Mesmerized

treinta y dos.

"What are you doing for Christmas?" Mahdi asked me, we were in his car. He'd driven us to the park where we took Cairo and parked so that we could spend some time together. It had been a few days since Nurse Tyler offered me the promotion, and Christmas was four days away.

I laughed under my breath, "I usually work."

"That's cold." He teased, "I've had to do that a few times, but never on purpose."

The weekly lunches at my parents' house-that I rarely had time to attend- were the extent of what I could manage in a family setting. Christmas was always difficult for me, especially because my aunts and uncles were in attendance. "I love my job though, not to mention that holiday pay brings me a lot of joy."

"Fair enough, I guess for me, having Cairo makes that sort of stuff sting more. I worked on her birthday last year and it sucked." Mahdi admitted, he pushed his seat back and rested his hands at the top of his head as he got lost in thought.

I rubbed his thigh comfortingly, "I can't even begin to imagine what that does to you." I sighed softly as I tried to put myself in his shoes. "I care about my family a lot, but that unresolved guilt always made it difficult to be around them."

Bit by bit, I was finding it easier to open up to him; not answer his questions truthfully, but volunteer information about me and how I was feeling without any prompts from him. The idea was still strange to me and I sometimes left us in silence for too long when I tried to get my thoughts together. But I still did it.

"And now that you're working on it, do you think that you could handle the gatherings better?" He clasped our hands together and trained his eyes on them as he spoke.

I shrugged, "Possibly, I'm just going to listen to my therapist and take my time. I've been trying to speed shit up and it's only been making other things worse."

"That's a good point." He replied as he turned some music on. I'd never just parked somewhere and talked to someone before, we'd already established that fancy dates weren't our style and something as simple as being in a car with him was making me feel butterflies.

I decided to flip his initial question on him, though I had a pretty good idea of the answer. "What about you? What are you doing for Christmas?"

"My parents are hosting this year, I'm gonna see a lot of people that I'm usually too busy to see and I'm pretty excited about it." Mahdi chuckled softly. "We are very different people Rinze."

He didn't mean anything by it, but the comment struck me. "Where did that come from?"

"I was just thinking about how much I rely on my family and how much you don't." He responded casually, "It's just an observation Rinze, not a critique."

I nodded slowly, "I rely on my brothers more than anything, but even that is new to me. It's a process; I became self-reliant because of that traumatic experience and I'm doing my best to unlearn the behavior... I kind of rely on you in a way now." I admitted, trying to be as casual with sharing my thoughts as he was.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm happy to hear that." He brought my hand that he was still holding to his lips and kissed it. "Talk me through what you mean though."

I rolled my eyes at him while biting back a smile, "You just want me to stroke your ego."

"Yeah, so stroke it." He kissed my hand again while looking at me. "Please?"

Mahdi caught me off guard with his brazenness, over time I'd learned that he became bolder after we'd been with each other for an extended period of time. In some ways it felt like he would start off all of our time together being more cautious, then after reading my mood he'd say whatever he wanted. I liked his bold side and wished that he didn't tip-toe around me; but I also knew that it was my fault that he did that.