Thank You for such a wonderful response and thank you for loving this story
Do comment and vote, please.
/////
Her face paled as white as porcelain. Her breaths became shallow. Each one was harder than the last. The need to cut out of this pain was taking over her. Her arms were becoming heavy.
The need to breathe was desperate. She needed familiarity. Anything. Whether it was her room, her cat, or even her pain. But her eyes flickered up the only thing staring back to her were the brownest of the eyes she'd seen. Of all the questions, why would you ask me this? She wanted to hold the collar of his pristine white dress shirt and just shake him. Why would you do this to me?
She held on to the mahogany desk for her dear life. Counting backward from ten. It wasn't working. Then she remembered her rubber band on her left wrist. Snapping it with each time, she counted backward. The flick on her wrist reminding her to breathe.
"Miss Noor?" Her widened eyes met his as his concerned voice reached her through the snapping somehow.
"I can't breathe." She gasped for air as the croaked voice left her throat. She closed her eyes. Looking for straws to hang on to. Anything to snap her out of it
"Hey," His deep, balmy voice was much closer this time. "I'm so sorry, ok!" The voice was distracting her. She liked that. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was something so traumatic for you. I should have been more careful."
She fluttered open her eyes. The eyes staring back at her were filled with guilt and concern.
"Let me help you okay?" He spelled out each word for her quietly and slowly as if he was talking to a child. She nodded. "Look me straight in the eyes."
She looked into the dark eyes that were staring back at her. They were much clear now. The charcoal black was actually dark brown. She could see the flakes of gold in his orbs.
"You're fine. Everything will be fine." His words smoothly crossing to her. "And Listen to me clearly, Miss Noor." She nodded as if in a daze. "You survived. Whatever it was. You survived. You're here. You're breathing. And even if you don't know how to swim through your pain, you're staying afloat and that's all that matters. And you won't let your suffering sink you. You will not allow it."
She nodded. She kept nodding until whatever she was holding left her body silently through her tears. She cried. She cried her heart but silently and quietly in that dim house. She covered her face with her hands and let herself go through those tears
For the first time in her life, she had cried without guilt. To be able to accept that her pain was not wrong. That maybe she did survive even if she was scarred and battered, but she wasn't defeated.
"Close your eyes." His words softly washed over her. She did close them. "Listen to the waves and just imagine yourself, out there on the beach. Just let yourself breathe freely. Without any restrictions. Without any thoughts. Just breathe."
He didn't know that she hated beaches. She hated sand. But in that moment he'd given her solace. A way out. But he'd never know that more than his beach it was his scent that calmed her. With each breath, she could inhale his scent. A mix of wood with the ocean. The calmness of earth he carried.
Giving her a whole new meaning, He'd never know that it was that day that he'd turned her world upside down.
She opened her eyes, staring straight into his alluring eyes. Mystified and thunderstruck. She'd calmed down without a blade, without bleeding, and without a cut.
"Are you feeling better?"
She nodded.
"Do you want to call it a day and go home?"
She shook her head. Words were a lost cause for her in that moment. She was terrified that if she spoke of it, she might lose that sense of harmony and stillness.
Going to the apartment wasn't an option. It'd mean alone time and she wasn't quite ready to be her own companion in isolation yet. So she let him know that she wanted to work. She wanted to complete her unfinished manuscripts.
As she was back in her seat by the window, she stared out the window. The sun was setting, talking the last of its rays, leaving the bits and pieces of orange in the smoky sky of the evening. She waited for the storm to start within herself as she watched the sunset. She waited and waited. But nothing came to push her off the edge this time.
Something changed in her, A seed of strength has been planted in her. It was always her pain that held the autonomy of her life. But for the first time, she'd said no to it. She didn't know whether it was his words or his presence, but whatever it was she'd forever be indebted to him.
