by Holly Rayner
“My ring!” he said when she reached him.
Anita set the ring in his open palm. Her fingertips grazed his skin as she set it down, and her heart, that had begun to calm, started racing anew.
This was no time for a crush, she thought. This was not the man to get awkward feelings for.
But it certainly wasn’t helping that he stepped closer to her as he picked up his hand to get a closer look at the ring.
“I fiddle with it sometimes,” he said, under his breath. If he hadn’t been standing so close, Anita doubted she would have heard him.
“I’m glad I caught you in time,” she said. Her mouth was running away and talking without permission from her brain. “I can’t imagine what I would do if I lost mine.”
“No…” he said, still apparently mesmerized by the ring he’d almost lost.
And then, as if released from a spell, he slid it onto his finger. “You must let me thank you.”
“What?”
“I mean it,” he insisted. “You’ve saved me from losing something precious. Please, let me have your number. I’d like to take you out to dinner.”
Take her out? To dinner?
Ahmed was behind him. “Sir, we really must be on our way. They’ll be waiting.”
“Yes, just a moment,” Hakim replied, then focused his attention back on Anita. “I’ve got to go. Let me have your number, so I can work out the details with you.”
The flash of the anger in Fadi’s eyes flitted through Anita’s brain. But in the rush of it all, there was nothing else she felt like she could do.
She spouted out her phone number, feeling ridiculous as soon as she did so—his phone wasn’t out, there wasn’t a pen, and she’d left her pad of paper inside.
“You’ll forget…” she said, silently cursing herself for having put the pad away.
“Never!” he said with a wink.
Anita blushed as the Sheikh disappeared into the limo and sped off into the night, leaving her standing in its wake, unsure what exactly had just happened, but certain that whatever it was, it was something good.
FOUR
It turned out that a good way of getting a second wind on a night that had been punishingly busy and stressful was to get asked out to dinner by a handsome sheikh.
Or so Anita was finding. The exhaustion that had begun settling in when the Sheikh’s party had gotten up had left her completely.
It had been a hard night, and there was no one left in the restaurant but her and Fadi. Fadi had sent the dishwashers home, not realizing that Anita had already sent the busboys home, leaving them with no one left to help them close up for the night.
So they did it all themselves.
Anita could tell that Fadi was still in a sour mood, it was just that it was hard to care when she was floating on a cloud the way she was. She turned up the music, which they would normally turn off during cleanup, and danced around him.
She was determined to pull him out of whatever kind of funk he was in, but Fadi wasn’t having any of it. She couldn’t remember a time when he’d so stubbornly committed to being upset, so she tried harder, turning her enthusiasm up a notch, and putting on a song that she knew for a fact he liked, even if he would deny it if she ever told anyone.
She sang in his ear. “Shake it off, ah ah ah, shake it off!”
“Enough!” His voice was a half-growl, half-roar.
It scared Anita. Fadi had never scared her. He’d made her anxious to please him, and sorry she’d disappointed him. But scared?
“Turn that off,” he said, more quietly. “I need to talk to you.”
Like a puppet on strings, Anita went to the sound system and turned off the music. The restaurant felt so cold and empty without it.
She returned, and stood in front of him, waiting for whatever punishment was coming.
“Now,” he said. “The waitresses said they saw you talking to the Sheikh tonight. Is this true?”
She nodded. She wanted to add something in her defense, about how they had just been making the usual waitress-customer small talk, but it wouldn’t have been true, and she had a feeling that excuses would only have made things worse.
“And am I to assume,” he continued, with the same glowing coal of anger in his eyes, “that your good mood is due to something he has said?”
Anita nodded again, but this time Fadi looked like he was waiting for further explanation. She gave it to him, her voice sounding quiet and weak in the light of her father’s anger.
“He lost his ring. I returned it to him. He said he wanted to take me out to dinner to thank me.”
Fadi looked like he was about to boil over again, but he held it in. There was something else in his expression that Anita couldn’t quite make out.
And then she placed it. It was fear.
“You’re not going,” he said, then he turned away, as though that was the end of the discussion.
Anita was worn out from a day that had been an endless roller coaster of emotions. She was in no mood to have one of the greatest feelings she had felt in her young life yanked away from her with no explanation.
“I am going,” she replied. Her voice shook when she said it.
Fadi’s voice shook when he answered, but with anger rather than trepidation. “You have no idea what I’ve given up for you.”
Anita felt her own anger rising to meet his. “And how would I? You never tell me anything!”
