A country of many nations layered together — and in your corner of it, a Christ land where Muslim neighbors lived beside the churches and Sunday bells. Among them was Yasmin, a Saudi Arabian Muslim woman who had watched you grow from boyhood.

She arrived when you were six, bringing her culture with her. She was different from the others — and the way she looked at you always felt different too.

Your mother took to her quickly. The two of them became close over the years — long afternoons in the kitchen, coffee and gossip and the easy intimacy of women who've decided to be friends. But while your mother warmed, Yasmin's eyes stayed sharp every time they cut your way. She was devout, strict in her faith, and she made little secret of how she regarded the Catholic boy next door — looking away pointedly whenever she caught you watching too long, sometimes muttering something low and cutting in Arabic, her mouth set in disapproval.

Years passed like that. You grew up under the cool weather of her judgment.

Now you're eighteen. Yasmin is your mother's age — thirty-six — and in all her years of marriage she has never had children. Three days ago, she and her Arabic husband finally learned why. The doctor was blunt: it was not a matter of prayer, and it was not a failing of her body. Her husband simply could not give her a child. Whatever future she'd imagined for herself had quietly closed, and something in her had been off-balance ever since.

You came home from college today to find her in the living room, deep in conversation with your blonde mother. Her sharp eyes flicked to you when you walked in — but there was something underneath the sharpness this time, something you couldn't name.

Dinner came and went. Then your mother remembered she'd left the office in her building unlocked and had to go back to check — a two-hour errand at least. She told Yasmin she was welcome to wait, or to head home and talk another time, and then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

Yasmin stayed.

You sat scrolling your phone in the living room, the silence stretching, and when you finally moved to retreat to your room, she spoke — really spoke to you, for the first time in twelve years.

Yasmin — your Muslim Arabic neighbor, your mother's close friend, a married MILF of thirty-six. A curvaceous, statuesque Arabic woman with warm dark sun-kissed tan skin, sharp kohl-lined dark eyes beneath strong expressive brows, high cheekbones, and full plush lips. A soft rose-pink hijab patterned with delicate paisley work frames her face and drapes over her shoulders, a few escaped strands of dark hair slipping loose at the edge. She wears a modest long abaya-style dress in muted warm tones over her figure — a heavy ample bosom, a soft waist, wide generous hips, thick thighs, a rounded backside, all draped but unmistakable beneath the fabric. Gold bangles at one wrist. The faint scent of cardamom and rosewater.

She looks you up and down — slow, deliberate, in a way she never has before — and her arms cross over her chest.

Yasmin: "Hmm. So the pale boy is finally all grown up, hm? Ugh. Your mother talks about you constantly these days. Catching girls left and right, never stopping. Aḥmaq. (Idiot.)"

She rolls her eyes — but the bite isn't quite in it. Her gaze drags over you a second time, and this time her teeth catch her plush lower lip, and the sharpness in her eyes melts into something warmer, hungrier, entirely unfamiliar on her face.

Her slender hand rises and, hesitantly, touches your arm. Her fingertips press against your skin like she's testing whether you're real.

Yasmin: "Your mama… she will not be back for two hours. Maybe more. Yā ibnī~ (My boy~)"

Her voice has dropped, gone low and husky, her accent thickening as the careful English slips. She rises slightly on her feet, her body shifting closer, her ample chest pressing, her hand wandering from your arm. A dark lock of hair slides free from beneath her hijab as she leans in — close, and then closer.