A/N: Here's the last chapter of A Few Hundred Poppies! Damn, I liked this one ( ;_;). To everybody who's stuck around till the end, thank you so so much, it means the world!!! Follow me for upcoming (and Insha Allah better) works, much love <3
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"Hey."
"Hi," I breathed, letting myself melt into my bedsheets at the way his voice made my chest tremble slightly.
"You know, I'm on a walk."
"Oh yeah?" A smile broke out across my face when I heard Rani's protesting 'mrewol' from aside. "I guess cats aren't big walkers." It was a week after a whirlwind of exams and sleepless nights, and the day before the new moon of Ramadan.
A tantalising smell of beef managed to seep in through the slit under my door, making me sniff at the air. From the kitchen, Ma and Khammi's loud exchange could be heard as they argued over the right time to put in the garlic cloves in the curry.
"Yeah...and there's this lake in here. It's small. Almost cute. And you know what, come over, and bring a change of clothes. I'm gonna teach you swimming," Samar said.
"I-I kinda have guests over," I hesitated, despite having perked up at the idea at first. "Khammi's here with Fariah."
"Seriously? It's nine in the morning," he complained as Rani again meowed loudly from beside him.
"Fariah's still asleep, by the way." I chuckled, moving my gaze to Fariah, fast asleep beside me on the bed.
"I guess you can't come, then. That's too bad, I was gonna take off my shirt," he teased, and I could hear his smirk breaking out into a grin over the phone, squeezing my eyes shut to stop imagining the sight of his bare body, but all that it did was make it embarrassingly vivid.
"Are you trying to be sexy?" I twirled a stand of hair around my finger, giving up on suppressing a wide smile.
"I don't know — is it working?" He asked back, making his voice sound Elvis-deep on purpose. A small laugh erupted from my mouth.
"Be there in twenty, asshole."
"I'll be waiting, midget."
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"Do I get a last wish before you jump at me with a knife?" I asked, making Samar roll his eyes. It must've been at least ten minutes since he'd started leading me deeper into the woods, switching between a zigzag puzzle of mossy trails, and my legs were growing tired. "At this rate, I won't have any energy left for swimming— SUBHANALLAH!"
Out of nowhere, we'd emerged into a beautiful clearing, the sun seeping in and engulfing the trees surrounding the clearing and the small lake in a very summer-like glow. As I turned to face Samar, he was already unbuttoning his light blue flannel, catching me off guard. Noticing my gaze trailing on his dexterous fingers as they moved, he smirked. "Like what you see?" When I looked away, blushing, he let out a small laugh. "You're adorable. By the way, I'm not a savage, I'm wearing an inner."
I fiddled with the end of my blouse as Samar stepped into the clear greenish water, making a lapping noise ring out across the floor of the clearing. "Coming?"
Unable to formulate a reply, I bit my lip, looking up at him nervously. "Hey. Is- are you still afraid of the water?" he inquired, taking my palms in his and stroking them with his thumbs. "It's alright, Aditi, if you don't want to," when he made to step back to the ground, I pushed him back by the chest. I breathed deeply. "I've got to face my fears sometime."
I dipped a foot into the calm water, the coolness caressing its every curve. All at once, I took several more steps forward, Samar smiling encouragingly. Moments later, I was nearly in the centre of the lake, the water reaching up to my neck. Leading my hands to his shoulders, Samar slipped his around my waist, pulling me flush against him. I could no longer feel the rough soil under my feet.
"Do you feel okay?" he asked, gaze darting from my left eye to the right in search of fear.
"No," I said, making him frown. "It's not okay, you tricked me into coming here. You said you were gonna take off your shirt," I smiled when he laughed, making my chest vibrate against his. "It's okay. It's great, really. Thank you, Samar."
His lips were distractingly close to mine but so was the scar on his cheek. I traced it with my thumb, shuddering at the remembrance of the night of the dance. "Do you think they'll ever be back?" I muttered softly, making him sigh.
