."
He paused for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek. "But what if I am? Just not at you."
She pressed her fingertips into the soft surface below her, hoping this wouldn't turn into another useless argument. "Did something happen while I was away?"
He shook his head. "Ta'ali," he ordered softly after a moment, replacing his signature "come here" with its Arabic counterpart.
Talia refused to believe a single word could always flutter her insides, but there she was, melting on the inside, floating to him like a magnet to metal. "I'm here," she said, sitting down next to him. When a door upstairs banging closed, she relaxed and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"That's better," he murmured, cupping her cheek. His thumb brushed her skin, probably getting some metallic highlighter on it. "You look much better here."
"Well, aren't you in a mood," she mumbled, sliding her hand to the middle of his chest. She could feel the hard grooves of his muscles, only a thin T-shirt covering them. "Maybe I should leave you more often."
"No," he breathed, resting his cheek on the back of the couch. He still held her, just with a hand around the back of her neck. His voice dropped a notch, eyes no longer meeting hers as he added, "That's what I hated about today."
She bristled, halting the movements of her fingers. "We don't have to think about that, then."
"Then when will we?"
"Thursday," she said and gulped when she remembered that was four days away. His thumb ran along the base of her throat and then stopped at her collarbone. "Yeah. Th-that sounds good."
"Then when Thursday comes, what will you say before you leave?" Now she couldn't think with his face this close to hers, but his words prodded her into conjuring up an answer. "Will it be goodbye?"
"No," she whispered, feeling his fingers skim her back. It was like he was hoping to make an intangible mold of her, his touches everywhere for accuracy. "It won't be a goodbye."
"Will it be a 'goodbye for now,' then?" When she shaped her lips into a "yes," he leaned in again and cut her off. "Because if it is, that's still not a satisfying answer."
She darted her eyes to the staircase as his fingers slipped underneath her sweater. "What other answers are there, Zaid? You have me at a loss."
He said nothing and glanced at the muted TV again. The news anchor bore some uncanny resemblance to her, medium-length brown hair with the same angled face and strange hand movements while talking, which Zaid seemed to notice after a moment.
The TV went black, and her face was in his hands.
"What do you say we spend the night together?" he asked. "And the next one, and the next...until we reach Thursday?"
For a moment, she questioned if he was drunk, but then she remembered the only contents of her grandparents' alcohol cabinet were two old bottles of arak, and his breath still smelled like mint gum.
No, this was natural, uninhibited Zaid, apparently suffering from a broken heart before she even left him.
She'd be damned if she said she didn't like this version of him.
"I would say yes," she said, breath hitching in her throat as he gripped her thigh. "But we aren't alone, Zaid."
"Oh, come on," he said, pulling her over his lap. She looked behind her again, but he yanked her face back towards him. "No one's coming, Talia."
"You're really pushing my limits, aren't you?"
"You've been pushing mine for weeks," he groaned, adjusting her over his legs, hands at the backs of her thighs. When his lips met her ear, she knew those next words were only for her. "I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought of what you'd look like under me. In bed. Preferably with a little less clothing." He nipped the sensitive area below her ear, and she just about flew off the couch, saved only by his tight hold. "But...I meant that much more innocently, Talia. I just want to spend more time with you before this break ends." After a moment of her sitting still on his lap, he shifted uncomfortably and grumbled, "Ideally, doing something that won't drive me as mad."
"Well, I guess teaching me more Arabic is off the table...because I'm a godawful student."
He broke into a wide grin, and pulled her off his lap. "On second thought, go grab me some pen and paper."
***
"Okay, let's start with the basics. Can you at least recite some of the alphabet by now?"
Talia met Zaid with a stone-faced stare, wiping away some of his hopes that this second teaching session would have a smoother start than the first. Following a disastrous fifteen minutes of trying to get her to remember how to write her name, they had reconvened fresh off dinner and a three-hour phone break, meaning it was nearing ten, and she had yet to utter a single letter in Arabic.
She racked her brain for the last tutoring session à la her mother, but all she remembered was that it had ended in a yelling session over her atrocious pronunciation of the letter ق—since apparently, it didn't sound the same as the English letter K.