Spe spent hours flipping through the pages. Giving her level best to proofread them. The work he'd given her had kept her occupied. It made her calm. After marking the last page and stretching her arms out, she leaned back in her chair. Her limbs felt heavy and her body was tired. The episode earlier had taken the energy out of her. She hardly had in it her to pick herself up and go to the bus stop.
need a ride. pick me up? - Rabail
She texted Falak as she closed the files in front of her.
Be there in 10. ✌- Feefee
"I think I'm done for the day." Looking his way, she announced faintly. He looked up and nodded.
Standing up, she packed the new articles that he'd given her in her bag. He had gone back to writing whatever he was writing on the papers in front of him.
"Thank you." She whispered inaudibly, but he seemed to have heard it. He glanced up from his papers. "You have no idea how thankful I am." Admitting, she turned around to leave.
"Miss Noor," Hearing his low, but rich voice, she turned his way. "For every time you feel like you can't breathe, try to distract yourself with something you find comfort in. A flicker of light is enough to find your way through the darkness."
Blinking at his words, her lips curved up in the most sincere way. A smiled that she wasn't familiar with graced her lips. Her phone vibrated, letting her know her housemate was waiting for her.
"What do you know about Professor Khan?" She asked all of sudden. Falak glanced her way before focusing back on the road.
"Nothing much, except I took the English Reading and Composition class with him. It was hard but doable. They call him a Dictator because literally, his classes are so grueling and if papers are not done according to his requirements, kiss goodbye to your perfect GPA. But Girls are dying to take his class. I swear to God, I saw a few of them literally drooling in class. But I can totally see why though." Falak ended her report on a dreamy note. "Oh, and he is also best friend's with that Officer Hot Sauce."
"That man," She sighed as Falak parked the car in the designated parking lot for their apartments. Unfastening her seatbelt, Falak turned around in her seat towards her. "He is weird. I don't understand him."
"A month and a half. I'm shook you survived that long with him." Falak chuckled. "Why are you asking about him?"
"Just curious," She covered her tracks with just waving it as general interest. "It's just I work with that man and I don't even know."
"Meh, you're not special. Don't sweat over it. Nobody knows his name. He always goes by his last name. Even in the University Roster for the professors, his name is written as A. Khan."
"Indeed weird." Now that she thought about it. She really did not know his name nor had she seen it anywhere. "Whatever, anyways. I found out from Zarmina you had an altercation with that what's-his-name police officer again?" She changed the topic to what she had heard earlier in the day. "And that too when you were drunk? I'm glad he didn't throw you in jail for underage drinking."
"His name is Rayyan Raza, but I prefer to call him Officer Hot Sauce. Anyways he interrupted the party so I just had a small argument with him. and I wasn't even drunk, I just had one shot, or may two... three... can't remember."
"Why do you drink in the first place, Falak?" She sighed as she questioned her friend who stared out the car window. Counting the lights in the parking lot. Falak Kayani. An enigma of her own. Under blood red hair, crazy piercings, offensive t-shirts, and ripped jeans was a girl who became her best friend, her homie, her sister in just a month, but she hardly knew what skeletons Falak hid in her closet. "FeeFee?"
"You know my brother gave me that nickname." She mumbled, avoiding any eye contact with her. "And now he won't even talk to me. He won't talk to anyone because his life wasn't worth enough for my parent. They sold his morals, his wounds, his pain for millions of dollars. The put a price tag on his justice, on his dream, and on his love life. So fuck morals. Fuck being right and wrong. and If I have to drink myself to oblivion in order to fill that dark hole that keeps on swallowing me than I will get drunk and waste the damn hell of that blood money of my parents.
She realized she could never fault Falak for drinking. It was her poison but also her way to survive, just like hers was inflicting pain. Falak was also inflicting pain on herself, only it was on her soul instead of her body.
Too tired to dwell on an eventful day anymore, the moment she had gotten home, she hit the bed and fallen asleep. Now she was wide awake at three in the morning after getting her few hours of soundless sleep.
