"Only one more touchdown!"

Talia dragged her hands down her face, not wanting to look at the screen, already knowing it would give the 49ers a two-score lead. There was no way the other team could recover from that in what little was left of the fourth quarter.

"Just one—come on, come on, come on!"

In the suspense, she teetered on the very edge of the couch, knowing only one more exaggerated throw of her hands would send her headfirst into the hardwood. She blamed the quarterback for her insanity, surprising her and all of San Francisco with the best season they'd had in years. She could finally relate to her father's rants about the greatness of Joe Montana back in the day, but she was sure he would kill her if she tried comparing the current team to the one from his early college years.

"Come on, yes, yes—wait, why is he rushing with thirteen yards to go? What the hell?" She drew her sweatshirt over half of her face, recoiling in her spot as she watched the running back avert defensive player after defensive player. "Shit, yes, yes, TOUCHDOWN!"

Zaid sat stone-faced behind her as she hopped around the living room, resembling the fans on their fourth beer in the audience. With one more screech, she cleared her throat and adjusted the hem of her gray sweatshirt, attempting to regain an ounce of her decorum.

"I'm going to sound sexist," he said, voice low, fingers dribbling against his chin, "but I have never seen a girl get so excited over a herd of burly men bringing an oval over a line."

Her lips curled into a stupid, wide grin. One day I will convert you, she thought and plopped back down on the coach, listening to the thrill in the commentators' voices as they narrated the replay, knowing he wouldn't change his mind any time soon.

Her interest in the game wavered as she grew more aware of his burning gaze analyzing every one of her reactions, or maybe she just knew this game couldn't end in a loss. Whatever it was, she didn't understand how he couldn't find another place to lounge around in this two-thousand-something-square-foot house when it was clear he had no interest in the sport playing on TV.

Regardless of their disagreement, about an hour and a couple thousand commercial breaks and timeouts later, the game ended, as did their excuse to avoid conversation. She shut the TV off and let them bask in silence, playing with the loose strings of her sweatpants.

"So, what are you actually reading?"

"Poetry," he answered, stone-faced.

She quirked a brow, but when he didn't respond, she couldn't suppress a snort. "You enjoy poetry? And you were making fun of me for watching a sports game?"

"I see we share the judgmental gene," he deadpanned, handing the book off to her again, as if she'd gained the ability to read it in the last hour. "For what it's worth, it's not full of the lovesick ramblings of thirteen-year-olds on the Notes app at four a.m. This book is centuries old, Talia." He pointed to the name of the writer, as if she could read it as well, and chuckled. "Well, maybe not my edition. It was my great-grandfather's, which I suppose makes it ancient enough."

As she listened to him describe the text, and the long history of the sha'ir—or poet—Talia wondered what it was like to come from a literary family. Every person directly related to her seemed to thrive off numbers and formulas, making more calculators and textbooks populate her house than actual prose.

"You don't find the writings difficult?" she asked after he'd finished, drawing one knee to her chest. She rested her head on it, watching him through her eyelashes. "Seventeenth-century literature was impossible for me in high school. I can't imagine reading something ages-older than that."

"Perhaps there's some beauty in the difficulty," he murmured, tracing circles on the material of the sofa, ones with a tangent line always a hair shy of her hand. "If you take forever to finish a book, you might actually remember it forever."

Not having expected this side of him, she entertained the questions in her brain. Does he enjoy American literature just as much? Has he ever written anything?

Would he mind teaching me how to read Ar—

The door to the kitchen opened, sending them to opposite sides of the couch. A couple more steps, and her grandparents would enjoy a full view of the two of them, their body language displaying perfectly coordinated mutual aversion.

"Have you two even uttered a word to each other?" Fouad chuckled as he helped Teta Salma bring in the overflowing bags of goods from their day-long shopping trip. "You're sitting over there like he has the plague, Talia."

She folded her hands over her lap. "I don't interact with boys outside of marriage, Sido. It's a modesty thing."

"Bullshit," Zaid mumbled, just loud enough so that only she could hear.

***

"On a scale of one to ten, how stupid do I look?"

