Amie tilted her head to the side and smiled, rubbing Malik’s arm gently. “I’m sorry to hear that. He must have been worried I wasn’t going to make this trip. I had a… work-related emergency that I wasn’t sure I could get away from. He probably didn’t want to disappoint any of you.”
“And what a disappointment that would have been,” Zafina smirked.
With that, Azim and Galina politely excused themselves to a nearby painting and warmly expressed their delight in meeting Amie, as if to subtly scold Zafina for her behavior.
“So…” Zafina frowned, and gave a knowing smile to Malik. “How was it you two met, again?
“We met at a bar,” Amie said with a dazed smile, taking her best guess at it. She could tell she’d made the wrong guess, however, when Malik’s face suddenly fell.
“Hmm,” Zafina enunciated. “Malik said you met through his work in real estate.”
“Right, right… I had made an appointment with him about buying a new condo, but I run a theater in Chicago and we had a wrap party that night at a local restaurant. I had an early meeting so he kindly agreed to meet me there.” Amie grinned. Take that, Zafina!
The sister nodded and gave an arrogant smile. “The theater… how fascinating.”
It was time for Amie to reassess her situation; she was now dealing with a culture she had no clue about, and a mean, jealous sister who clearly had beef with Malik.
The strange thing was, while she was standing there, mortified, Malik actually seemed jovial; an endless chatter of conversation and a contagiously playful laughter spilling forth from him.
“You Americans, you love games, yes?” Zafina asked, grabbing Amie’s arm and walking her further into the gallery.
They walked past three paintings, the designs on each canvas combining to make a single image of a fallen soldier. The details within the thick brush strokes were left to interpretation, but to Amie, the hero looked decidedly happy to have fallen.
“So,” the sister continued, “who said ‘I love you’ first?”
“Malik did,” Amie smiled her best adoring smile. “In the rain, after seeing our first play together.”
“Looks like my big brother has some class after all!” Zafina said playfully, smacking Malik lightly on the shoulder. “And how did he propose?”
“It was just last week, actually,” Amie said proudly, offering Zafina her ring finger for inspection. “At my place. He set up a trail of candles leading from the entry to the ring box.”
“My, my,” Zafina said with some surprise. “And how long had you been together before he proposed?”
Amie went to speak but Malik cut her off. “Five months, Zafina. I told you that already.”
“I know,” she smiled, sliding her tongue across her teeth. “It’s just a little fast, I suppose.”
“Well, when you know, you know,” Amie confirmed, looking up into Malik’s eyes and brushing her hand against his cheek. “What about you, Zafina, are you with anyone?”
“So Amie,” the sister went on, ignoring her question. “Tell me, when is Malik’s birthday?”
Amie fought the urge to frown. Low blow, Zafina, low blow. She laughed nervously and looked to Malik for some guidance, trying to think of any plausible reason why she wouldn’t have learned his birthdate in the course of five months together.
“Oh, Zafina, she knows it’s in October,” Malik said, sounding bored. “You know how she knows?”
“How?”
“Because hers is in October, too!” he lied.
Zafina stared between the two of them before finally relenting to a laugh. Her demeanor seemed to soften from that point on, and the Newlywed Game came to a halt. The three were practically inseparable for the rest of the afternoon. The gala turned to dinner and dinner turned to cocktails, and before long the pair had been socializing well into the evening, with no shortage of important patrons and well-dressed figures for Amie to meet. Many of the guests spoke English, which boded well for her. She frequently heard the term, ‘Sheikh Malik’s American fiancée’ floating around the room.