Chapter 11 - Where We Begin Again
Chapter 11: Where We Begin Again
Morning came slowly.
The light filtered in through Meilin’s curtains, quiet and golden. She woke to the soft scent of toast and the creak of movement in the kitchen. Her mother, awake before her—as always.
She padded out barefoot and found her mother already placing sliced fruits into a bowl, her expression calm, casual, as if the night before had never carried the weight it did.
“Sleep okay?” her mother asked.
“Yeah.”
Her phone buzzed.
From: Rafiq
I can still taste your mum’s pineapple tarts. Hope she’s okay.
Meilin smiled.
She replied: She stayed over.
A pause.
Then: Still alive?
She stifled a laugh and put her phone down.
They ate breakfast quietly, her mother offering no further commentary—just soft glances, a second cup of tea poured without asking, a silent acknowledgment of everything unspoken.
Before leaving, her mother turned at the door. “Invite him again. Next weekend. Proper lunch.”
Meilin blinked. “You sure?”
Her mother raised an eyebrow. “You think I stay overnight just for the tarts?”
—
The return to the office was quiet but charged. There was no change in how Rafiq and Meilin behaved A different kind of awareness. A gentle undercurrent of having been seen, and still choosing to stay seen.
They walked in separately, as usual. Sat in different sections of the floor. But during the morning meeting, their slides flowed seamlessly. Meilin handed off one point, Rafiq picked up the next. Their rhythm was easy—practiced but not rehearsed.
After the meeting, a colleague leaned over to Meilin with a playful nudge. “You two really sync well. Same slides, same notes. It’s like you’re telepathic.”
Meilin smiled politely, brushing it off with a light, “We’ve worked together on enough projects.”
But when she glanced up, Rafiq was already looking at her. Not smiling outwardly—but his gaze was steady, reassuring.
Later, in the pantry, she overheard a casual conversation between two coworkers. It wasn’t about her—not directly—but the words still struck a chord.
“I don’t know. Age gap relationships just feel off sometimes,” one of them said. “Especially when the woman’s older. The guy either gets overwhelmed or bored, or just… flakes.”
“Yeah,” the other replied. “It’s cute at first, but long-term? Not many make it.”
They laughed. Moved on.
Meilin didn’t. Not right away.
She stood there a little longer than she needed to, holding her tea. Wondering if that would always be the quiet background noise—comments never meant for her, but somehow always finding their way in.
When she returned to her desk, Rafiq passed by with a file. He didn’t say anything. But as he placed it on her table, his fingers paused—just for a second. A small, silent gesture.
She looked up. He didn’t smile.
But she understood.
—but something had shifted beneath the surface.
—
That evening, she found a message from Rafiq.
Rooftop?
When she arrived, the sky was soft with dusk. He had brought two packed dinners, a flask of tea, and something small wrapped in brown paper.
“A gift?”
He handed it to her.
She unwrapped it slowly. It wasn’t a notebook.
It was a book. A slim, translated copy of the Quran—its cover soft matte, with gentle embossed script and a gold ribbon tucked between the pages.
“For your questions,” he said. “Not for answers I expect you to find. Just… to understand more. At your own pace.”
Meilin stared at it, throat tight.
She ran her fingers over the cover, slowly. The delicate embossed script felt more real than she expected—less like a gift, more like a quiet invitation. It wasn’t grand or dramatic. It didn’t try to persuade. It just sat there between them, waiting for her to choose what it would mean.
Her first instinct had been awe. Her second—fear. Not of the book, but of what it represented: a path she hadn’t fully stepped onto, yet somehow was already walking. And the fact that Rafiq had given it to her without pressure, without conditions, made her want to open it even more.
She blinked hard, feeling the weight of the moment settle in her chest—not heavy, but full.
She thought about how easily he could’ve given her anything else—a necklace, a card, a keepsake with less meaning. But this wasn’t about romance or symbolism. It was about trust. It was about Rafiq saying, this matters to me, and so do you.
Her fingers curled protectively around the book, not ready to open it just yet, but ready to carry it.
She wasn’t sure when she’d begin reading. She wasn’t sure how much she would understand. But she knew she wanted to. Not because he asked her to. Because she needed to find her own way toward him, toward them—through something that mattered deeply to him.
It was overwhelming. But in the quiet of that rooftop, it also felt right.
Not like a finish line.
But like the beginning of a deeper kind of listening.
“I heard what was said earlier,” he added gently. “I don’t have the answers either. But I’m still here.”
She sat beside him. The city blinked below.
She said nothing. Just reached for his hand.
—
That night, after returning home, Meilin sat by her desk with the Quran in her lap. The room was dim, lit only by the warm glow of her reading lamp.
She opened the book slowly, letting the ribbon guide her to a random page.
Her eyes skimmed over the verses—delicately translated, each line accompanied by its original Arabic. She read slowly, absorbing more than just the words. It wasn’t all clear. Some passages felt distant, wrapped in language she didn’t yet know how to hold. But then a verse caught her.
“Indeed, in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest.”
She read it twice. Then a third time.
And something inside her exhaled.
It didn’t erase her doubts. But it softened them.
She closed the book gently and placed it beside the notebook in her bag.
Then she opened a page and wrote:
Maybe the story doesn’t begin when everything is certain.
Maybe it begins when you’re unsure—but still choosing.
When you don’t fully know the road ahead, but you stay… anyway.