“Everything alright?” Nate asks, dropping a kiss on my temple.
Is it? Ishouldfeel confused, but I don’t. It feels… Right.
I look at his confused face and nod with a smile.
“Yeah,” I say before I press on the door ring.
The kitchen is a chaotic mess. Jack is sitting on a stool with a pout as Evie is working behind the stove.
“As I said, we’re not exactly ready,” Ikram says, scratching his forehead.
“It’ll be fixed in no time,” Evie sings, adjusting the heat under the pan.
It was not.
Turns out, Jack tried to go for a casserole and didsomethingwrong. What did he do wrong? I have no idea, but it turned into a kind of mushy mixture that could only be saved by Evie and her clever ideas and skill.
Now we have a chicken, mushroom, and leek pie with some mashed potatoes.
At least it tastes really good.
“Thursday,” Evie says. “We’ll do a cooking day. We’ll go over the basics again.”
Jack grunts but nods anyway as he takes another bite of his pie. When we moved in, the large round table confused me because there were only the two of us. My heart feels warm looking at all of us, seated together at the table, with room for one more person. Maybe Evie’s next date, or Nuri when she’ll come back.
I can’t wait to do this again.
“You didn’t tell me about your book signing event last week,” I say to Jack, pouring everyone another round of wine.
“I missed doing those,” he says with a sad gleam in his eyes. “I hope I can do more. Maybe with you, once the storytelling book has been published.”
“Did you send it?”
“Saturday morning,” he grins. “And since my agent can’t spend a day without checking her emails, she read it all in one go and answered this morning.”
“You didn’t tell me!” Ikram whines. “So that’s what you were doing in your office for so long.”
Jack nods with a small smile. “I didn’t want to mention it in case she thought it was a dead end.”
No matter how many best sellers he has written, Jack always doubts his finished manuscripts. I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re an accomplished writer or not, the imposter’s syndrome is hitting everyone hard.
“And how was the meeting with the family?” Nate asks, serving me and himself another spoon of the mashed potatoes I’ve been eyeing in silence.
Ikram and Jack look at each other with tenderness, holding their hands over the table.
“I had an amazing time,” my brother says with a soft smile. “He has like the loudest but kindest family I’ve ever seen.”
My heart constricts. Jack deserves to have a family like this. If he gets it through Ikram, it’s good enough for me.
“I think my mother loves you more than she loves me,” Ikram chuckles. “She never gavemeher secret Samsa recipe.”
Jack rolls his eyes but they still shine with adoration. “She knows I’m too bad a cook to ever shadow her.Andyou couldn’t be more wrong. She said as her‘Ibn’, whatever that means, I had to know what your favorite dessert was so I could cook it for you.”
“Ibn?” I frown.
Ikram looks at Jack with wide eyes. “She called you that?” He asks, and Jack nods, arching a brow. “My mom can be a little over the top. By calling you stuff like that, she only means that she approves of our relationship.”
“But what does it mean?” Evie asks.
