Normal With You

Chapter 43

"Mama?"

Her gasps and muffled moans echoed throughout the corridor outside her room. He didn't like it. He was scared of those sounds and he wasn't sure why she would sound like that when his father was at work. She only ever made those sounds when his father was with her in their room.

"Mama?" He opened her door, peeking hesitantly behind the massive wooden frame. The room was empty but he could still hear her silent gasps and deep pants. "Are you here?"

The room suddenly went silent, as if frozen by his voice but he knew she was there. She couldn't hide her laboured breaths no matter how hard she tried. He walked in, his feet shuffling clumsily, anxiously. He didn't want to look but he had to. He had to know that she was okay. He walked towards their bed, slowing his pace as he walked to the opposite end of it.

She was there. She had to be there but he so desperately wished that she wasn't.

He closed his eyes, craning his neck to look around the thick duvet.

He breathed deeply, trying to prepare himself, before his opened his eyes...

Her eyes opened to the strong smell of cigarette smoke and an empty space beside her on the bed. She rubbed absentmindedly at the dull ache on her outer thigh before turning to look for him. "Couldn't sleep?" Tasneem sat up, wrapping their sheet around her body to fend of the slight chill in the air.

She looked at him worriedly. Riaz hadn't even realised that she had spoken to him as he stared aimlessly down at the street below. Great white puffs of smoke billowed from his mouth each time he lowered his cigarette, tapping off the ash as if by reflex in the ashtray beside him. She wrapped her arms around her knees as she looked at him. After five years, the thought of being with him still made her smile. He was always there, silent and constant. He was there to shade her against all the shitty things in life and leaning on him seemed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

She reached for his shirt, tangled up in the covers at the end of their bed, wincing as the bruise on her leg seemed to pull at the action. She looked down, stifling her gasp at the size of the large, purple mark before she grasped his shirt in her hands, yanking it over her head in order to cover it up.

She padded over to him on her tiptoes, shivering at the feeling of the cold tiles against her feet, and wrapped her arms around him as if to siphon the heat out of his body. He jolted, as if brought back to life, as she snatched the cigarette from his mouth and brought it to her own lips.

"I don't like it when you do that." He said softly, wrapping his arm around her soft frame, watching as she inhaled the blackened smoke into her lungs.

She looked up, smiling around the cigarette before she handed it back to him.

"What?" He asked, amused at her reaction.

She stretched up, wrapping her arm around his neck as she pressed her lips to his, exhaling the smoke slowly into his mouth. The bitter, sharp taste of the smoke infiltrated every part of him as he tightened his grip on her waist, lifting her up till her she was balanced on only the tiniest tips of her toes. He could feel her chest expand heavily as he pressed her up even more firmly against him, trying to drown out the voices in his head. He could feel her breathe cold air heavily out her nose as he ran his hand through her long, brown hair. His grasp around her waist was almost suffocating before his hands roved lower down her back...

Lower...

Lower...

He barely felt her fingers slip through his own before she removed the cigarette gently from his tightened hold and leaned back, breaking of the kiss with one last peck to his lips.