Missed Flights And First Times

Chapter 7

"Here I'd been crying about Islamabad being hot. Dubai is literally burning," Izhaan said as he wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead. He had gotten sweaty just from standing outside while he paid the taxi driver, and if he stood there any longer, he felt like he would felt like a popsicle in summer.

Warisha chuckled at his dramatics though she, too, couldn't wait to just enter the mall. Her head and neck were starting to get sticky under her hijab in just five minutes.

To his surprise, she slid her hand through his when he began to walk forward, leaving her behind. Izhaan stopped and grinned at her before lacing their fingers together and squeezing as they walked in together this time, side by side.

The cool breeze from the air conditioner hit the couple as they entered through the glass doors, making both of them sigh in relief. Izhaan was tempted to just stand there and soak in the coolth but trudged forward lazily when Warisha got ahead of him.

But she stopped just a few steps later, seemingly having frozen. Then, one second later, she was scurrying back to Izhaan and both her arms had wrapped around one of his and she was plastered to him, her face hidden in his shoulder. He stilled, his eyes round at the sudden almost-hug he'd been taken into by her. Heat rose to his face, coloring the tips of his ears too when he realized he was getting hugged by his wife. Izhaan could die right now and he'd die a happy man.

But once he'd regained his senses and gotten over the intimacy of her actions, he blinked and realized she seemed scared. "What happened?" He asked her softly, looking around to see what could've gotten such a reaction from her.

She pointed a timid finger, peeking at the sight with one eye before she hid behind him again, reminding him very much a child. An adorable, cute child he would want to squish the cheeks of at first sight. But he cut the train of his thoughts short and looked in the direction she'd pointed.

"Kids?" She couldn't be afraid of kids. That was absurd. And it would also lead to the crushing of quite a few dreams of his. She shook her head and answered, "Clowns."

Surely, there were three men dressed as clowns playing with the children, and now after her confession, Izhaan was finding it hard to not laugh. It was wrong to laugh at her fear but... "You're scared of clowns?"

Warisha, upon hearing the humor in his voice, looked at him with a frown. "Yes, and it's completely justified. Stop making fun of me."

"Meri itni himmat?" He blinked innocently at her, then put his arm around his scowling woman and steered her away from the clowns. "Tell me why you're scared of them.

*"How can I dare?"

Warisha finally let out the breath that had been stuck ever since her eyes fell on the clowns. "I'd been maybe two years when one day, the light had been gone at night. Waheed Bhai had been trying out a clown costume for his school play and he decided to scare me with it, and it had been dark too... I never recovered from it, I guess." She narrated her story with a shrug though she shuddered at the mere thought of a clown.

Izhaan's immediate thought upon hearing the 'clown costume' part was that Waheed didn't really need a costume to look like a clown, and his second thought was:

"So your brother is the villain in your story too?" He blurted out without thinking.

Warisha's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What?"

He realized she loved her brothers a lot and he didn't want to badmouth them. "Nothing. Let's shop." Warisha was still not happy about spending money but she followed him around nonetheless, as he took her to the Carrefour on the ground level first.