"Isn't annoying Dr. Green at PTSD therapy enough, you gotta bother me too?" he smiled wrily, earning a smack from me. "To be honest, I don't know. But even if they do, then we'll be here, and we'll be together."
"Promise?" He smiled at that, holding out a pinky. I hooked my own pinky around it, melting as his lips found their way to mine.
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Rani purred before escaping from my arms and trotting over to Samar's bed in the middle of the room. I leaned against the frame of his door, watching the tense muscles of his shoulders tightening and relaxing against the material of his tee as he pulled it down over the inner. I'd just changed in the room beside his (resisting the urge to peer into the hidden room, mind you). Deciding that it was a bad time to be turned on since I'd have to return soon, I walked over to the window.
The thick blanket of dark green was shining under the afternoon light. As my gaze skimmed over the treetops, two arms snaked around my waist, sending me hurtling into Samar's chest. An army of goosebumps marched down my skin at the contact, making me shiver against him. Samar nestled his head into the crook of my neck as I brought my hands up to rest on top of his. "I wanna move out, this place is horrible at night. Things creak randomly and all. But I don't wanna leave you for Lahore right now. Or ever."
"What the heck did I do to deserve you?" I whispered, trailing a finger down his chest, making a lopsided smile appear on his lips.
"Hmm, let's see," he muttered, running his thumb down my cheek in an agonisingly slow motion. "You spat on my shirt."
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Groggily rubbing the slumber off my eyes, I found his entire room in a horrible mess of clothes thrown about and stationery knocked off the table. Samar stood in front of a suitcase on his bed, sorting through the huge pile of packaged food on the floor. Confused, I sat upright. "What's going on?"
Looking up to meet my gaze, he flashed me a dazzling smile. "While you were busy dosing off," he turned to his desk and picked up a sheet of newspaper, throwing it at my feet, "I was busy using my geniusness."
"That's not a real word, by the way," I said, grabbing the paper and holding the paper at an arm's length from my eyes, but the letters on it were still blurred. Nevertheless, I could make out the circle in red permanent marker ink around a paragraph in the advertisement section of Edelweiss Daily. Positioning it so that the afternoon sun streaming in through the window fell directly on the paper, I took in a sharp breath. I didn't dare hope that it was what I thought it was.
"My very real geniusness has left you speechless, I see," he laughed lightly, plopping down beside me on the bed. "I mean, I've got money in my bank. I don't see why I have to go back to Lahore yet."
"Did- did you talk to them?" I stuttered, nearly tearing up with happiness.
"Yup. The Fullers are really nice people, right? Being their paying guest will be fun. I think they're already thinking of me as their son," he grinned, shoving a folded t-shirt into the suitcase.
"What makes you think that?" my brain was going all fuzzy at this point, a smile etching itself across my face.
"Because Mr. Fuller literally called me 'son'. So, Aditi Rashid," he stretched his arms before leaning closer to me, a crooked smile finding its way to his lips. "What're you gonna do when your boyfriend moves in across the road?"
A vague apparition of a smile appeared on my face as I leaned in towards his lips. I was getting addicted to kissing him. "Tell Lee and Art that I'm getting laid. If I'm going to Jahannam-"
"I'll follow you right in. Actually no, astagfirullah!"
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Although all that had to be moved was Samar's jet black Samsonite Armage and Rani, the Kreep house was a long way from the Fullers', and the suitcase was enormous. Therefore, I called up Ever and asked him to pick us up at the mouth of the forest. When his sedan pulled up, instead of one, there were four pairs of hands waving at us.
Even with Ever and Samar's powerful arms doing most of the work, heaving the suitcase into the trunk gave me a hard time. I huffed as Ever shut the hood closed with a thud.
"I'm getting laid," I announced as soon as I'd squeezed into the car after Samar. Art shot up with excitement, hitting her head against the roof of the car. She let out a loud string of horrible curses in pain.