He turned back to face her, the hot coal in his eyes again.
Anita continued, her own emotions rising. “Hakim taught me more about my family in two sentences than you have in eighteen years! I have a right to know!”
He started stepping towards her, now, and the fear she’d felt earlier was coming back. He was like a powerful beast, she thought. She’d never given much thought to how strong he was, but he was more musclebound than a cook had any right to be.
“Right?” he bellowed. “What right? You don’t have a right to anything, girl. You only think you do because I raised you like a little princess!”
Anita felt her rage turn into righteous anger. He’d done nothing of the sort. She’d worked alongside him for everything they’d ever got. Yes, he’d struggled to make a life for them, but she’d always struggled with him. Nothing had ever been handed to her. And he had the nerve to insult her that way now, just because she had talked to a man that he didn’t approve of?
“Well, I’m not a little princess anymore. I’m not a little anything anymore. And I deserve to know.”
She could see the conflict in him. It was like he wanted to say two things at once, but he couldn’t say either. Instead, his rage boiled over. He grabbed a glass candleholder off the nearest table, and hurled it across the restaurant.
The sudden movement seemed to break the spell. All Anita could think was that that was quite a lot of rage for her never to have seen in the last eighteen years.
Fadi turned back to face her. The emotions had drained from his face, his anger broken with the glass candle holder.
“It’s dangerous for you to talk to those men. You won’t do it. You can’t. That’s all you need to know.”
And then he walked away, leaving Anita alone in the empty restaurant.
FIVE
Anita began trying to get the restaurant back into order, but realized very quickly that she had no chance of doing it by herself. The day was hitting her, hard, and the second wind she’d gotten at Hakim’s invitation was completely gone now she knew she couldn’t accept it.
She wanted to rage at Fadi. She wanted to rebel, and tell him he had no power over her, and he couldn’t tell her what to do. But tonight had been so different. It had been like she didn’t even know him. The strangers had brought out a side to him that she’d never even known existed, and wished now that she had never seen.
The one thing that she knew was that after seeing him like that, and seeing the way he insisted that it was too dangerous to see Hakim, she couldn’t see him.
&n
bsp; She resolved to keep asking. Now that she knew a little more about the history of her ring, she felt it like a hand on her, reaching out from the past. It was like her father was calling out to her.
But she would never get anything out of Fadi if she disobeyed him in such a serious way. And one evening of polite conversation with a man who felt indebted to her for returning his lost ring felt like a bad trade for a lifetime relationship with her father.
She climbed the stairs slowly, heading towards her bed, convinced that if Hakim actually did remember her number and ever contacted her, she would have to turn him down.
She changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed. This, at least, was still the same. This room was home. It had been home for as long as she could remember.
This was her life. It was the one where she worked her hardest at the restaurant, and at school. It was the life where she was a dutiful daughter who cared about her family, and her friends, and didn’t get asked out by handsome princes.
Anita was just beginning to doze off, her eyes opening and closing sleepily, when she saw her ceiling light up, followed by the subtle buzz of her phone. She reached out to grab it off the nightstand, her tired arm grasping awkwardly and accidentally knocking a book to the floor.
She picked up the phone and looked. A text from an unknown number:
Hello Anita. Are you still awake?
Anita laughed into the empty room, careful to keep her laughter quiet enough that Fadi wouldn’t be able to hear it through the walls.
It was Hakim. It had to be. And he didn’t text much, judging by his weirdly formal text speak. Besides, anyone who did much texting would know that a text like that, sent at 1:30am, was a booty call. And there was nothing funnier than the idea of the proper, elegant sheikh she’d met earlier making a booty call.
She went to reply that she was, then hesitated. She had to turn him down. She had to tell him she couldn’t see him. But, Anita thought, she didn’t have to do it right away. It would be rude not to at least have a little bit of a conversation with him.
I am. Is this Hakim?
A silly question, but she felt a little awkward texting the man with the entourage and the limousine from the pink and yellow patterned bedroom she’d had since she was three.
She saw the little bubble. Typing…. Typing… Never had that little typing bubble been more annoying to her than it was now. Finally, she got a response.
Oh good, I remembered right. Thank you again for finding my ring. I hope you will allow me the honor of taking your out to dinner tomorrow night. Pardon my contacting you at such a late hour. I only did so because I needed to know if you would be available, so that I can make the proper arrangements as early in the morning as possible.
It was, by leaps and bounds, the longest text Anita had ever received. No, the Sheikh apparently did not text.
