(Rewritten: 23 Aug 20)
Chapter Two: The First Meeting
A'isha joined Amara at the foot of the stairs, the front door held ajar at her cousin's hand.
"Muuum," Amara droned, and A'isha watched as she all but swung from the front door. She sucked at standing still. "We're off to the mall!" No answer. "Muuum!"
"Yes, I heard you, Amara," Aunt Elissa called from somewhere upstairs. "Just be back by quarter to two. I'm catering for a conference tonight."
A'isha plucked Elissa's keys from a nearby rack and followed Amara out onto the porch. The crisp, earthy scent of freshly mown grass filled her nose as they trailed down the driveway and onto the sidewalk, where a white Nissan Sunny sat in wait on the side of the road.
It was day two of her new life in Alexandria, a city she knew next to nothing about. Well, unless she counted the more impersonal stuff that a quick Google search uncovered. It hugged the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, was the second-largest city in the country and the home of several historic landmarks, like Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa. The last time she'd lived here, A'isha had been in diapers—
A hand clung to her shoulder, literally tugging her from her thoughts. Amara, who was supposed to be texting her bestie to tell her they're en route, was instead bouncing on the tips of her toes like a crazed fangirl.
"Ish! Ish!" Mar propelled a finger toward two men across the street, shooting hoops on their driveway. "Oh my gosh! Check him out!"
A'isha could only assume her cousin was squealing about the younger guy, since the older one looked about ten years their senior. The younger one's hair was pale blond, stark against his caramel skin, and although she preferred guys with shorter hair, he wore the shoulder-length style well. His feet sported a pair of white Nike trainers, while dark blue shorts wrapped around his waist.
But to Amara's obvious delight, his shirt was conveniently unbuttoned.
Amara shook her back to reality. "God, Ish! Isn't he DELICIOUS? I mean, just LOOK at his abs!" The girl gave a very enthusiastic hum of approval. "What I wouldn't do to get a piece of that fine Egyptian ass."
A'isha propped an elbow against the white sedan, eyeing him with intrigue. Okay, I'll admit it. He IS pretty hot—
Lavender eyes shot her way, boring straight into hers, and she stumbled two steps back, undergoing some kind of mental whiplash. Any attraction for him was instantly snuffed by the ice in that stare.
Wow, Ish! The sidewalk sure is interesting. Yup. Just keep looking at the sidewalk. A grimace twisted her face as she did that very thing. Isn't this just my luck? He doesn't hear Amara's obnoxious mating calls, but looks at me the very moment I check him out. Ughhh—
"Hey, Marik!" cried Amara, adoration oozing from her voice.
A'isha hid behind a hand, her cheeks burning. She could just picture Amara: beaming like she was at a boy band concert, figurative love hearts in her eyes, and probably waving at him like a maniac.
For the sake of her sanity, A'isha gave this Marik dude no time to reply. The ice in his eyes had her desperate to avoid any further interaction. That and it was embarrassing enough just being near a guy who'd caught her ogling him. "Okay, Mar! Time to go!" She took Amara by the wrist and threw her into the front passenger seat of the car, muttering a quiet apology over her puzzled words of protest.
It wasn't lost to A'isha that her cousin had a reputation for being boy-obsessed. Or to put it bluntly, a bit of a slut. She always needed a guy fawning over her. Or two. Maybe three. A few years ago, during one of their weekly video calls, Amara had proudly shared that she'd lost her V-Card. At thirteen. With a guy she'd been dating for a whopping three days. Two days later, Amara had been a blubbering mess over the love of her life cheating on her with her now ex-bestie. A'isha, although sympathetic, had later told Amara she could stand to be a little more careful and a little less trusting with her body. Mar hasn't mentioned her sex life since, and she still can't decide if that's a good thing or not.
As she marched around the car, A'isha sucked in a shaky breath, hit by a sudden, familiar surge of nausea.
Stupidly, she dared to look Marik's way—
Mistakes were made.
