And we continued preparing dinner.
It wasn’t a dramatic reconciliation, and it didn’t erase everything that had happened.
But it was real.
A year after the night my secret was exposed, Zayd and I were still together.
We had faced disagreements. We had learned things about each other that neither of us had expected. We had also discovered that honesty could be uncomfortable without necessarily destroying a relationship.
One evening, we sat together in the same café where we had first decided to start over.
Zayd looked at me across the table.
“Do you ever think about that first night?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“More often than I’d like to admit.”
He laughed softly.
“I still can’t believe we ended up meeting each other’s parents the next evening.”
“Believe me, I remember.”
We smiled, but then his expression became serious.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you.”
“What?”
“Do you think you can be happy with me? Not because our families approve. Not because people expect us to get married. Just because you genuinely want to be with me?”
