Through the screen of the fireplace, Talia watched flames envelope a wooden log, creating a blanket of heat that just barely covered the corner of the living room in which she and Zaid had sought refuge.

Lying on an old comforter, they were a mess of blankets and their thoughts, as life had created the cruelest paradox. Being this close to his body made her want to commit every sin under the sun, but pulling away meant losing one of her two sources of warmth.

Zaid looped an arm around her waist, making her gasp. He wrenched her body backwards until her back stuck to his front and then interlocked their icy hands. "This is purely to prevent hypothermia," he said. She swore she could feel him smile over her hairline, feeling his chilled nose buried in the thick locks. "You can sleep now."

Talia closed her eyes, but she knew for sure she wouldn't doze off with the sheer number of conflicting emotions flooding her body. "I'm not actually tired, Zaid. Maybe you can tell me some things."

"What things?"

She entertained the first of her many curiosities. "How did your parents meet? I've been a little confused this whole time how your mother ended up in the Middle East."

"It's not as interesting of a story as you might think." The levity in his tone relaxed the lines in her face, restoring some of the lighthearted atmosphere. "She was an English major at UCLA when she decided to study abroad. My father used to give these long-winded university seminars on poetry outside of work, and she attended one by chance. I guess he interested her much more than whatever dry piece of literature he was droning on about." He laughed warmly, making her smile with him. "I don't know, I guess I find it kind of odd how Arabic poetry bonded a British-educated engineer and an American college student thousands of miles away from home."

Well, that explains the accent, then.

"That story is actually so romantic," she breathed, watching it play out in her head, almost like a movie. "My parents met in grad school in California in a dispute over a few lines of code." When he quirked a brow, she laughed and clarified the story. "No, really. My dad used to think he was a god at tutoring this weird ancient software, until he realized a shy foreign student named Nadia understood it better than he ever could."

"Now that is the start of a beautiful romance," he chuckled, returning to their makeshift mattress. "Did your mother come to the US just for a degree? Or did she intend on staying?"

She froze, realizing she didn't even know the answer to that. For someone who took any chance she could to run back to her family, she couldn't have been that desperate to leave them—or else maybe half of Talia's childhood trauma would've been a figment of her imagination.

"I don't know," she murmured, shrugging. "I don't know if I would even describe my parents as a love story."

"You wouldn't say they love each other?"

"No, no—I don't mean they don't love each other. I just mean, they're more of a practical pairing. Both analytical, career-oriented people with a work ethic they put into everything, even raising me and my brother. Where they're not alike they complement each other—her strictness, his leniency, her traditions, his open-mindedness..." She shook her head, not having expected to psychoanalyze their marriage on the spot. "I don't know...they just work."

He nodded. "That's still good, though. If I think about it, my parents' marriage was anything but practical. My mother gave up almost her whole life for what was love at first sight, but at least it lasted." His eyes fell to the floor as the same burden from last night lay heavy. "For how long it was meant to last, I guess."

"I'm sorry," she whispered after a moment. Their hands closed some of the gap between them, the one that wasn't so visible to the naked eye. "That kind of love is so rare."

"I wonder how much so..." he murmured, tilting his head up. "I have a question for you, for a change."

"Go right ahead."

"Would you—" He took a moment to collect his thoughts, before finishing, "Would you ever visit me?"

"Visit you?" She blinked. "When?"

"You know, in the future. After we go our separate ways, that is."

She stiffened, turning her head back to her pillow. She chose her words carefully, not wanting to divulge her true feelings about this topic. "I mean, I hope we get to see each other again once we leave, but I figured—I don't know—that this could be our meeting place? A compromise, I guess."

"That's not a bad idea," he murmured, "but what do you think of mine?"

"I-I'm not sure, Zaid. I mean, I haven't been back with my family in over eight years, so I'd feel like a stranger there more than anything."

"But that's why I'm a native, right?" At the playful tone, she couldn't suppress a smile, but it slowly fell when he continued, "I can't help but feel like that's not what you wanted to say, though."

"It's not," she admitted, staring at the fuzzy black of the foyer before them. She steeled herself before turning her face back to him and admitting the truth. "To be honest, I don't care to visit—ever. I've had my mind made up for years, so trust me when I say it has nothing to do with you, Zaid."

She couldn't hear anything besides their slow and steady breaths for a few moments, knowing if they hadn't been swimming in darkness, the disappointment on his face would have been glaring. She could at least feel it when his hand slipped out of hers and fell to his side.

"I respect your choice," he said slowly. "But I just don't understand. Do you really have no longing to go back to the land of your family? To remember your culture? To connect with your roots?" He spoke so steadily and softly, but his words still felt like knives, digging deeper into her lost soul.

"I can still do most of that here," she reasoned. "I know our history, I love our traditions, I grew up with our language, even if I still can't read it."