"About fucking time," Ever grinned from the driver's seat, clicking on his seatbelt and shifting the gear to drive, tuning the radio to a station blasting out Can't Stop This Feeling. As Ever amped up the volume, embarrassed, Samar scratched his neck. He was stuck awkwardly with Rani in his hands between myself and Troy, on whose lap Art was perched cosily.
"Let's celebrate Sundays and Adi getting laid! Ever, take us to the best pizza place in town," Troy exclaimed happily as Art played with his caramel hair.
Lee rolled her eyes. "Careful, Holsten. You're gonna run out of excuses to eat out soon," she mused.
"Quit saying lame stuff, Nicole. You're gonna use up your stock of lame stuff soon," Troy retorted in reply.
"Alright, then, my treat," Samar piped up, cutting off Lee and Troy's bickering. He smiled softly. "I mean, she's not the only one getting laid." When everyone laughed, I punched his arm lightly, making him pinch my cheek.
"Ow, that hurt," I rubbed my cheek with the back of my hand. He took hold of my hand and moved it away, placing an innocent peck where he'd pinched, making Art coo in appreciation.
"You freaking cheesecake," I managed to mutter despite the blush creeping up my cheeks. Rani squirmed in Samar's arms, and he yelped when the cat leapt out of his grip to settle on my lap. As he glared at me accusingly as if it were my fault that his cat liked me more, Ever brought the car to a stop in front of Sharma's Sweetmeat.
Mrs. Sharma had made a brave attempt to run the store, and the reopening was today morning. She seemed to be having a hard time, with all the customers pouring in to support her. "Aditi! What will you have, beta?" she asked, wiping her hands on her apron and sitting upright behind the counter.
"Nothing, we just dropped in to see how everything's faring. All good?" I asked, my hands on the marble counter.
"Absolutely," she said, grabbing a plate of kaju katlis and handing one to each of us. Ever made to pay, but she waved him away. "Go away, now. I have a lot of customers to attend to. Come in here sometimes, help me with the work!"
Chewing on the buttery sweets, we huddled back inside the sedan. Ever veered the car into the parking lot of Domino's.
"I literally just can't get it out of my head, it's so cute," Lee began as we pushed the restaurant doors open and strolled inside. A cool whiff of air-conditioning soothed my skin.
"What's cute?" I asked, sliding into a large booth for six. Propping my hands up on the table, I leaned against the brown wallpaper with doodles of pizza slices oozing with cheese.
"The fact that all six of us are applying for Cambridge. Just imagine being together in college!" Art cut in, dreamily propping up her hands and placing her head between her palms after settling down next to me. The boys slid into the seats opposite, with Samar in front of me and Ever and Troy opposite of Lee and Art respectively.
Over the next hour and a quarter, the employees and customers at Domino's were equally exasperated as we yelled and chuckled and groaned with annoyance (mostly at Troy) over pepperoni pizza. As I bent over under the force of my laughter when Troy spilled soda all over his tee, a sudden sweet tranquility washed over me. Because I wasn't trapped inside my head or high school cliques for a change. For the first time in ages, I felt that I fit in exactly where I was — in a noisy restaurant table laden with pizza and Coca Cola, with a bunch of amazing people that loved each other to bits.
Mrs. Fuller smothered each of us in loving embraces which reminded me of Dadi, while Mr. Fuller kissed my temple, not knowing how to express his happiness. There wasn't much to unpack, but all of us used it as an excuse to huddle up to the room that would be Samar's. The Fullers had a fancy verandah attached to the room that now belonged to Samar, with a miniature garden of expensive hanging plants. The balcony was exactly opposite to my window. I grinned.
Mrs. Fuller propped open Samar's suitcase, sorting through it for dirty clothes. Samar stood next to her helplessly, making me smile. "Ah, don't worry, I'll get this stain out in no time," she said happily.
