Normal With You

Chapter 20

Love has earth to which she clings

With hills and circling arms about-

Wall within wall to shut fear out

But Thought has need of no such thing

For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

They walked out of the building with a signed marriage certificate.

They hadn't even boarded the bus to Cape Town instead opting to spend the night in front of the garage on a picnic bench in the middle of Beaufort West and neither knew what had just happened.

They were married.

But only as they descended the stairs of the small facebrick building did they realise that they felt as if they were children playing games. Neither knew what they were thinking as they accepted the terms and conditions to the marriage nor who it was that had even signed as witnesses to the ceremony. They walked as if in a daze to the bus stop. They were married but the feeling was so surreal that both Riaz and Tasneem could only explain walking as if wading through a dream world and they were sure they would wake up soon enough.

Tasneem looked at Riaz out of the corner of her eye- he looked as confused as she was to be married. They were now married under South African law. They were married...

That was her husband.

Riaz was her husband.

And the more she thought those words. The more she wanted to throw up.

He was a husband. He could take what he wanted from her.He could have sex with her whenever he wanted and she couldn't say anything about it. She just banged the last nail on her own coffin.

"I need to sit." She said, sitting on the bottom step of the building. "What did we just do?" She breathed out, looking up at his looming figure. She raked her hand through her hair, yanking lightly at the strands before she rested her face on her lap.

"I don't know." She was surprised to hear his answer as she felt him sit beside her.

She could hear him folding and refolding the paper in his hands but she was too scared to look at the document. It was a contract they had just entered into. It wasn't just a paper. It was a contract stating that they entered knowingly and consciously into the marriage but neither knew what it was they were doing. They felt as if they had just rushed headlong into a whirlpool that would never let them out. They were going round and round and round in their heads and the more they tried to sort it all out, the dizzier they felt. They were hasty and quick and they should have thought about it. They should have thought about the consequences to their actions, instead they ran into it.

"We need to leave from here Riaz." She mumbled, remembering why it had happened in the first place. "This goes on public record. My mum will find out about it soon enough."

"I know. That's why we did it here. They won't know just yet that we're going to Cape Town."

"I feel as if it's not real." She admitted.

"Me too." He never wanted to marry her like this.

He never actually thought he would marry her.

He never thought he would marry anyone. He didn't know what an actual marriage meant. He had his parents as an example and he never wanted that. He knew he loved Tasneem but she was always a dream. She was a nymph. She was a forest fairy that he thought he could never dream of finding again. In all the letters they wrote to each other, he never once thought they would be together. They never planned on being together- They shared their hearts but that's all it was ever supposed to be. They were never supposed to have the happy ending that went with it. They were supposed to be on their own. They were never supposed to be together.

What did he know about marriage and love and making things work? He knew how to look after himself but how was he supposed to look after someone else. How was he supposed to look after someone else who was just as broken as he was? He didn't know anything about what she needed or who she needed and he could take a gander at the fact that she didn't know either. They were kids playing dress-up in someone else's lives without truly understanding what anything meant.

"Did we make a mistake?" She asked, looking warily at the white sheet of paper in his hands.

Did they?

He could only shrug as he turned the folded note in his hands before he looked back at her. "We need to go."

Tasneem could only nod before she stood up slowly, walking in the shadow his large frame created as they made their way towards the bus stop.

...

On snow and sand and turn, I see

Where Love has left a printed trace

With straining in the world's embrace.

And such is Love and glad to be

But Thought has shaken his ankles free

The bus was silent. There were only 6 other passengers with them and none of them seemed inclined to talk at all. Tasneem wondered what their story was. Were they running away as she was or were they going towards someone? Were they happy? Were they sad? Did they have children? She used to love imagining people's lives when she was a child. There was something special about knowing that every person that walked past her had an entire other life that no one knew about. They had families, pets, memories, secrets and dreams all weaved into one beautiful heart that kept it all within. There was beauty in knowing that she would never know what people kept in their hearts much like no one would ever know what she kept in her heart and as she looked at the man beside her...

She had been so nervous and so terrified that she had forgotten that he had carved out his own special place in her heart. And he had done it using letters and poems and all those hundreds of freckles all over his face.

"Are you sleeping?"

She looked cautiously at his closed eyes, hoping he wouldn't answer.

He shook his head slowly before he opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Thank you, Riaz." She whispered her words- those words were only for them to hear. She didn't want anyone else on the bus knowing or hearing. It was only he who would know how grateful she was.

He said nothing- Just nodded his head once before he closed his eyes once again.

But as she laid her hand to rest in his palm, she felt him intertwine their fingers and they never moved- not for anything until they reached the last stop to their journey home...

A/N The poem used in this chapter is called Bond and Free by Robert Frost