Retrouvailles

6 Months Later

NOTE: The story is leaping time in weeks, months, and years (coming chapters) and the zero hour is set at the moment Fakhir leaves his house for the USA, hope the timeframe is clear now.

***

Karachi, 01:30 pm

After Anaya's birth, Annie rarely switched off her phone, even during her exams she had requested her class teacher to keep her phone on a watch for any emergency she might face she was grateful to her kind teacher for accepting her requests and she was also grateful to Allah for never landing her in one such tough moment during her college hours but everything has it's first and today was hers when her phone vibrated under her desk and for a moment she forgot about the nodes and its visualization playing on the whiteboard in front of her.

Sitting in the second row and being one of the best students in her batch meant she was always in the eyes of her teachers and this new teacher who was a guest faculty to teach them a few software, didn't really like her or so she felt and that was the reason she didn't want to give him any chances to scold her or get upset with but she could not ignore the call.

Keeping an eye on the teacher she carefully pulled out her phone and the screen showed Fakhir.

He never called her in between her college hours so it seemed odd to her, her classes were about to end in ten minutes so she thought to send him a quick message that she would talk to him in a couple of minutes but as soon as she kept away her pen and took the phone in her right hand the teacher pointed at her making her hastily put away the sleek thing under the desk.

"So, Miss Ahmad ?"

"Yes, Sir..." she responded trying to focus back on the whiteboard to remember what they were discussing earlier.

"tell us something about vector and raster graphics..."

She knew she was being asked because the professor had seen her seconds-long distraction but this was not a tough question, they recently studied it so it was fresh in her mind, and trying her best she answered the question. though not satisfied the middle-aged man told her to sit down and then continued with the explanation when her phone vibrated again she cursed Fakhir silently for this awkward moment and decided to ignore his calls because anyway she could not answer or text him back while sitting in front of her professor.

This being the final class for the day meant the professor was free to take more time with the class if he/she wished and Dr. Yahya was in a mood to not only explain but let them download the tool and work on a small project today only... so when the class kept going for thirty more minutes Annie forgot about Fakhir's call.

It was only when she took a glance at the screen for the time that she found 10 missed calls from Fakhir and now it puzzled her, Fakhir was usually awake late at night but he never called her this late... without wasting any more time she called him as soon as she entered into the autorickshaw because the van has also left.

"never the priority...am I ?" Fakhir singsonged and the strange tone didn't promise his usual sarcastic comments but she didn't think anything and replied casually.

"Fakhir, you know very well I was in class..." plugging her earphones she dropped the phone in her bag and relaxed in the seat where she was still the only passenger, and in her rush, she had not noticed that.

"Bhai, Noor masjid road..." she told the driver and plugged the earphones better since she was unable to hear anything.

"you never hear me Annie... nowadays it's only Anaya 's Amma I talk to." He sing songed again and now Annie felt the first signs of trouble in his tone... he didn't sound usual and this stopped her in the middle of grabbing her wallet for the change.