She ran her fingers lightly across Akira's back as cat slept in the crook of her arm. She turned a little to see what her roommate was up to and as always even at this wee hour of the night Sanaz's nose was in the books.
"Sanaz?" She murmured in the low light of the room.
"Hmmm?" Her roommate turned around in her chair and looked at her. "Why are you awake at this time."
"I cried today." She whispered, her voice barely leaving her throat.
"Did you do it again?" Sanaz's words were dipped in worry and barely audible.
She stared at the ceiling and then turned her head back towards where her friend was.
"No," She heard her friend's sigh of relief. "No, I didn't" As if this time the words were for her own reassurance.
"Then what happened?" She plopped her chin on the back of the chair as she intently waited for her.
She was about to tell her about everything that had happened, but then she couldn't. She couldn't put it in the words. The whole time with him seemed too personal, too vulnerable and too intimate in the sense of how bare her soul had been in front of him.
"I don't know." She sighed, but then she tried to understand her own self and what had happened earlier. "Something broke loose in me. I cried not out of guilt, or out of pain, but I just cried for myself. For what I've been through. For the little girl who never deserved so much misery. For the teenager who took too many harrowing and burning ways to cope with grief. For the woman who is too scared to reach out for her own happiness.
"Rabail!" Sanaz's voice wavered as well.
"What am I becoming Sanaz?" She sniffed lightly. Akira purred as if sensing her distress. Oh little furball, thank you for always comforting me.
"You're becoming a woman who went through hell but still held it up like a one-woman battle and won it like a damn warrior. You had every right in the world to be cruel because all you had seen was cruelty and hate, but your heart... your heart is made out of kindness. Without you, I would've never survived. You gave me the courage to live and I know you'll be the one to become a voice for those whose stories are unheard. You're becoming a woman I'm so proud of."
Words. Words were good. Therapeutic to hear, but where would she find the courage to believe them. She had never learned to believe the kind words about herself. He had also said words to her? Why did something in her yearn to believe him then?
"You ever met someone that just destroyed the idea of right and wrong, and just the mere existence of them question your morals and values and then you find comfort in all that distorted chaos."
"I'm becoming a lawyer so every day I meet people whose ideals question my own morals and values, but I know one thing that you find comfort in a person when you know the person understand you even when you don't understand yourself."
"You ever found that person?" She asked.
"I did." Sanaz returned back towards her desk. Staring at the photos pinned on the wall above her desk, she whispered. "I did." barely audible. "Those three months I spent in the hospital after I got into the car accident." Not having her glasses, Rabail couldn't see which photo her friend was staring at so longingly. Sanaz's eyes were frozen on the photo and flipped back to her books. "Okay let me study now."
Quietness wafted through the room again, giving space to the sound of howling wind. The end of October was indicating the upcoming change in weather. With the change of season, her life was also taking a turn for a change. She just didn't whether it would be the warm breezes of the sunny day or the cold, howling winds of the night.
Again her mind went back to him. The graveness of his voice that was rather soothing, the depth of his words. His eyes, which were smoky dark from far, but up close like embers among the dark smoke, his brown eyes had flakes of gold, so tiny that she could only see it when he was sitting right in front of him. So close she could taste his scent. Earthy, home to a mixture of oud and the breeze of the ocean. The way his bared perfectly lined his strong jawline or the way his faintly brown hair were always tied back. Or most of all that scar that ran narrowly across his nose. If not so close he would have never found that imperfection his perfectly structured face.
Why do I remember him so vividly?
Maybe it was his words. As if he was relacing the ghosts of pain from within her. As she wailed, cried, sniffed, He listened to her unheard and unseen wounds and validated her pain. Letting her grieve over the destruction she had caused for herself, just to survive. Maybe she did find comfort in him because he understood the skeleton in her closet without her saying anything. But if he did understand her darkness then how many skeletons were hidden in his closet? How many wounds were buried in his past? What was his poison?