Sue me for not knowing, I guess.
"I can try," she said, trying not to meet Zaid's calculated gaze. He sat in a chair across from her on the kitchen table, arms folded over his Patagonia zip-up, clicking and un-clicking a ballpoint pen. "Alif, ba..."
"Good," he hummed, nodding. After a pause, he added, "Then?"
"Then?" Gosh, two letters were impressive enough. "Shouldn't there be like a C now or something?"
A small puff of air escaped his nose, but otherwise, he was used to her antics. "Ta, Talia. As in the letter your name starts with. Then comes tha."
"And then jim right," she shot back, a metaphorical light bulb beaming over her head. "It's the letter that looks like an eye and eyebrow. That one I remember."
He blinked, not mirroring her enthusiasm. "It looks like a what?"
"No, really," she began, plucking the pen from his fingers and drawing it from memory. 'If you turn your head about twenty degrees to the right and squint, you can kind of see the pupil in the middle of the eye. It's really cool."
He followed her instructions, letting the flat line on his lips morph into the most reluctant smile. Glancing at her stupid elation, he dragged a palm down his stubble-covered cheek and shook his head, releasing a sputtering sigh. "You are definitely something, Talia. Now, we have five letters so far. Luckily, the next two look the same as jim, only distinguished by their dots or lack thereof—which aren't optional, by the way."
"Duly noted," she mumbled. She'd already transformed her name into Nalia and Balia from her sheer aversion to putting them in the proper place. "It doesn't get that much more complicated from here, does it?"
"Sure," he lied through his teeth, pausing in the middle of writing a dal. "We'll go with that for now."
As he continued rattling off the rest of the alphabet to her, her memory became less fuzzy, repopulating with letters she'd all seen before—especially one particularly foreign one.
"Okay, repeat after me," he said, looking her dead in the eyes. "Qaf."
"Absolutely not."
He dropped a palm to the wooden table, eyes narrowing. "Oh, come on, Talia. You can at least try."
"So you can laugh at me? Not a chance, Zaid."
He pushed the notebook and pen between them aside and leaned forward, elbows meeting his knees. "What is there to laugh about? Someone humbling themselves enough to let me teach them the alphabet?" For a second, his soft tone assuaged her slight unease, but then it came. "That I learned at two, by the way."
"There it is," she snapped, jabbing him in the chest. "You secretly find this hilarious. I know you do."
"Hilarious is a stretch," he said, shrugging. "But I can't be too encouraging, or you'll lose the necessary humility for this process."
"The humility that applies to everyone but you, right?"
"Ahsanti," he praised, like a true teacher. "I'm amazed at how fast you catch on."
"Fine, I'll give it a shot," she grumbled, looking away, "...qaf."
The awkward silence prepared her for another "humbling" remark, but it never came. Instead, Zaid nodded to himself and shot her a small smile.
"Honestly, not too bad. Next time try saying it a little deeper in your throat."
She ignored the direction in which the words "deeper" and "throat" sent her mind and nodded. Looking away, she tried again, but the sound that left her lips was more akin to polite choking. Wincing, she grabbed the water pitcher from the middle of the table and poured herself a full glass.
Once she finished drinking, Zaid spoke again. "Maybe I didn't explain that well enough. Imagine you're saying the letter K and then swallow it—but not all the way."
She snorted into her sleeve, sending some water back up her nose. Feeling the burn in her sinuses, she groaned and shut her eyes. God, serves me right for those thoughts.
Zaid rose from his seat and hovered over her, eyes running down her face. "Hey, are you alright? Did I say something?"
"Not at all," Talia said, wiping her mouth on a napkin. "I'm just being a little ridiculous."
More like ri-dick-ulous, but we'll go with it.
"Okay, well, we can move on to writing once we get these next last seven letters down, if that helps."
Ignoring the uncontrollable smirk on her face, he continued reciting the last of the alphabet, writing every letter in his perfect calligraphic handwriting. He went over the page one last time with her before he steeled himself.
