I stared at him across the table with my eyes glistening. I hadn’t known my tear ducts still worked until then. What a way to find out.
‘The two other women don’t exist, do they?’
‘You tried to find them, didn’t you?’
‘Asshole. That was very clever.’
He smiled. I cleared my throat. ‘This is my kitchen. I can’t walk out.’
Shahryār nodded, and drew back his chair. ‘So tell me to leave.’
I pushed my own chair back and moved around to his side of the table, placed myself on his lap and kissed him deeply, tasting the herbs and the spices and him. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in flush. I rested my forehead against his. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.’
He pushed my hair from my face. ‘I’m not either. Let’s learn together.’
I nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s do that. I hated kissing him. And I didn’t let him feel my boob. Not even once. I just thought doing it would make me un-fall in love with you.’
Shahryār brought my lips to his once more, softly, sweeping his thumb against my jaw. ‘How did it go?’
‘My first failed mission.’
‘I am supportive of all your endeavours and I am proud of you for being incredibly successful in everything you do, but I’m glad to hear that. I hope every time you try to un-fall in love with me you fail. And I know you’ll probably try it a lot.’
I started unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Hmm. You’re probably right.’
‘Can we agree not to kiss anyone else apart from each other now?’ He tugged at the belt of my wrap-style sweater dress.
I laughed into his mouth. ‘Sure. Sex is okay, though, right?’
‘Of course.’
I didn’t like doing things I wasn’t good at, but it turned out I loved learning how to love with him.
I’d told him everything about myself; not on purpose, it just happened. It was a natural reaction to the ease I felt around him and it was irresistible, being that free. It felt so good that I didn’t trust it and I treated it like a vice, when actually, maybe it was good for me? Maybe it was a good thing I deserved to have? It just felt too good, too fairytale, too storybook, too too, because I wasn’t used to it. My constitution had to adjust to it.
The transition from not knowing him to knowing him was a seamless transfiguration. Pieces of me fell into place; I was growing into what I should be. We were growing. It wasn’t as if our love built me, it’s that it galvanised me, making me stronger because he saw me fully, the best parts and the worst parts. I kept count of the nights we slept in the same bed. He was the first man that I’d ever allowed to sleep over and sleep over and sleep over, and it seemed to me, at first, such a remarkable, unexplainable phenomenon that I had to retain a tally. I thought that, at some point, I would get bored. Deep down I believed that, at some point, he would get bored. 1,001 nights. Each one felt unique, even in the growing comfort and familiarity; it was a widening tapestry and a deepening of our story. We were building our world. Some nights we would talk with words, others just with our bodies, developing our language, discovering new ways to say I love you; I see you, I hear you, me and you. A lot of nights, we would just collapse into bed silently and curl up into each other, and often those were the nights I understood most how staggering the thing between us was. I fell asleep so deeply next to him, safe and content. I never thought I could have a peaceful sleep with someone else by my side. 1,001 nights. About two years and seven months of what I reckoned would be a two-week fling. 1,001 nights in your arms and each one felt like a great eternity. I felt like there was an infinity within our affinity, that our connection was so deep and so fathomless that there was no way we could be bound by something as mundane as dawn. We were our own suns.
But our line of work was dangerous. We didn’t talk about it much because it was a given, we didn’t talk about it much because what was the point? We both knew that being together made us powerful and therefore it exponentially increased the risk. We were double the threat to a lot of people in the tall glass towers. We didn’t talk about it much, but when we chose somewhere to live, it was a sweet neighbourhood just outside of the city, gated with security. We didn’t talk about it much, but we agreed we didn’t want children, even though we both cooed over your nieces in the same way. I saw the look in your eye. We didn’t talk about it much, but one day you started kissing me longer before you left the house, started telling me to ‘be careful, baby’， brushing your thumb across my lips in a way that pulled a smile out of me and then made me pull you in and say ‘hey, you be careful, baby, or we’ll have a baby’。 We didn’t talk about it much, but one morning, you pulled me back into bed, whispered into my neck that we should both miss work. Our clients were going at it again, which was frustrating, as they had bigger, common enemies to focus on. It was stressful for both of us, to the point where we were starting to bring it home. We spent the whole day in our bed, white and cushiony, within the clouds themselves. I’d never felt more alive than when you made me breathless; and taking your breath away made me feel like God must have when he poured life into the earth.