The creep had stopped to enjoy the show, a smirk on his face and a basketball tucked under one arm.
A'isha shot him a glare.
To her immense distaste, his smirk only grew.
God, she'd come across a lot of smirks in her life, but something about his one really riled her up.
Only as she reached the driver's door did she build up the nerve to bark, "Do you mind, Pretty Boy?" She almost dove into the car and slammed the door shut, giving him no time to answer.
"Oh my GOSH!" Amara dragged her perfectly manicured fingers down her face. "Do you have any IDEA of how embarrassing you just were?!"
"I don't think I do," A'isha lied, twisting the keys in the ignition. The car rumbled to life.
"Well, I was TRYING to introduce you to Marik!" Amara squawked, throwing her hands about. "And, well, some introduction THAT was! You were a total bitch!"
A'isha glared out the windscreen. "I don't care about first impressions, Amara." At least, not in this particular case. "I'm about to drive. Can you just let this go?"
With a pout, Amara crossed her arms. "Fine!"
A'isha brandished a glass dish, crammed with a concoction of saucy mince, uncooked pasta sheets and grated cheese. "The lasagne's ready for the oven, Mar!"
Amara twisted the oven dial, stealing a glance at an open recipe book. "The oven's hot. Dinner should be ready in, like, forty minutes."
After tossing the dish in the oven, A'isha left the kitchen for the living room. "So," she said, complete with a hearty stretch, "when are Aunt Elissa and Uncle Ahad meant to be home?"
"I, uh, wasn't really listening. Like, eight or nine, maybe. Dad won't be home for aaages though. He didn't start work until, like, two."
"Then, I guess we have the TV to ourselves"—A'isha sent Amara an eyebrow waggle—"and Criminal Minds is about to start."
Amara clapped, energetic as ever. "Ooh! I love that show!" She dashed across the room and threw herself on the leather sofa, alongside A'isha. "More for that hunky brown guy than the actual plot."
A'isha grinned. "I watch it for the plot and Shemar Moore. He's a total babe!"
Around thirty minutes of boy talk and TV went by before—
Ding dong!
They exchanged a bemused look, and with the TV remote nearby, A'isha hit the mute button. "Are you expecting anyone?" Like, say, one of those guys whose attention she thrived off.
Amara shrugged, springing up from the sofa and into the hallway. The click of a lock was soon followed by a squeal of excitement, and A'isha was struck by an unhealthy dose of déjà vu.
Dear God. Please don't let it be—
"Marik!"
A'isha shot ramrod straight in her seat. Her face burned in a nanosecond—just like this morning, when she'd checked him out and snapped at him and called him a freaking Pretty Boy. She slid down the back of the sofa. "Kill me..."
"Hello, Amara."
Jeez, the guy even sounded like a creep. Cold, just like his eyes. What does Amara even see in— Oh, right. He's tanned and he has a package. That explains it.
Two sets of steps echoed in the entrance hall, snapping her back to attention. The first set was loud, graceless, and most definitely Amara's. The second set, however, was smooth and calculated. Perhaps that small detail offered a glimpse of his personality.
Far too quickly, Marik appeared beneath the polished archway ahead of her. His steps came to a sudden stop, but his eyes, oh, they refused to stay still. No, they roamed her from head to toe. Slowly. Deliberately. Just long enough to make her squirm in her seat. And the very moment those eyes met her stony glare, a pseudo-charming grin spilled across his lips.
"You must be A'isha."
With a suaveness to suit his every punctuated step, Marik approached her where she sat on the sofa. The one she currently hoped would swallow her whole.
"I've heard a lot about you."
A'isha only glared. She didn't enjoy the suffocating air around him one bit. It exuded "arrogant douchebag" in buckets and if there was one thing she wouldn't let into her new life, it was one of those.
