The Easiest Target

You Have To Stop

I'm sorting through my things in the closet, unpacking the boxes when Athan walks in after a workout. Apparently there's a gym in the building and he intends to spend every morning in it.

"Oh," he steps back instantly when he sees me and lingers outside of the room. "I have to go check on my mom," he announces.

"Do I have to come?" He takes a moment then comes in timidly. I look at him and cover my eyes. "Whoa — can you get dressed first?"

He laughs — a different laugh than what I'm used to. Something sounds weird about it — like he forgot his confidence at the gym. "You're in our closet and you're my wife. Gaze at my beauty — it's no longer haram for you."

I peek through my fingers, scanning the muscles in his back. He's wearing nothing but a long towel, his body glistening from the shower he just took. He would make a good male model — for drawing purposes. He parts his arms, shuffling through hanging shirts and I move my hands, staring at the thick scars running up and down his right flank across his breast.

He's giving me his back on purpose.

He catches me watching, slips a white undershirt on quickly and drops the jeans in his hand to pin me to the floor. I keep my head turned, twisting my wrists in his grasp. "Don't — get off!" I panic.

"Don't? I wasn't really planning on it," he leans down and bites my chin. "You have a really small chin. It's actually cute."

"STOP!" Goosebumps break out from my scalp to my toes.

"Push me," he says, locking his fingers in mine. He holds my hands up in front of me and I give him a push. "Harder." He scans my quivering left arm. "You need to exercise this arm. It's been resting for months." So he sits there with nothing but a towel around his waist and shows me exercises to do every morning and night to strengthen the atrophied muscles. Then he gets up like nothing happened.

"Do you wanna come visit my mom with me or do you wanna stay here?"

I look at him sharply, surprised he cares so much about her. Then again, she is the only family he has, right?

He smiles and I realize I'm gawking at him. "Love me, love me, say that you love me," he sings and I start laughing. I do my best to stifle my laughs while he sings.

"You're so tone-deaf."

"I am not. I'm just bad at singing. It isn't in my blood!" he sings mockingly.

I try to squeeze the smile off my face but it doesn't work so I continue unpacking and change the subject instead. "You're really an only child?"

He winds his finger through my coiled lock of my hair, tugging my attention to him right before he pulls his underwear and pants on at the same time. I look away sharply and he chuckles: he wanted me look! Ew!

"Yup. Weird for Yemenis, right? My mom's actually half Russian."

My eyebrows raise. "I knew she couldn't be Yemeni — you don't look it, either."

He ruffles his hair with his towel and glances around in thought. "Are you hitting on me, Yemenia?"

I blush. "NO! I'm just — it's true!"

"My entire family's mixed. My mom's dad married like four different women so I have aunts and uncles that are half Mexican, white, Yemeni and — he married a black lady, too. He's still with that one. I like her. She has his ass whipped right."

"So that's where you got your taste in variety," I say.

He gets so quiet I get afraid I might have said something wrong. "I think ... I'm going to break up with Carla ...."