HER

7

Are you sure you are going to be okay?" Dur-e-Fishan murmured from beside Laila as she held her sister's hair back who puked her guts out.

Laila didn't answer that, too exhausted to listen to her sister for a moment.

"I think so." Whispering after a prolonged gap she washed her mouth before walking out of washroom with her sister following behind.

Her mother came running towards them with a worried look plastered on her finely aging face. "You cousin informed me you got sick."

"Seems like a stomach problem Mama." Dur-e-Fishan explained from beside Laila. He expressions mirroring her mother.

The small commotion didn't go unnoticed by their father, who too walked towards them with a familiar looking man.

"What happened?" Jabbar asked approaching his family. His eyes fell on a very pale looking Laila being supported by Dur-e-Fishan. "Are you alright?"

"She got sick baba." It was Dur-e-Fishan again who explained.

"I think we should take her home. Crowd will only make it worse." Laila's mother strocked her hair who kept looking down at her hands.

"But we need to be here too." Jabbar argued even if he wanted to take her daughter to doctor.v

But Laila didn't know that.

"Faris can take her to doctor for a check up and drop her at your home." A new voice suggested who was silent al this time.

She looked up at her father's friend who gave her a worried look. His lips pulled into a tender smile when Laila looked up at him.

She knew whom he was referring too.

The boy who remembered her.

That's how she found herself sitting in car besides a boy whom she met just once yet could never be able to forget.

Her father had given a greatfull look to his friend followed by her mother's big thanks. Her father's friend, whose name she found out was Ansar, just waved them off with a little laugh calling them silly.

He called Faris who came not even a minute later and instructed him to take Laila to doctor and drop her at home.

Faris remained silent the whole ride so did Laila.  A question still roamed her mind yet she felt too coward to ask him that.

The boy was handsome. She had to give him that. He could make heads turn by just existing and make even males give him second looks.

Too bad for Laila who didn't know he would only look at only one girl.

"I hope you didn't get sick by looking at my face." It was Faris' lame attempt to start a conversation with a joke which made him face palm himself mentally.

"It wasn't you." A very soft reply on Laila's behalf made Faris heart race like a madman. 

"A relief to know that." He chuckled glancing at her pale face.

Her beauty mesmerized him. Faris found himself glancing at her again and again. A fool for girl who didn't even knew his name till today.

"I don't think you remember me." He spoke again. His words soft like feather, too nervous to scare the girl who mesmerized him endlessly.

"I do." Laila mumbled looking out of the winow, hands folded against her protectively.

How could she forget.

The memory was still fresh in her mind so was the face of younger version of boy sitting beside her.

The boy who noticed her and remembered her when no one did.

"You were still a child then." He remembered every meeting he had with the girl.

Every time she captivated him.

"Yet your eyes were too mature for a girl who was just about to turn fourteen."

He remembered how her eyes lightened up when he wished her and how disappointment arose in them when her father called her.

The girl who smiled too much when he first saw her.

Now when he saw the same girl with a smile so dull,  something ticked in his heart.

What had happened to her?

What had time done to her?

"How did you know it was my birthday?"

"That's for me to know and you to dot dot dot Laila."

He stopped in front of a hospital and winked at her flushed face.