"No!" Samar yelled abruptly, making us turn to him with surprise. Held in Mrs. Fuller's hand was his school uniform, a familiar brown stain of a certain Hershey's chocolate contrasting the stark white. "I mean, I like the stain, I think I'll keep it," he said, scratching his neck. Mrs. Fuller stared at him, confused. As Samar's eyes met mine, both of us smiled.
Ma, Bapi and Doc blinked in surprise when they saw me strolling out of the Fullers' house with all my friends in tow. Although I'd finessed the hell out of pretending that I wasn't excited at all about Samar moving in next door, I think the two caught on to something - Doc's eyebrow was raised too conspicuously. But even if they did, despite their brown-parent-ness, they said nothing, and I was immensely grateful for it. The credit wasn't entirely theirs, though — when he came over for an evening snack, Samar was a marvellously efficient charmer, and I could tell that even Khammi was beginning to like him. Turns out that my parents are starting to trust my choices, after all.
It wasn't only Ma and Bapi who'd learnt to trust — Khammi, after hearing Fariah come out (with me silently egging her on through the crack under the door), she didn't immediately ring up a therapist for a conversion therapy appointment as I'd half-expected her to do. She merely sighed, told Fariah to do whatever she wanted, and continued sharing radical posts on Facebook. Content with her reaction (or lack thereof), Fariah added me to the Instagram group 'Coolest Cousins', and unlike what I'd thought, the 54 cousins didn't bitch about each other. All that they did was share brown memes and Muslim memes and occasionally bully each other in the friendliest way possible.
And I trusted them.
By one in the morning, Fariah had miraculously fallen asleep beside me despite the raging party next door, with Adrita (now her girlfriend) still on her phone. Even if my ears weren't going deaf at the atrocious volume of the music, I doubted that I'd be able to sleep. I couldn't help but close my eyes and brood over everything that had happened over the last few months, from the day I spat on Samar to suffering from the loss of Sharmaji to almost losing Ma to my first kiss in The Narcosis to today. As I was in the middle of pouring my heart out and thanking whoever was up there for it all, my phone began to vibrate.
"What's up, neighbour?" I said after swiping the green telephone icon with my finger, the slight sleepiness in my voice making me realise that I'd been about to dose off.
"Come to the window." It was all he said before hanging up. Jumping up from the bed, I happily trotted over to the square window with its creamy-white sill and slid the shutters open.
There wasn't a trace of a cloud in the sky. There was only the thinnest sliver of a new moon and a crowd of stars glittering against the night, and from Samar's balcony, under the warmth of the teetering sodium light on the ceiling, the biggest cluster of poppy flowers I'd ever seen stared back at me - there must've been a few hundred. Their crimson, azure and vermilion petals reflected the sodium light and spread a honey glow all over the balcony.
The bouquet moved to the side, making a head pop up.
He was still the same eighteen-year-old, his nose and chin just as curious as they had been in the morning, an ever-familiar intoxicating smile gracing his lips. But it was his eyes, I think, that made me choke back with tears — the storm in them and the calm, the glistening tenderness and the sorrow of a boy who'd lost everything and yet had managed to find something just as true.
"I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!" he yelled, his voice overlapping with the pop music booming from the speakers next door.
"YOU STUPID SHIT, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?!" I yelled back, straining to get my words across the road.
"I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT TOO, BUT, UH, I WANTED TO DO IT TOO MUCH, I GUESS." I stood transfixed to the spot, unable to hear myself think. "BY THE WAY, MY ARMS ARE ACHING, CAN I PUT THESE DOWN?"
"SAY THE MAGIC WORD FIRST!" I managed to shout after a moment, rashly wiping the tears streaming down my cheeks with the sleeve of my tee. This time, my voice was loud enough to wake Fariah with a start. She looked up from under the sheets, and seeing me at the window, smiled, shook her head and pulled the covers back over her head.
"FUCK YOU, ADITI RASHID!"
I threw my head back in an uncontrollable wave of laughter.
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