Amara came to a halt beside Marik, the creep a full head taller than the vertically challenged girl. "Yeah, I kinda talk about you a lot, Ish." She sent him a coy smile, her lashes fluttering a little too much to be chalked up to an eye twitch. Barf.
Marik cocked a brow. "Ish? What a cute nickname." She swore his eyes were laughing at her, taunting her, enjoying every second of this way more than he should be. "Though, I must say, A'isha in itself is a very pretty name." He raised a tanned hand in greeting—barely—since she hadn't bothered to rise from the sofa.
A'isha shot his hand a pointed stare—
Amara coughed into her palm, a master of subtly.
Biting back a groan, A'isha accepted his strong handshake. His touch was warm, a direct contrast to everything else about him—
"I believe you checked me out earlier," he added, as casually as a comment on the weather.
A'isha's grip tightened, a small part of her giving thought to ripping his hand off and slapping him with it. "Yeah, but it wasn't much of a view." She flashed him a sugary smile. It wavered when she ended the handshake—with immense difficulty, since he'd latched on like a crazy ex.
Marik's grin didn't falter. In fact, it grew. "Not much of a view?" He quirked a brow. "You seemed pretty enamoured by what you saw. Not to mention mortified when our eyes met."
Leather groaned as A'isha's nails dug into the sofa. Then, her nose twitched, and her eyes flew wide. "The lasagne!" She leapt to her feet, shoved Marik aside—God, that felt good—and sprinted for the kitchen.
After shoving on some mittens, A'isha ripped the oven open. The smell of smoke choked her senses.
"Remind me to never consume your cooking."
A'isha scowled at Marik, who'd made himself quite at home with an arm propped on the kitchen archway. "Consume?" She dumped the glass dish on the stove. "Can't you just say eat like a normal person?" She turned to Amara, who was peering down her scrunched nose at their now-very-much-inedible dinner. "Didn't you say this thing would take forty minutes to cook?"
Amara peeked at the recipe book sprawled across the marble bench. "Ohhhhh. That's the, uh, cooking time for a serving for four people. We kinda did half of that, so…" She rubbed the nape of her neck. "Also, I may have, um, turned the temperature up a little higher than it said."
A'isha's hand smacked her face without hesitation, then swept through her dark, wavy hair. "Canned soup for dinner, it is, then."
"Eww! No way!" Amara quite literally turned up her nose. "Canned soup's DISGUSTING." Her eyes darted to Marik, a sickeningly sweet smile filling her face. "Marik, can you please drive me to the mall to get some sushi?"
His answer came curtly. "My motorbike's at the mechanics."
As Amara pouted, A'isha had to wonder if her cousin had just been looking for an excuse to cling onto him like a barnacle. "Why not delivery?" she chipped in. "It's easier than leaving the house. We could order curry—"
"Whatever," Amara groaned. "You phone them. I'm gonna take a HOT shower." Aaand that flirty smile was back on her cousin's face, as her eyes roved over Marik. Was A'isha seeing things? Or did he look unimpressed?
Amara moseyed on out of the kitchen, prompting A'isha's attention.
"Uh. Excuse me?" She blinked back her surprise. "When exactly did I become your personal slave?"
The thump of Amara's feet on the stairs were her only parting answer.
A'isha was slack-jawed. I knew Amara was a bit boy-obsessed, but since when did she add full-bitch to her resume?
A chuckle stole her focus, coming from the creep who was now her sole company. As if this night couldn't get any cruddier.
She huffed. "What're you laughing at, buddy?"
Marik closed any distance between them in three short strides. "You," he answered, with a taunting tap of her nose.
"What?"
"You are currently the source of my amusement."
A'isha's scowl intensified, if that was even possible. "Well, sorry to crash your one-man party"—she squeezed between him and the polished bench, hightailing it outta the kitchen—"but I REFUSE to be alone with you."
Ten minutes later, A'isha had ordered her curry, hooked her smartphone up to her Bluetooth speakers, and popped on "Sexy And I Know It" by LMFAO. Guaranteed to at least make her lips twitch, even through the grimmest of times.
