Normal With You

Chapter 50

The rental car felt out of place in front of the mansion before him. 

It hadn't changed.

Not one bit.

The trees outside were still trimmed and groomed to perfection and the lawn had been mowed as neatly as it had always been. The mansion was exactly as he remembered it and the curtain peeping out from behind the windows were the same cream colour that it always was.

 He could barely believe he had grown up in this house. After living in their miniscule one-bedroom flat, he had gotten used to living simply. It amazed him to think that he would walk home after school each day and barely even glance at the sheer opulence of the house before him. But now, he felt odd and out of place. He felt as if he were an intruder or a trespasser into Zaheer's home. It wasn't his home.

He considered it home when his mother was still alive, but after her death it felt wrong to step foot into the massive front garden. Knowing that he held his father's key in his hand felt strange. A man that haunted him for nine years was now a living presence once again and he had held onto the little remote only a few days prior. He had opened this door and lived in this house and his very essence was still trapped within the walls before him and the more Riaz thought about it, the more anxious he felt.

"My mum always liked looking at this house." Tasneem's voice broke him out of his reverie as she looked up in awe at the patterned steel framework of the gate before them. "I never mentioned that I knew the boy who lived in it though." She smiled, as if lost in a pleasant memory that had rooted itself within her mind. Even after 9 years, she would find herself slipping gently into the days when she only ever knew him as was the quiet boy beside her in English class and the boy who looked ever so handsome when he removed his blazer and loosened his tie as he sat next to her on the bench outside the science labs.

They were so young back then. They were young and their friendship was young. Their friendship was nothing but a bud that had emerged from the soil before the lightning struck. Like her rosebush, it had never grown straight again but it had grown and persevered and had strengthened. It had grown as tall as the Jacaranda tree that used to stand tall before her house and never had she seen a tree as beautiful as that one. It was majestic and when the wind picked up its fine purple petals from their delicate twigs, it would drop them along the grey asphalt of the streets, coating them in purple splendour.

That was what their friendship was like. It had rained its beauty and its magic upon every single aspect of her life and made it beautiful.

He made her life beautiful.

"I don't want to go in." he said, feeling ashamed of the fear festering within his heart.

"Your memories are trapped in this house." she said, turning to look at him, "Not you. You're free and he can never hurt you again."

She folded her hand over his, closing his hand around the little black remote.

"You have to."

He didn't want to go in.

Those hallways echoed his memories and those were echoes he never wanted to listen to. He had buried them so deep within his mind that the idea of them being dug out once again was almost crippling to him. If he knew his father, he knew that nothing would have changed. It would be exactly the same. Every vase and ornament and frame would be in its exact same spot and he would walk back into time as if he were 18 again.

He didn't want to do it. He could feel his fingers shake beneath her hand before he reached for the comfortable square box within the pocket of his jeans. Just one more, and then he would go in.