Accidentally Engaged(32)

He nodded, taking his equipment to his car. Reena headed back into the hallway, where Nadim was unlocking his door.

“Hey, thanks again for doing that,” she said.

He smiled. “I had fun. And thanks for letting me have the leftover food.”

“No problem.” She leaned her head back against the wall next to her door.

“Why don’t you come inside for a bit,” he said. “You look beat. I think you need a cup of tea or something.”

Smart man. Reena smiled and followed him into the apartment. She fell on the old green armchair immediately and removed the too-tight boots. She wanted to remove the too-tight jeans, too, but decided it best to save that for her own apartment.

Nadim went straight to the kitchen, put the leftover food away, then filled his kettle. “So,” he said, once he’d joined her in the living room. “You think that went okay?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Really well, actually. You were a natural. And I know Shayne will do an amazing job editing it.”

“Yeah. I’m excited to see it. The production value will at least be better than what we did alone.” He sat on the sofa across from her, watching her face intently. “Reena, why do you seem, I don’t know, sad? We have it in the bag, right?”

She bit her lower lip. She couldn’t explain her moodiness, at least not to him. She couldn’t explain how things going well in one part of her life had always coincided with things going spectacularly wrong in others.

The other shoe always dropped. No good came without a crushing bad to chase it away.

“No, I’m fine.” She smiled. “Just sore feet.”

He raised a brow. “I’d offer to massage them for you, but, well, I’m not sure you’d want that. What with my…you know.”

She sat up straight. “Your what?”

“You know. My thing.”

Their arranged marriage? Their fake engagement? Why would any of those mean he couldn’t give her a foot massage?

“What thing?” she asked again.

He ran his hand through his cropped hair. “I told you, remember? This is awkward.”

Yes, awkward was the right word to describe this conversation. Was there another big-bad thing Nadim hadn’t told her? Worse than when he told her their parents had arranged their marriage, or that he had slept with the kindie teacher? Worse than telling her he might have given her lice? At this point she didn’t just expect the other shoe to drop, she expected the whole blasted shoe museum downtown to fall on her head. What the hell was he trying to tell her?

Her shoulders fell, resigned to the pain that would no doubt come. “Nadim, just tell me.”

He sighed. “I told you this. I…I have a thing for, you know, a thing for, er…feet.”

She blinked. “Feet.”

“Yes.”

Reena’s eyes widened. Feet? Really? “Is that why you’re always looking down at your feet?”

“It’s not my feet I’m looking at—it’s yours. You have lovely arches,” he said.

Reena stared at him for several long seconds before bursting out into full-body laughter. “You have a foot fetish?”

His brow furrowed. “It’s not a fetish. I just think women’s feet are…sexy.”

“Dude, that’s the definition of a fetish!” She valiantly tried to stop laughing, but another wave overcame her, and she slid right off her parents’ armchair onto the floor.

“Are you seriously laughing at my preferences?”

She waved her hand. “No, no. I’ve known enough people with unique tastes, I don’t kink-shame…it’s just that it’s so totally not what I expected you to say! I thought you were going to reveal some deep, dark secret you’ve hidden that would ruin everything. I literally at that moment thought the next shoe was going to drop and—”

He smiled. “I dropped a foot on you.” He chuckled. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“I don’t know. Last time you had that look you told me you had li—”

“Don’t say it,” he warned.

“Sorry.” She got back onto her seat. “I thought you were going to say you had a secret girlfriend or an incurable disease or something. Not that you enjoy the odd foot job.”

His nose wrinkled. “I didn’t say I—”

“Shh…” She waved her hands again. “Don’t even worry about it. I don’t care what floats your boat.” Especially since she had no intention of floating that boat in any manner herself, she didn’t judge an adult’s sexual predilections, so long as they were legal and consensual. Still, this was too funny. She burst out laughing again. “Now I get why you said nail polish when you were telling my mum why you came over. You were staring at my pedicure!” She nearly fell off the chair again.

“I said nail varnish, and glad I’m so amusing,” he muttered.

“No one has ever complimented my feet before. So much makes sense now—a foot fetish!”

“You can stop laughing anytime now…”

His brown skin tinged with pink, and his body seemed to have folded in on itself. Big, confident Nadim was embarrassed. She stopped laughing. Smiling at him, she got up from the green armchair and joined him on the sofa. “If I give you my foot to massage, you’re not going to like, rub up against it or anything, are you?’