With the volume on full blast, A'isha bounced to her feet and shimmied carelessly around the room. She might've sung along to the lyrics all the while, and with a little too much vigour. Who's to say?
Dancing was a passion of hers. And when she actually tried, A'isha liked to think she was pretty dang good at it. Her grades, on the other hand, were nothing to boast about—with the exception of French and English—so, when she felt particularly inadequate, dancing did wonders for her confidence. She was starting at Alexandria High School the day after tomorrow, and hoped to up her academic game, to expand her horizons, to embrace her new life where she could. It's what her parents would've wanted. And it was probably one of the few things she could truly still give them.
A'isha leapt onto her bed with dramatic flair. "I've got a passion in ma pants and I ain't afraid to show it, show it, show it, show it—"
The music stopped.
Without so much as a record scratch.
From the corner of her eye, A'isha glimpsed a blond head of hair that was swiftly becoming the stuff of nightmares.
"Hello, Ish."
She stumbled from the bed, almost faceplanting the floor in the process. "The hell are you doing in my room?"
"You're so graceful," was his utterly unsatisfying answer.
"You can't just come into MY room and switch off MY music." She planted her hands firmly on her hips. "Don't you have anything better to do than piss me off?"
Then again, Amara was probably still in the shower. That excessive water bill Ahad was ranting about yesterday didn't rack up itself.
Apparently, it was Ignore A'isha Day and she'd missed the memo. First, Amara. Now, this jerk, who seemed to think strolling around her room and fiddling with her things was a socially acceptable use of his time and hers.
A'isha sighed from her very soul, striving to calm herself. "Marik," she started, "I would very much appreciate you making yourself scarce."
More ignoring.
She'd definitely missed a memo.
Marik came to a halt before a framed photo, set upon her bedside table. A young girl with dark hair and blue, upturned eyes beamed back at him, perched upon the shoulders of a laughing man. He looked identical to Uncle Ahad, save for his shaggy, black locks, rather than the short, tidy do Ahad sported. A blonde woman with eyes the same shade as the girl embraced the man by the waist, her smile bright, and her hourglass figure draped in a colourful, flowing dress.
When Marik reached for the photo frame, A'isha gripped his wrist. "Don't touch it." Her eyes were fixed on the beaming girl, through a steadily blurring vision. She wouldn't cry. Not in front of him.
For the first time, A'isha was met by Marik's frown rather than his smirk. "What happened to them?" The question came softly, gently, warmly.
"A car crash."
"So that's why you're here," he said, like another piece of a puzzle had fallen into place. "When?"
When her hold tightened on his wrist, it was surprisingly unintentional. "Two weeks ago."
"You blame yourself."
A'isha sucked in a sudden breath. "What?"
"You blame yourself for their passing. I can see it in your eyes." He pursed his lips, as if... hesitating. "Why?"
She gnawed at her lower lip, her eyes sinking to her feet. I've never told anyone why they were in such a hurry— The softness in her eyes turned steely, unyielding, as she remembered just who she was talking to: a stranger who'd been rude incarnate from the very second they'd met. "No!" She released his wrist with a little more force than was probably necessary. "Don't act like you know me! You don't. And you don't deserve to either." She shoved him once toward her bedroom door, but to her chagrin, he hardly budged. "Only an idiot would open up to a jerk like you. God, I'm an idiot for telling you this much!"
A frown seemed to be Marik's new expression of choice. "I'm an orphan too."
A'isha stilled at that. "I..." She forced a grimace back onto her face. "I don't care!" Another failed shove toward the door. "You're not tortured by the guilt of knowing they'd still be here if you'd never been!" One final shove. This time, he actually budged. "Just leave me alone!"
Marik gave her a lingering look, his eyes glittering with an emotion she refused to analyse. And to her surprise, he respected her wishes, leaving without a word.