Talia angled her laptop so Calvin could get a full view of the cherry-red Christmas sweater à la their grandmother's shopping escapade. A part of her wanted to ask for the receipt so she could return it, but the unwavering smile on Teta's face as she'd waited for her to try it on had destroyed those thoughts. So, there she was, wearing it while lounging in bed, so she could minimize her exposure to the world in that itchy, acrylic Christmas tree, four days after Christmas.

"Well, I'm your brother, so I have to give you a zero," he said, bringing his teacup to his lips. Early morning sunlight streamed through the window above his head, brightening her almost pitch-black room. She wasn't sure if he could even see her face in the poor lighting. "The correct question is, what would Logan think of it?"

"Why the hell does his opinion matter?" she snapped, eyebrows knitting themselves into a continuous line. "We broke up ages ago, Cal."

He snorted, inhaling some of his tea. After a brief coughing fit belonging to someone diagnosed with COPD, he appeared on camera again. "Have you seen the dude's Facebook page?"

"You know I don't have Facebook—wait, neither do you, right?"

"I do now. I swear, all these foreign old people have turned me into one of them."

A familiar voice yelled something to him in the background. She drew her ear closer to her speakers, realizing it belonged to their mother.

So far, only a few dry texts had encompassed their communication. They may have still been engaged in some pathetic feud over her insistence on staying behind, but at least Talia had Calvin to channel any of her concerns their mother's way.

"Sorry, that was Mama reminding me not to shit-talk anyone over the phone." Calvin broke into a wide grin as he added, "Think she'd yell at me if I continued in Latin?"

She snorted. "Well, given that all I remember are a few priestly chants, I think you'll be talking to a wall."

As he jokingly threw a few phrases her way, memories of seven years of forced Latin class resurfaced. Calvin had some strange obsession with the language, having scored obscenely high on the National Exam last year, despite Talia reminding him regularly that his knowledge had zero use in the real world.

"All I was trying to say is that Logan's Facebook page is a fuckin' gold mine, Talia. You think your sweater is ugly? His family has a tradition of dressing up as ornaments for Christmas Eve. His aunt posted, like, five-hundred million photos. You dodged a bullet, but I can't lie, those photos really upped my serotonin levels."

"I think that's enough for now," she grumbled, trying to get the image out of her head. Don't you dare make a fake account and stalk him later, Talia. "Wait, someone is knocking."

She adjusted the hem of her ridiculous sweater and hurried to her closed door, wondering why her grandparents would be up this late. She yanked it open and took a moment to make out Zaid's grim face in the dark, arms crossed over his chest like an indignant five-year-old.

"I can't sleep," he said. "Mind shutting up?"

"Oh please, Zaid," she scoffed, coming close to slamming the door. Calvin was still trying to get her attention through her laptop, a faint Talia echoing through her room. "Just admit you wanted an excuse to see me again."

"Who are you talking to, Talia?"

Calvin was nearly yelling by now, so she stalked to her bed and picked up her laptop, flipping on a light switch in the process. She turned the screen the other way, allowing him to come face-to-face with the source of all her problems.

"There, now you know," she huffed, rolling her eyes at the smirk that appeared on Zaid's face. At least he was now privy to her very wild social life.

"You know, you aren't what I imagined you looked like," Calvin mused, skipping past the formalities. "Talia usually dates soft white boys."

Her cheeks turned redder than her sweater. "Oh my god, Calvin, shut up."

Before Zaid could respond with something equally snarky, she slammed the laptop shut and threw it back onto her messy bedsheets. She mashed her face into her hands, praying Zaid would get the message to get the fuck out.

He did not.

"Who said anything about dating?" he asked, leaning into her doorframe. "Bold of your brother to assume."

She uncovered her face and took one declarative step forward, then another. Soon enough only a few inches divided them, a position where only one right move could transform the entire atmosphere into something much more pleasing to them both.

Rising to her toes, Talia brought her lips to his ear, breath hot against his skin. "Bold of you to assume you're my type."

And then she kissed him, with one swift movement of her door to his pretty face.