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I met Zunair a year later. Like, really met him. We had always seen each other around here and there, but never spoken. I had escaped his pitiful glances every time I saw him, and I wasn't very keen on the whispering that occurred every time we were in the same vicinity.
But in one of our joint classes at college, we had been partnered up. And before I knew what was happening, I was sitting in front of him, tapping my pen against the desk awkwardly.
His eyes were piercing into my skull.
When I looked up, I was startled to see the intensity of his gaze. And the look in his eyes.
Regret.
I turned away, holding back a scoff.
"How've you been, Sarah?"
I nodded in reply, feigning nonchalance. But I checked my heartbeat—as I had been consciously doing for the past year—and found that it was calm.
Steady.
"Good?" he asked, and I nodded again. After a moment's hesitation, I managed a "How about you?"
"I'm okay."
I nodded once again slowly, my eyes shifting everywhere but at him.
"Sarah," he said then, and suddenly my gaze shifted to his.
I used to regard the man in front of me as the ground that steadied me, the air I breathed, the surface above the water for my drowning soul.
He was never any of those.
He was not the ground that steadied me—he was the carpet waiting to roughly pull itself out from under me so that I could flail around and find real ground.
He was not the air I breathed—he was the illusion of air which in reality was filled with poison that I kept inhaling until I choked on it.
And he was not the surface above the water for my drowning soul—he was the false sense of security before I was roughly pulled back under.
"Sarah?" He repeated, waving a hand in front of my face.
I blinked, smiling a little. I had freed myself of him—and it had hurt like hell—but I was no longer living an illusion. I was no longer running after a mirage. "Yes?"
"I never got to tell you how sorry I am," Zunair began, and I held a hand up, signaling for him to stop.