"Should I be worried?" she asked, watching his lips press into a flat line. The sounds of the kitchen had reduced to the rhythmic taps of his metal pen on the cover of his notebook.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's still a second and third part to this alphabet lecture," he said, "so, technically, we've only made a dent."
"Oh God, there're more dots, right?" The letters did look suspiciously bare. "I knew we were missing something."
"Technically, not dots. Tashkil. They're sort of like marks or signs used to represent the pronunciation of each word since Arabic has no vowels in the traditional sense." With the growing horror on her face, he added the cherry on top, "But we can't even get to those without first covering the initial, medial, and final form of each letter."
"Oh, hell no." She rose from her seat and walked to the kitchen island, eyeing the fruit basket. Turning around, she added, "I will gladly be monolingual for the rest of my life if you're going to tell me the language is that complicated."
She expected him to give her some long-winded response shading her American-ness, but he sighed and closed the notebook.
"Well, there's no rush to learn now. I'll let you come back to it if you ever wish to."
She grabbed an apple and turned around. "There's no 'but' clause this time?"
"Contrary to popular belief, I can be nice, Talia." She remained unconvinced, so she stood there, back to the counter, eyebrows slightly raised. "It's just more fun to be rude."
There we go. She smiled to herself and dropped the apple back into the basket, deciding she wasn't in the mood of a Granny Smith. As she pulled out a Golden Delicious from underneath a pile of green, a presence loomed behind her her. Or maybe she smelled it first, a deep woodsy cologne. She slowly tilted her head up, but every muscle in her body tensed up when a hand trapped her in on either side.
And then she couldn't move.
"Also..." Zaid breathed, dropping his head to the curve of her neck. "I knew exactly what you found so funny earlier. But sometimes..." He pressed forward, trapping her farther against the surface of the counter. "I choose to be respectful."
"Is this—" She struggled to contain herself, lost in the veiny arms blockading her escape, the feel of his hard chest against her back. "Is this one of those times?"
"No," he breathed. True to his word, he trailed his hand up her arm to the collar of her sweater hanging off her shoulder and pushed it a little farther down. She held her breath as his lips grazed the bare skin there, tightening her death grip on the edge of the counter. Mumbling into the kiss, he added, "It can be if you want, however."
"No." Talia squeezed her eyes shut at the instant reply, glad he couldn't see the deep pink of her cheeks.
The low chuckle meant he knew he had the upper hand; she'd only mortify herself with more words. "It always intrigues me how obstinate you are in everything," he murmured after a moment, trailing a light finger down her back. "Until the primal part of your body kicks in. Interesting dichotomy."
Her knuckles turned whiter. "I don't—" Another touch. "I don't recall this being the fucking vocabulary bee, Zaid."
"Ah, there it is."
He leaned in again, that self-satisified chuckle of his mocking her as he floated a hand to her hair. It met the scrunchie keeping the wild locks together in a loose bun at the base of her neck. In a second, it flew to the other side of the counter.
He flipped her around, finally filling in the rest of the picture for her. The hand in her hair met her face, and he cupped her jaw, a thumb below her chin to keep her head held high, as high as his always was. Talking was no use, as she found some way to temper his ego each time with a single sentence, so he shut her up in a different way: her face to his, his lips on her own.
"Zaid," she mumbled against his lips, pressing a hand flat to his chest. He continued his mindless path down her neck, so she gripped the back of his sweater and tugged. "Zaid."
He paused. "What?"
"My grandparents." She took a moment to catch her breath, running a hand down her fiery face. "They're upstairs."
"And so is God, but that hasn't seemed to stop you this whole time."
At his devilish smirk, Talia hit her wit's end. "Okay, fuck you." She didn't need to be guilted even more.
"Gladly would," he murmured, trailing his fingers down the front of her sweater. They stopped at the button of her jeans, resting on the fabric atop it. One finger slipped past the barrier before it was gone—just like him. "But that, Talia, is where my respect actually begins."
And so he left her hot and bothered in the kitchen, back to counting down the days until he would become a fantasy, in every sense of the word.