I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 08: it sure is a place

            Sometimes I forget that Mariame ain't my mother. As she massages the taut muscles in my shoulder, her strong hands occasionally digging so deep into the knots that I jerk away with a hiss only to be pulled back, it is to be understood that she considers me family.

I can't fathom how neither she nor Ridha questioned our relationship — wouldn't they want someone better for their only son? Someone a little cleverer or more ambitious. Or at the very least, someone who could love him in public without care for what other people think. But if they have doubts, they've never allowed them to be visible. They welcomed me with open arms from the beginning.

The first time we were alone together, Mariame assured me, out of nowhere, that she and Ridha had no issue with me being Asian. Her parents practically stopped talking to her because she married a North African Muslim and she wanted me to know that I never had to worry about that. It had never crossed my mind as a worry and yet, the reassurance lifted a weight off my shoulders. When we decided to move in together, she taught me her Beninese jollof recipe so I could make it for Ziri when he got depressed. She were well clear that she wouldn't teach it to me "just so I could cook it for my next boyfriend" and I swore that there would not be a next boyfriend. Mariame hummed and said, I know this already or you wouldn't be here. I know you want to marry my son. She turned back to the ingredients piled on the table only to realise I were crying.

She hugged me, assuring that she were just joking about hunting me down if I gave the recipe to someone else. I shook my head and croaked into her shoulder, I want to marry your son. I hated that I were crying in front of my boyfriend's mother — especially since I didn't exactly know why I were crying — but Mariame only sang some lullaby in French until I stopped.

Despite how much Ziri complains about her being strict and unreasonable, Mariame is mostly gentle.

Except now as her thumbs gouge into the tight muscle under my shoulder blades. She demanded I let her apply some coolant to the pulled muscle in my arm when she noticed me wince regularly during dinner. Now, as I sit on the floor between her legs, Mariame on the sofa, she has clearly decided to work her way through my whole back, humming disapprovingly whenever a knot is particularly stoddy.

Ziri carries dessert bowls from the kitchen. As he turns away to collect the tea, Ridha, still seated at the table, takes one but Ziri spins around in a flash slaps his hand away. 'No, Baba, this one is for Miles.'

Ridha laughs incredulously. 'They're all the same.'

'No, they aren't, because this is my favourite spoon.' Ziri pushes another sellou bowl to his dad. 'You can have one with an Ikea spoon.'

'Astaghfirullah!'

'Désolé.' He bows his head in apology. 'C'est ça l'amour.'

My cheeks ache with my smile as I watch them. When we first started dating, I were nervous coming around here since they seem to argue about everything but it didn't take long for me to realise there's never any vitriol in their bickering. Even their arguments are an expression of love. When I understood that, I became so bitter I refused to come over for weeks. Seeing the casual affection they share made me want to scream or cry, burn their house down, burn my house down. Ziri's parents hug him every time he comes home and when he leaves, it's with food and fruit. I doubt Ziri has ever felt unloved, even when he feels unloveable.

And his parents are so obviously in love too. Sometimes they share glances when Ziri ain't looking, pass inside jokes like teenagers pass notes in class, fully aware that they've raised a ridiculous and slightly naive son. When Ridha cooks, he takes off his wedding ring and places it on a decorative platter beside the pot of parsley that's been placed there for that sole purpose. Mariame is tall enough to kiss the top of his balding head whenever she likes. And how's that fair? Why did I get parents who only yelled at each other and then one went off and died?