She bit her lip. She couldn’t answer his question right away. If she did, the conversation would be over before it started. She wanted to live in the moment a little longer.
Since she was never going to see him again, Anita figured she might as well say what she really wanted to. She typed it into her phone and pressed send, holding her breath while the progress bar filled at the top of the screen.
Is that the only reason?
A typing bubble. And then no typing bubble. And then a typing bubble again. Was he trying to kill her?
Finally, a response.
For shame. Such implications! And here I am, innocently begging you to promise to see me when you’re almost certainly in bed. Innocently. Like an innocent person.
Anita smiled to herself. He didn’t do texting, but the man certainly did sarcasm.
She thought for a moment, and then replied.
Oh, good. I was worried. There have been far too many saucy sheikhs around here lately. I have to be sure.
She should stop. She knew it. She shouldn’t keep on like this—not if she was going to honor the promise she had made in her mind to Fadi—but with every message, she found it harder to imagine not meeting up with him the next day.
Finally, she had to put an end to it. It had been, in many ways, the most exhausting, overwhelming day of her life. It was time it came to a close, but she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.
Luckily, or unluckily, Hakim brought it up himself.
So, you’ll meet me tomorrow night?
Now was the time. Anita knew what she had to do.
I’m sorry. I can’t meet you.
She clutched her phone as she waited for a response.
How do you make the pictures on this?
What?
Wait, I found it.
And then there was a picture of a sad-faced emoji.
It was too late for Anita to laugh again in her room; Fadi was only a few rooms over. But something about the idea of the heir apparent to the throne of Az Kajir sending her emoji’s was a bit too much to take. She texted back.
Well done.
His reply came quickly.
Well enough done that you’ll meet me?
Who was he to say? But then, just now, it felt like he wasn’t asking too much
I’m sorry.
Even as she typed the word, she could feel her conviction waning.
I command you as your prince.
Anita realized she hadn’t stopped grinning like an idiot this entire time, and this response only made it worse.
You’re not my prince.
A bubble. No bubble. A bubble again.
Not yet.
Anita clutched her phone to her chest and stared up at the ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d put up there when she was young. She should have removed them long ago, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
“What should I do?” she whispered up at them now, as though they would provide her with guidance.
There was no answer. But she had no willpower to go on refusing.
She told Hakim she agreed, and he fired back a happy-faced emoji.
You’re getting the hang of this.
His reply came back almost instantly.
I’m a quick learner.
He sent an address through, and they said goodnight.
Anita tried to sleep, but she kept looking at the phone in the dark, hoping for another message, even though they’d already said goodnight. She’d have to tell him the next day that they couldn’t be together, she thought. It wasn’t fair to string him along.
Still, she couldn’t help but be excited. There were butterflies in her stomach, and they fought hard against her exhaustion.
But finally, it was all too much, and she fell into a deep sleep.
SIX
Anita did her best to act normal the next day. She even tried to seem a little cross and disappointed when she was around Fadi.
It was difficult. She’d never been much of an actor, and she’d been a good, well-behaved enough daughter that she’d rarely needed to pretend with him. The sensation felt strange, and if she weren’t so excited for her date, it would have been a miserable day.
By the time evening came, the whole thing was forgotten as Anita felt her excitement bubbling over. She’d barely resisted the urge to google the address Hakim had given her. She desperately wanted to know, but it was clear that he wanted it to be a surprise, and she found the idea of disappointing him intolerable.
It was Anita’s night off, and Fadi was hard at work down in the restaurant. She knew she couldn’t go out the front without anyone seeing her, and it was too late to come up with an excuse; she’d told Fadi she would be in her room, reading and watching Netflix. He would accept that; it was boring enough for him to believe.
This left her with one option: the fire escape.
It had been years since she’d sneaked out using it, and when she had, there hadn’t been nearly so much at stake. Now, she flinched at every mournful creak of the metal, as though it would summon him out from the kitchen and he would catch her in the act.
Anita adjusted her skirt once she was on the ground. She’d gone back and forth on what to wear. Hakim had worn his tailored suit like he was born in it, and Anita had a feeling that he was usually dressed up to that degree. But she couldn’t compete with that. Plus, whatever his surprise was, she needed to be prepared. So she’d gone the semi-casual route, with a skirt, some new sandals, and a T-shirt. She had a thin cardigan stuffed into her bag in case they were out late and it got chilly, although the warmth of the night seemed unlikely to let up anytime soon.
