Dear Z,

Chapter 19

Dear Z,
You live inside me.
You bury yourself in my veins.
You crawl into my throat through my mouth.
You reside in my gut.
You never leave, you are stuck with me.

• • •

Zaid

A dribble of sweat hung on the strand of my hair as I stared back at her, with wide eyes. The yearning and longing in them made my heart twitch. My throat stopped functioning. I had nothing to say because...

Fuck, there was no reason.

Immediately on seeing my non-response, her eyes shuttered. Barricading me. She shifted away, the string that attached us was tearing.
And all I could do was watch.

Like an audience watching a film in a cinema hall, I watch her as she withdrew from me. Reaching down for her dress, her eyes downcast. Tugging up the sleeve over, zip being pulled, that bare skin reducing till all part of her was covered. The motion was fluid, no stutter. It was as if she hadn't uttered those three words.

Then, her eyes rose to mine. The spark of something unclear simmered in them. Yet it shone with the brightest light. It resonated with intense forbidding force. It made me feel reduced into a small pulp.

"I ask for a favor."

Unable to shun her request and irresistible to her plea, just so that she would look back at me with the way I made passionate love to her. "Anything."

She closes her eyes at the raw need of my voice but straightens up, looking back directly at me. "When you leave, don't ever come back."

The stone cemented in her voice made my back stiffen.

If I hadn't been watching closely, I would have missed the glassy haze shaking over her eyes. They were daring her to slip into drops that would run down the apple of her cheeks. Yet it didn't.

My chest constricted at that sight. "Okay."

She didn't move. I was frozen in my spot. My nakedness was no shame to either of us. She had spilled out what she truly felt and I had no guts to reply. I was weak. I couldn't tell her what I feel.

Then, she left. Her heels clicking as she walked over to the door, opening and before it closed, I heard that sharp inhale. I couldn't stop her because the door shut with a short slam.

"I wish I could tell you how I feel." I whisper to no one.

Bending, I pull on my clothes. I see the scratches, red indentations of her nails on my biceps and shoulder. I circle the area. My fingers smelled of her sex. Her oud perfume was trapped on my chest and stomach.

I feel numb but it was enough to keep the emotions from hurling and furling inside of me. I was greeted with the face of my friend. A colleague whose mind spoke and thought like mine. I saw his face, lighting up and somber. After that, his face blown up in ashes. Just gone. One minute he was there, then he had disappeared. Nothing left of him but smoke.

And there was no one to blame but fate. It was in the stars he would blow in the skies. Things like this happen often. It was there, alive. A threat hanging over us always. Yet when it happens to someone we speak, know and recognize their role in our lives, it makes us bleed with hurt.

I close my eyes. Then I see Rose's face. That waah of glimmer comes through me. Rose was someone I knew that I couldn't live a normal life when I met her. It was forbidden from the very beginning. It was known to me for so long. I just buried it in my chest, unable to claim that feeling. I hid it with hate and anger. It's easy that way. So much more uncomplicated way to keep that part locked.