When we finally stood to leave, Zayd looked at me.
“I don’t know whether we would make a good married couple,” he said honestly. “We barely know each other.”
I appreciated that more than I expected.
“Neither do I.”
“But I would like to get to know you, if you want the same thing.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I answered.
“I would like that. But I don’t want to become someone else just to make a relationship work.”
“Then don’t,” he said. “And I won’t ask you to.”
We began meeting occasionally after that.
Sometimes we talked about ordinary things. Sometimes we discussed the difficult questions neither of us had ever been comfortable asking our families.
We didn’t rush toward marriage.
We didn’t pretend that attraction was enough to solve every problem.
And slowly, I began to see Zayd as a person rather than the man who had exposed my secret.
