“Mysterious like a zombie,” Fatima said.
“You’re such a rude girl. Respect your elders.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, tilted her head mockingly, and simpered, “Please, dearest Chacha, sleep eight hours a night instead of writing charity letters or whatever it is you do, and maybe you will not be at work looking like a dead thing, inshallah.”
She was just like her father. The thought was bittersweet. “I’ll think about it. Why are you here? There’s nothing wrong, is there?” In the months since Fatima had enrolled, Zaf had only caught glimpses of her on campus from afar. He usually pantomimed his best Embarrassing Uncle routine, and she usually skulked away while shooting daggers in his direction—but now here she was, in his building. A kernel of anxiety skittered within his chest, always ready and waiting to blow. His Protective Uncle routine was even more intense than the Embarrassing Uncle one.
But Fatima rolled her eyes—she had a minor eye-rolling addiction—and sighed, “No, Chacha. Nothing is wrong. I just moved a class around to fit in Level 1 Punjabi.”
Zaf raised his eyebrows. “Your Punjabi is fine.”
“Exactly. I look forward to my distinction. Of course, I didn’t know my rescheduled lit seminar would be”—she wrinkled her nose, looking around the foyer with blatant disgust—“here.” Echo was a squat, gray relic of a building halfway down University Road where medical-science students did weird things to dead bodies and animal organs.
“Ah, it’s not so bad,” he told her cheerfully. “At least you’ll get to see your favorite uncle more often now.”
“I see you almost every day, and you are my only uncle,” she tutted, shifting her handbag from her left arm to her right. He’d told her countless times to wear a rucksack for even weight distribution, but she was a little fashion plate like her mother.
“Grouch as much as you want, Fluff. I know you love me. Now hurry up to your lesson, or you’ll be late.”
“Nag, nag, nag. This is what I get for checking on your welfare, ah?” With another epic eye roll, she turned to leave.
“Niece,” he called after her, “be good and bring me breakfast next time.”
She ignored him, increasing her pace as she walked away.
“A snack, even. Fluffball! Are you listening to me?”
The flick of her headscarf over her shoulder was an unspoken Fuck you.
And then Fatima was gone, and Zaf was alone—a realization that made him tap his computer again. If he was the type to obsess over women, he might notice that a certain someone was late, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t. Instead, he rubbed at his short beard, clicked his tongue against his teeth, and checked his emails. There was a reminder from the team leader about the evacuation drill planned today, because Echo housed a ton of dangerous gases as well as weird organs. There was another email from the university’s staff rugby team, inviting him to play—but, as much as he’d like to, that might be asking for trouble. Zaf was rarely recognized these days, what with the beard, and it was almost a decade since he’d last played pro. But getting on a pitch with local rugby fans could jog someone’s memory, and if anyone said to him, “Hey, aren’t you the guy whose family died in that car crash?” he might accidentally punch them in the face.
While he trashed the email with a sigh, Echo’s automatic door heaved itself slowly open. In his peripheral vision, Zaf registered a familiar figure, and something inside him grew quiet. Watchful. Hungry.
He turned, and there was Danika Brown.
She walked like she’d never stumbled, studying the empty foyer with feline eyes he had a bad habit of falling into. Her dark skin glowed prettily under the same fluorescent lights that made everyone else look ghostly, jaundiced, or gray. And even though he’d told himself a thousand times that panting after a friend—a work friend, a work friend who might also be gay—was tacky at best and creepy at worst, lust slammed into Zaf like an illegal tackle.
“I’m late,” Danika declared, because she rarely said hello or good-bye. Her long, black dress swirled as she approached him, the loose fabric occasionally clinging to her hip or her waist or her thigh. Not that he was looking, because that would be inappropriate. “Here you are,” she said, sliding a cup over the desk that separated them. “One extra-hot, extra-black, extra-bitter coffee for our resident prince of darkness.”
“Cheers, Princess,” he shot back, and his reward was a million-dollar smile from that soft, scarlet mouth. The sight crackled through his veins like electricity. He kept going. “Out-gothed any teenagers, lately?”
“Scared any old ladies shitless?” she replied sweetly.
“Old ladies love me.”
“Wow, hot stuff.”
He flushed, but hopefully his skin tone and his beard would hide it. “Erm . . . because I mow their lawns and that. Is what I meant.”
She grinned. “This just gets better and better.”
“Fuck off.”
Usually, she’d smirk at him and do as instructed, always in a rush to get to work. But today, she huffed out a laugh and ran a hand over her short, pink hair, from the razored edges to the longer curls on top. That hair had been black on Friday. Blue last month. Red the first day he ever saw her.
Aaand he should probably spend less energy cataloging this woman’s hair colors, and more on . . . you know, important shit. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other things to think about—workshops to write and goals to chase and nonprofits to get off the ground.
But then Dani sighed, and he was distracted from common sense again.
“That was a hell of a sigh,” he murmured, because it had been.
“Of course it was,” she replied absently. “I’m a hell of a woman.”
True enough, and a typical Danika comment, but her gaze was distant and her heart clearly wasn’t in it. With her narrowed eyes and her pursed lips, she seemed unusually . . . agitated,
