**Winner 2024 Amby Awards**
Fiza has everything planned-medical school, a respectable future, and an engagement she never wanted. Determined to escape a loveless match, she creates a checklist to find the perfect husband her father will approve of.
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The pressure of the external exams was like a physical weight on our shoulders. The mosaic of color-coded blocks on our timetables now took over our lives, spilling from weekdays into weekends, leaving no space for anything but studying. Our usual banter had been replaced by the rustle of pages and the scratch of highlighters.
One afternoon, Alan slumped next to me on our usual bench outside the library, the timetable I had made for him in hand. He squinted at it.
"Why do I have so many purple squares on my weekends," he grumbled, pointing a accusing finger at the sea of color on his chart, then gesturing to the conspicuously blank white spaces on mine for the weekends. "While yours is practically empty?"
I smiled at his petulant tone. "You have a lot of catching up to do!" I reminded him gently, though firmly. "You have the entire second term awaiting your attention." He let out a long, discontented sigh but didn't argue further, which I counted as a victory.
As we settled in to start, a nervous flutter started in my stomach. I had been working on something for him, something I thought might help. Taking a deep breath, I reached into my bag, my cheeks already warming. I pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper and held it out to him.
His eyebrows shot up in curiosity. He took it, unfolding it with a theatrical flourish. Then his eyes widened, not in awe, but in pure, unadulterated amusement. A snort escaped him, then another, and then a full-blown, deep-bellied laugh erupted from his chest. He bent over, clutching his stomach, his shoulders shaking with the force of it.
Tears of mirth gathered in the corners of his eyes as he stared at my creation. I had drawn two simple female outlines labeled "anterior" and "posterior." Using my highlighters, I had marked the zones: red for the lips, neck, chest, pelvis, and thighs—strictly off-limits. Yellow for the abdomen—a caution area. Green for the head, face, back, hands, and legs—safe for friendly contact.
As his raucous laughter continued, a chorus of irritated "shushes" came from the library's open windows.
My face burned. I snatched the paper back from his limp fingers, crumpling it slightly in my grasp. "It's a boundary map," I mumbled under my breath. He was laughing at something I had put real, vulnerable thought into. He had reduced my attempt to navigate our confusing, charged proximity into a joke.
Unfazed by my embarrassment, Alan, still chuckling didn't retreat. Instead, he leaned in closer, invading my personal space in a way that made my heart almost stop. "So, you're telling me," he whispered, allowing his lips to brush against the shell of my ear as he spoke. "This is green?" I felt a shocking jolt straight down my spine.
Before I could process that, his hand shot out, his fingers wrapping firmly around my wrist. He pulled my hand toward him, but it was his other hand that made me gasp. His fingertips traced a slow, deliberate path down the curve of my back, following the line of my spine through the thin fabric of my kurti.
