The Shisha Lounge After Hours

Every Thursday night, she's the last one in the lounge.

Samira. Twenty-eight. She orders double apple shisha, mint tea, and sits in the corner booth until I have to kick her out. Never looks at her phone. Never talks to anyone. Just smokes and watches the room like she's waiting for something that never arrives.

I'm Yusuf. I manage Al-Amal Lounge on Edgware Road. It's not glamorous—cleaning hookahs, dealing with drunk tourists, stopping fights between Arsenal and Tottenham fans. But it's mine, or it will be when I finish buying out my uncle.

And every Thursday, I find myself watching her instead of the clock.

Tonight, she stays even later than usual.

It's 2:15 AM. The staff have gone home. The hookahs are cleaned. The chairs are on the tables. Everything says "we're closed" except her, still smoking in that corner booth like time doesn't apply to her.

"Samira."

She looks up. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark circles underneath like she hasn't slept properly in weeks.

"Five more minutes."

"You said that an hour ago."

"Then I'm consistent." She takes a long pull from the hookah. "You can go. I'll lock up."

"I don't know you like that."

"You've known me for six months." She tilts her head, studies me. "Every Thursday. Same time. Same order. Same booth. You know me better than most people in my life."

I should tell her to leave. Instead, I sit down across from her.

"Why do you come here?"

"Because no one else does." She gestures at the empty lounge. "By midnight, the crowds are gone. By one, it's just me and the music. By two, it's quiet enough to think."

"What do you need to think about?"

She laughs—low, bitter. "Everything. Nothing. The fact that I'm twenty-eight and I have a degree from UCL and a flat in Maida Vale and a family who thinks I'm perfect, and none of it means anything."

"That sounds like something."

"It's everything." She leans forward. "I work eighty hours a week at a law firm that doesn't see me as anything but a diversity hire. I date men my mother approves of who bore me to death. I do everything right and I feel nothing." Her eyes meet mine. "Then I come here, and you smile at me when you bring my tea, and for five seconds I feel something."

My heart stops.

"Samira—"

"I know." She waves her hand. "I'm a customer. You're being professional. I'm reading into things that aren't there." She stubs out the hookah. "Forget I said anything. I should go."

She stands.

I grab her hand.

"I didn't say you were wrong."

The back room smells like tobacco and roses.

I store the fancy hookahs here—the expensive ones we bring out for weddings and parties. There's a couch. A few cushions. The ghost of a thousand smoke sessions lingering in the air.

Samira sits on the couch. I sit next to her. Neither of us pretends we don't know what's happening.

"I've wanted this for six months," she says. "Every Thursday, I tell myself tonight's the night I'll say something. Then I look at you and lose my nerve."

"What nerve? You're a lawyer."

"I argue in court. This is scarier." She turns to face me. "What if you said no? What if you laughed? What if you were just being nice because I tip well?"

"You tip terribly, actually."

She laughs—real this time. "I knew there was something."

I reach out, touch her face. She leans into it like she's been starving for contact.

"Six months," I say. "I've been memorizing your order for six months. Double apple, extra coal, mint tea with no sugar. I've been timing my cleaning so I can sit near your booth. I've been closing late just to watch you think."

"Yusuf—"

"I don't know anything about law. I didn't go to university. I work in a shisha lounge and I'm probably not what your mother pictures when she thinks about your future husband."

"No." She moves closer. "You're better."

She kisses me.

She tastes like apple and mint and all the things I've been wanting.

I pull her onto my lap, feel her legs wrap around my waist, her hands in my hair, her body pressing against mine. She's soft in all the right places—curved hips, full breasts, the kind of body hidden under professional clothes that no one at her law firm gets to see.

"Here?" she gasps between kisses. "What if someone—"

"Everyone's gone." I pull her blouse from her skirt. "It's just us."

"Yusuf—"

I unhook her bra. Her breasts spill out—heavy, perfect, nipples hardening in the cool air. I lean down, take one in my mouth, and she moans.

"Oh God—"

"Been thinking about this." I switch to the other breast. "Every Thursday. What you look like. What you sound like. What you taste like."

"Please—"

I push her skirt up around her waist. Her underwear is soaked through.

"All this from smoking shisha?"

"All this from you." She reaches for my belt. "From watching you walk around this place like you own it. From your hands on the hookahs. From your voice when you call out orders."

I push her underwear aside, slide two fingers inside her.

She screams.

She's tight. Wet. Her walls grip my fingers as I work her, curling up to find the spot that makes her legs shake.

"Yusuf—I'm going to—"

"Already?"

"Six months—" She gasps, grinding against my hand. "Six months of wanting this—I can't—"

"Let go."

She does.

Comes on my fingers with a cry that echoes off the walls. I don't stop—I keep going, push her through it, watch her face contort with pleasure.

"Stop—too much—"

"We're just getting started."

I lift her off my lap, bend her over the arm of the couch. She looks back at me, eyes glazed, as I free myself and position at her entrance.

"Yes—please—"

I push in.

She's perfect.

Hot and tight and wet, her body pulling me deeper as I fill her. She moans into a cushion, hands fisting in the fabric, ass pushing back against me.

"So good—you feel so—"

I start to move.

Long strokes at first, pulling almost all the way out before driving back in. She makes sounds I've never heard from a woman—helpless, desperate, like she's lost all control.

"Faster—"

I give her faster.

The couch scrapes against the floor. The hookahs rattle on their shelves. Somewhere, a coal pot falls over, but I don't care—all I care about is the way she feels, the way she sounds, the way she keeps saying my name like it's the only word she knows.

"Yusuf—Yusuf—I'm—"

"Come for me."

"Again—I can't—"

"You can." I reach around, find her clit, press. "Come for me, Samira."

She shatters.

Her pussy clamps down so hard I can't move, just hold myself inside her while she shakes and cries and falls apart. The sensation tips me over too—I come with a groan, fill her with everything I have, feel our bodies pulse together.

We collapse onto the couch.

Sweating. Panting. The smell of sex mixing with tobacco and roses.

"I should go," she says eventually.

"Should you?"

She looks at me, and I see something different in her eyes. Not the sad, empty look from before. Something brighter.

"No." She curls against my side. "I should stay."

"For how long?"

"I don't know." She kisses my chest. "Until the sun comes up. Until you have to open. Until one of us figures out what this is."

"I know what this is."

"Already?"

"Six months, Samira. I've known for six months." I pull her closer. "This is the start of something. The start of everything."

We leave the lounge at 6 AM.

The street is quiet, London still sleeping. She holds my hand as we walk toward her flat in Maida Vale—too nice a neighborhood for a shisha lounge manager, but she doesn't seem to care.

"Thursday," she says at her door. "Same time?"

"I'll be there."

"I might stay late again."

"I'm counting on it."

She kisses me—soft, promising—and disappears inside.

I walk home as the sun rises over the city.

For the first time in years, I'm looking forward to work.

Three months later, I meet her mother.

She doesn't approve. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not from the right family. I didn't go to the right schools.

But Samira tells her: "I spent twenty-eight years doing what you approved of. Now I'm doing what makes me happy."

Her mother comes around eventually.

They always do.

And every Thursday night, long after the lounge closes, I find Samira in the corner booth—waiting for me, smoking double apple, smiling like she finally found what she was looking for.

She did.

We both did.