Khudgarzi

23

Soyi soyi palkho pe chalke
Mere sapno ke khidki pe aa gaya
Aate jaate phir mere dil ke
Inn haathon mein woh khat pakda gaya
Pyar ka
Lafzo mein rang hai pyar ka

Ayla POV

He just stood there still as if evaluating his options, after about 30 seconds, he said,

"Yes. Meet me at the parking lot after the exam"

Saying this he walked away. I did an inner victory dance but I kept a poker face and nodded and followed him behind to the exam hall. The exam wasn't extremely hard, so I finished it earlier than the ending time. I went to the invigilator's desk to submit it and I panned around the room to see if I could see Salaar around. Turns out, he was already done.

I took a quick detour to the ladies room and fixed up my appearance a little bit and then made my way to the parking lot. I saw Salaar there and I waved at him and he just nodded and gestured for me to sit inside. I got to the car and as soon as I was in the passenger seat, he started driving without saying a word.

We got to a nearby Starbucks and he parked the car. I went and sat in a booth, whereas he went to place the order. Deep breaths, Ayla, I'm really going to tell him everything. Phew! It's no big deal. I try calming myself down, when I see him walking back with our coffees and from what I can see a chocolate crossaint. No way, he remembered my usual order! He settled on the seat infront of me and then said,

"Your 15 minutes start now"

Taking a deep breath in, I said,

"Salaar, firstly, I want to apologize to you about what happened the other day, I really didn't think aunty would react that way and its my fault too for not telling you"

He closed his eyes, as if remembering that night and said,

"You really hurt me Ayla, I'm sure you had your reasons to not confide in me, but how could you hide something this huge from me?", he complained. I could see that his eyes were a little glossy.

"I know I know and I can geniunely not apologize enough for not telling you, I wasn't ready to tell you at the time", I said

"You still don't have to if you're comfortable with telling me, you know that right?", he said, looking at me dead in the eye

"No, I want to!", I closed my eyes and breathed out

"Salaar, I will not deny the fact that I'm in Shehryar's nikkah but our marriage isn't something normal", and so I proceeded to tell him everything, from the day our marriage was fixed, to our nikkah, to me moving to Canada, his harsh behaviour with me on the day of our Walima, him going MIA after his nikkah, my parents abandoning me, basically everything. I did exclude the part of aunty being abusive towards me, because I knew if I told him, things would get out of hand.

I could see his facial features change from sympathy to anger. After, I finished telling him, he looked at me, gulped down his saliva and then said,

"Ayla why didn't you confide in anyone about this?", he asked

"I didn't know who to tell. I told my dad but he told me to suck it up", I said, laughing helplessly

"You could've told me, I could've been there for you, I mean, the past six months, I could've done something for you. We could've traced down Shehryar and talked to him about this entire situation", he said

"I don't know. I didn't want to burden on anyone, the past year was already so hard on me, moving seven seas apart to a place I'm completely alien with and then building myself back up after everything that happened, I wanted to deal with this situation on my own", I said