Accepting You

Chapter Fifty

"Something's burning," Asiya commented before she stuck her nose in the air and sniffed theatrically.

A small yelp escaped from Yusuf as he leapt off the sofa and skidded behind the cooker.

He pushed the lid off the smoking pot and let it clatter onto the island. "Nothing's burning," Yusuf protested as he slapped away the rising smoke with a stripey dishcloth.

"Really? Cause the smell coming from your pot says otherwise." Asiya twisted her face as she removed her shoes. "I could smell your concoction from the hallway. What are you even trying to make?"

"I am," Yusuf stressed, "I am making you jollof rice."

Asiya's bottom lip dropped, and her eyebrows pulled together as she moved her eyes around the room like she was searching for something. "You're doing what?"

"Right, I didn't make it from scratch! I used your frozen blend and added the rice, but it still counts!" Yusuf grimaced as he peered into the pot. "And it's not burning!"

"Smells like it is."

"The recipe says burn for smokiness." Yusuf pressed his finger against his phone and stomped over to Asiya like a sulking child. "See!" He jabbed a tomato-stained finger against his screen. "It says it right there. The last step. Burn for smokiness. It's smoking, not burning."

Asiya squeezed her brows together as her lips crawled into a smile. "Yusuf, they don't actually mean burn it. They mean once it's cooked, blast the fire for a few minutes and then turn it off."

Yusuf ran back to the pot and stabbed a black spatula into the rice.

He folded the fluffy, dark grains over each other and scraped the head of the spatula against the bottom of the pot desperately. "Then why didn't they just say that! Why would they say burn it if they didn't mean burn it!"

"It's just a saying," Asiya giggled. "Just turn it off. It's definitely cooked. Overcooked."

Yusuf obeyed and slumped his upper body over the counter exhaustedly.

"Why are you even cooking?" Asiya asked.

"I got home early and wanted you to eat something nice."

"Uh-huh." The syllables clicked off Asiya's tongue. "Well, we have to eat when we come back from the session."

With his head lowered, Yusuf fiddled with the dishcloth before using it to swipe stray grains of rice off the counter into the bin. "But your food is ready. Can't we be a little late?" he pouted slightly.

"I knew it! I knew this entire thing was sketchy!" Asiya scoffed. "Cooking jollof rice to try and sweeten me out of our counselling session!"

She bobbed her head to the side to try and meet Yusuf's eyes. "That's so sly, Yusuf."

"No! I just–" Yusuf began picking apart the leftover onion on the table. He pinched a loose edge of its skin between his fingers and slowly peeled it away, not once moving his eyes to meet Asiya's as his breathing increased in speed.

What could he say? He had lost his nerve.

After he had failed to cheerlead Daniel back into a happy place, Yusuf had realised he wasn't ready.

He had tried to grasp his words. He had tried to speak. He had curled his tongue around the letters, but his tongue had knotted itself into a loop, leaving him babbling lowly like a baby.

His words had sounded wrong. His words were all wrong.

The emotional descriptions, letters, and poems he had composed in his head had proven to be gibberish, a jumble of unhelpful, wrong words.