A Latte of Love

【☕】8

My neck hurts from looking up at him and his earthy scent fills my nose. A date...

I blink hard and stare at him with wide eyes. A date? Did he just say what I think he just said?

When have I ever gone on a date? All Hamza had wanted to do was attend his happy hours at work, return home trashed, and neglect his wife and child. He never felt the need to take care of his new family, when did he ever?

"Your hand," Sufyan insists, breaking my thoughts.

He wants my hand? For... a date.

We don't even know anything about one another. We only just met about a month ago. We aren't even married or engaged. 

But he sounds so sincere.

I hesitantly reach out my hand. Is he going to place his hand in it? I'm not sure I'm ready for this. We really shouldn't be touching.

Before I can take my hand away, Sufyan pulls out something from behind his back. His hand... but he's holding something in it. He plops it down into my palm without even a brush of our fingers.

It's a date.

No, not that date. The other date.

My cheek turns red from embarrassment. So he had meant the fruit...

I close my eyes, wishing I would just disappear. Was this what people would call an embarrassing moment?

When I reluctantly open them again, Sufyan is chewing on another date, completely oblivious to what was going on in my head. Did he even realize what he said?

He gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing. I look away and try to ignore the fury that was slowly inflating my head. "It's good, right? I love ajwa dates," he says, proceeding to pop another one in his mouth.

I eat it silently as I return to taking orders. My heart still hasn't calmed down and it is now beating at a thousand miles per hour.

Astaghfirullah. What have I done? Almost letting a non-mahram touch me. What if he had actually brushed his hand against my fingers, locked them together, touched me intimately, or went further? Would I have said anything? Would I just accept my fate, as I did with Hamza until I broke?

It was at this moment I truly realized that Allah (SWT) has been protecting me from the fitnah that has been plaguing the majority of the world - the longing to form relationships before marriage.

Unlike Sana, I never deliberately flirted with men, nor cared for their attention. The only man I had ever been remotely close with, was Hamza. And yet even with him, there was a huge part of me locked from his view. We would hardly speak to each other and conversations would only be out of necessity.

I spend the rest of my shift trying to avoid any conversations with Sufyan and focus my attention on the test I would be having on Monday.