"How's life, Steve? You look troubled," Ayesha Abdulmajid said as she looked pensively at the big and tall young black man who lay in her arms. Steve looked at Ayesha and gently stroked her lovely face, running his hand through her long, curly black hair. From the moment he first laid eyes on her inside that Tim Horton's one frosty December morning in the City of Nepean, Ontario, Steve knew Ayesha was a special woman.
At first, the young Haitian man wasn't quite sure how to proceed due to the difference in their ages. Steve Valcourt was in his late twenties, twenty seven to be exact, returning to the University of Ottawa to complete his long-interrupted Law studies. Ayesha was almost a decade older than Steve, recently divorced from her control freak of a Pakistani husband Yousef Abdulmajid, and living on her own for the first time since she moved to Ottawa from her hometown of Islamabad, Pakistan. Yeah, they came from different worlds, to say the least.
Steve didn't let that stop him, though. When he looked into Ayesha's eyes, the smoldering passion he saw in there almost took his breath away. That's why he kept coming back to the Tim Horton's located across the road from the Super Store which the security company he worked for sent him, day after day. Steve hated his job, standing at the door and dealing with irate, rude, passive-aggressive and at times downright racist people. The upside? His measly paycheck, and seeing Ayesha in the early mornings, of course.
Somehow, seeing Ayesha in the early morning was quite often the highlight of Steve's day. Waking up at five o'clock in the morning in his Barrhaven basement apartment wasn't easy. Running up that hill to get to Marketplace Station so he could catch the 95 OC Transpo bus to get to Baseline Station, and doing so in the dead of the Ontario winter, well, that was no joke. Riding a bus full of government worker types, entitled and boring as they were, that really sucked, but Steve didn't let them get to him. Focus on winning the war, not every battle, that's what he silently told himself.
Ayesha's Tim Horton's became his favorite such spot, and with good reason. Little by little, Steve got more comfortable talking to Ayesha. In the mornings they would exchange pleasantries, and sometimes, he would see her come into the Super Store, in the early afternoon. The dark-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed South Asian lady whom Steve referred to in his head as "Ayesha the MILF from Tim Horton's" was something else. Her smile could brighten Steve's day, even if he spent most of his time dealing with irate middle-aged white Canadians who disrespected him at every turn. Yeah, Ayesha was that special. That's why Steve decided he had to have her.
"Have lunch with me, please," Steve said pleadingly to Ayesha, one afternoon as she came into the Store. There was a MacDonald's restaurant inside the vast shopping center, and it was to be the setting of their first non-date, or whatever one might call such an impromptu encounter. After her shift ended at Tim Horton's, Ayesha figured she'd get a few items from the Super Store before she began her long trek back to her house in southern Nepean. At the Store entrance she spotted Steve, looking so handsome in his security uniform, a bright smile on his face.
