Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“Yeah? Your favorite what, babe?”
“Everything.”
I would have done anything she asked in that moment. Sariah was quickly becoming my best friend, and when she said things like that—things that told me how much I meant to her—it reinforced what a great idea falling in love with her was. I wasn’t falling alone. We were in this together, now and always.
“Bet I can make you come twice before the pizza gets here,” I said.
She arched a brow. “Probably. But then we’re finishing this movie.”
I put my hands up in mock surrender. “Yeah, I was really into it until you said I have to go fuck you.”
She scoffed, her eyes dancing playfully. “Okay, big talker, you’ve got like twenty-five minutes to give me two orgasms. Ticktock.”
She tried to leap over the back of the couch, but I caught her and pulled her back onto it, catching most of her weight on me. Her yelp was interrupted by her laughter.
“I’d better get to work right here on the couch then,” I said.
As I tugged her pants down, she moaned her approval.
And in just seventeen minutes, I held up my end of our bargain.
Epilogue
Sariah
* * *
For the first time since I was a teenager, summer vacation was awesome. Though I still worked part-time, the fact of the matter was that I didn’t have to work that hard. I had clients, a good salary, and the executive offices were essentially a ghost town in the summer. Everyone took time off and I even got two weeks of paid vacation, which I hadn’t been expecting this soon after being hired. Lance said they didn’t worry about accrual or anything like that. Rosa’s strategy was that happy employees made the best employees, and she was probably right. So Nash and I jetted off to Antigua, and then I’d put in some hours while he’d gone to Asheville to help his mom close on her house.
Now it was late August and Nash had asked me to move in. I’d resisted because of my lease and everything, but then he’d come up with what I had to admit was a brilliant idea. His mom moved into my apartment and would stay there for the remainder of my lease, which would give her time to decide when and where she wanted to settle, and I moved in with Nash.
This created the only hiccup in our relationship—my family. My sisters knew I was dating someone but I’d been super careful not to tell them who. We’d come a long way since the old country, but bringing my all-American blond, blue-eyed boyfriend home to my Middle Eastern family was terrifying. It wasn’t that they expected me to marry someone from Iran, but our disparate backgrounds might be tricky. Theo, at least, had been Italian and his family had been as old school as mine, just in a different way.
“It’s going to be fine,” Nash said for the hundredth time as we pulled up to my parents’ house.
“How many girlfriends have introduced you to their parents?” I demanded, nervously wiping my hands on my denim miniskirt.
He got out of the car and came around to open my door for me. “As an adult?”
“Exactly.”
“Babe.” He reached for me and pulled me close. “I love you and they’re going to see that I have the best of intentions.”
I gently reached up to put my hand on the side of his face. “I know. It’s just—” I faltered as a very familiar car pulled into the driveway. “Nash…what is your mother doing here?”
“What?” He swung around, frowning, and then walked over to where his mother was getting out of her car.
“Hello, sweetheart.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Will you get the casserole out of the passenger side? Hi, Sariah!”
“What are you doing here, Mom?” Nash asked, frowning.
“Nita!” A woman I assumed was Sariah’s mother came out of the front door smiling. “You’re late.”
“I know.” Nita gave her a little shrug. “I lost track of time.”
“Well, come in, come in.” She turned to Nash. “Hello. You must be Nash. I am Sadie Ansari, Sariah’s mother.”
“H-hello.” Nash seemed nervous as he shook my mother’s hand, which wasn’t like him at all, and I rushed forward.
“Mom.” I quickly hugged her.
“You look beautiful,” she said, smiling. “Like a woman in love.”
I might have blushed.
“Hello, hello!” My father came to the door and the introductions started.
This wasn’t at all what I’d envisioned.
“Does anyone want to tell us how you know Nash’s mother?” I asked when everyone had finally been introduced.
“I hadn’t seen you all summer,” Mom said, lifting her chin a notch. “I suspected you and your mysterious new boyfriend were getting serious, and I figured the only way I was going to meet him would be to show up at your apartment unannounced. Imagine my surprise when a strange woman answered the door.”