"I know," he murmured. "But you need some place to still go back to, don't you? It's easier to forget who you are when it's all a glimpse here. Hell, I would know. Four months here, and I've already given myself an identity crisis." Shrugging, he finished, "Maybe you just don't realize you have one of your own."

At the change in his tone, a subtle shift from neutral to patronizing, her demeanor changed, firing up all her defenses. "With all due respect, I don't think I need you to lecture me on how to deal with being a second-generation American, Zaid. And I definitely don't need you to make assumptions about my life."

"Fine," he begrudgingly admitted, "I won't speak so absolutely about it. But my point still stands."

"About what?" she snapped, patience finally wearing thin. "Me being a traitor to my culture because you're pissed I don't want to journey halfway across the world to see you?"

"Oh, now you're just picking and choosing arguments, Talia," he scoffed and sat up completely. "At least stay on topic to give yourself some credibility."

"You want me to stay on topic?" she huffed, jabbing a finger into her chest. "Then maybe you should ask yourself why you were so obsessed with coming here if you care so much about our roots."

"Because I think there's a way to maintain them without becoming whitewashed," he bit back. "It's been what for your family? One or two generations in this country? I wouldn't be surprised if your children turn out to barely utter a word in our language, let alone know what region of the world they actually come from."

That was just cold. She sucked in her cheeks and tightened her arms over her chest, and this time, not in any effort to keep her warm. She was fuming, on the inside and out.

"You know what, Zaid? I may be whitewashed, but at least I'm not a wannabe. You can boast about your passport and fancy study abroad experience all you want, but at least I don't pretend to know as much about your country as you do about mine in that jumbled accent of yours."

He let out a sardonic laugh, palms meeting the floor. "You want to poke fun at the way I speak? Alright, sure. Do that, Talia, when you actually aren't lying when you say you're fluent in two languages."

"Huh, let me think back to the time I ever said I was. As I recall, I humbled myself enough to let you teach me how to write my own fucking name, when Google very well could have done the same thing." Now she was all up in his face, but the hand nearing his cheek wanting to give it a very different kind of touch. "And for what it's worth, I'd rather have my kids grow up monolingual if their language at least teaches them respect."

"I don't think it'd matter if they're the kindest people in the world," he replied, looking at her from underneath his eyelashes, "if they don't understand their identity."

His words snapped the last of her restraint.

"God, do you wanna know why I hate going back, Zaid? It's because my people—you know, the ones who share my same flesh and blood—have never made me feel like I should remember who I am around them."

"Why?" he asked, pulling back. "Just because you were a girl?"

"No." Her eyes fell to the hazy floor, to the nothingness she wanted to feel. "To my grandmother, Nuha, I was a girl, and I was the first-born daughter of this foreign, American father, who, above all, had a flaw." Stiffening, she felt like she was betraying herself by phrasing it that way, knowing only her grandmother saw it as such. "I spoke her mother tongue with a stutter. One that didn't discriminate languages either, because if it did, I sure as hell wouldn't have spent years in speech therapy trying to get rid of it."

"Lots of children stutter," he reasoned after a quiet moment, shaking his head. "Your grandmother shouldn't have made you feel ashamed of that."

"It wasn't the stutter," she shot back, fist tightening. "It was everything it represented. My grandmother never understood my struggles were part of a real speech disorder. To her, my sad, broken Arabic could have only been a sign I was already too American to be one of them." And I still think she's right. "It's been over a decade now, but God, I can remember the exact disappointment in her eyes when she looked at my father and said those words. 'Such a shame, this is what happens when you raise your kids in the West. They forget their roots and become an embarrassment to their relatives.'"

He recoiled, seeming to understand why his words, the ones he'd spoken from sheer ignorance, had driven a knife into the very heart still cracked in two after all these years. Eventually, her tears were too heavy for her eyes, and they slowly dragged down her cheeks.

"Tell me your mother at least explained your situation to them," he said carefully. "Gave her some of the truth, at least."

"How could she?" She looked up, grateful her wet face faded in the dark. "Over the years, it was easier to let her mother believe I was a little whitewashed American child than admit the unwanted granddaughter of the family had something truly wrong with her. My aunts and uncles never cared to defend me either, because at least I appeared like more of a disaster than their own children in those moments." Her bitterness ate her alive when she remembered her mother was sitting with the same woman right now, six-thousand miles away but still infiltrating her mind. "It sounds kind of trivial, right? Who needs their grandmother's approval? But she... She is why I am the way I am right now." She rose to her feet, venom leaking from her tone as she finished, "And today I realized that there are other people I thought I liked who are just like her."

He grasped the edge of her sweater as she marched forward, calling out, "Talia, wait—"

She ignored him and ran to the frigid upstairs, realizing cold was the nicest feeling she'd feel that night.