Other Side

12 | Calm Before the Storm

"Okay, Mama. No, of course, mafi mushkila. Tell Nadine I say hi. Bye—" Zaid paused and gripped the nape of his neck, squinting as his mother continued reeling off on the phone. "Saif? No, I haven't seen any of his messages. No, I'm not ignoring him... Okay, talk to you soon. Love you—bye."

Talia appeared in the kitchen's doorway and wrapped her pink duster cardigan tighter around her body, watching Zaid stare at his blank phone screen. He brushed a hand through his hair and let it fall to the table with a slight thud, startling a prying Talia.

She cleared her throat and took a step onto the cold hardwood, feeling the chilled surface through her thin socks. "I'm going to offer an all-encompassing apology for eavesdropping, Zaid. It expires in exactly eight days."

Her awkward humor always earned a goofy smile from him, smoothing the lines in his forehead. He turned his head all the way to the right and motioned for her to sit diagonal from him at the kitchen table, in her unassigned assigned seat, one he dared never sit in, even in her absence.

"I'm not sure if it's eavesdropping if you couldn't hear half of the conversation." He smiled and brought his steaming cup of coffee to his lips, adding, "But apology accepted, ya Talia."

She hid her satisfied smile and tried not to think how much had changed since the first time she'd listened in on his phone call with his sister, when he'd almost given her a heart attack awaiting his reaction. Lowering herself to the seat, she freed her cardigan from the artificial seal of her three fingers. It revealed her long, freshly shaven legs, visible to the thigh, skin barely covered by loose cotton shorts. Zaid flickered his eyes to her exposed upper legs for a moment, barring his gaze from dragging down their length.

"Is Saif your brother?" she asked, voice dry. She grabbed the coffee pot from the middle of the table and poured half a cup into the mug next to his. He pushed the carton of milk towards her to temper the fiery liquid, but she needed something to cool her blushing face, melting as those tender hazel-brown eyes shed their warmth on her cheeks.

"Yes," he said and glanced at his phone face up on the table. A single text blinked on his home screen. "I suppose that snippet you heard sums up how I feel about each of my siblings."

"You're not very close with him, are you?"

He shook his head slowly. "We started to drift apart when he left for college at Brown, but our father's death four years ago cemented our distance. I don't think I've seen a genuine smile on his face since..." He sighed and drank the last of his murky-brown coffee, color hardly changed from the drop of milk he preferred. "I guess a personality like that comes with responsibility. He's been back home managing our father's engineering consultancy for the last year and a half, and I'm... Well, I'm here avoiding, aren't I?"

He stood up and eyed the backyard through the glass, before deciding to crack the door open. Instead of a gust of bitter wind, mild and humid air met their faces, the kind that invited songbirds in late spring, not January. Perhaps the calm before the storm was much more than a myth, something Talia wanted to live out before the rain and snow imprisoned them both.

"Maybe you're where you're supposed to be," she murmured, trying not to find it funny that she was speaking to faded green grass and wiry trees. She rose to her feet and stood behind him, tempting to comfort him with her touch. "It can't be a coincidence that we're from opposite sides of the world and ended up in a suburban Massachusetts home together for three weeks. I've never even visited my grandparents in winter before, Zaid."

He turned around and cupped her cheek, tilting her head up. "If it was, Talia, you'd be my favorite coincidence. And maybe that..." He trailed off and dipped his head lower, his fingers skimming her side. "Maybe that's a problem right now."