Mikaal

42: Mikaal

"Mmm, smells good," she said, standing in front of the barbecue, the beautiful ocean a backdrop.

"Me or the steak?" Mikaal's green eyes had their usual teasing glint in them.

Dalia rolled her eyes. "You just can't help yourself, can you?"

He laughed before flipping each piece with his tongs. "I'm addicted to that expression of yours," he said with a lazy smile.

Dalia shook her head, but she came around to his side, put her arm around his waist and pulled him into a small embrace. "Thank you," she said.

Mikaal shrugged but his face beamed.

Dalia peered at the four chunks of meat on the stainless steel barbecue tray. Abruptly, her face darkened and she clutched her stomach. She clamped her mouth shut and fought the urge to vomit.

The pieces of beef had turned bloody and black, but it was the maggots crawling out from underneath that made her want to throw up.

"Ugh!" Dalia jerked upright in her bed, panting, her body shaken. She gagged and shook her head in an attempt to erase the last image from her mind.

It was the second night in a row that she had had the same dream.

Since her visit to Silk Road, the dream that had plagued her for over six months had suddenly stopped—only to be replaced with this one.

In spite of how the dream had ended, Dalia immediately reached under her pillow for her notebook. Putting pen to paper, she scribbled all the new details she could remember onto the page. When she was done, she dropped the black pen and allowed it to roll to the fold where the lined pages met.

Creases formed across her forehead before she let out a long sigh. Writing in her new diary had the unwelcome effect of reminding her of her elusive old one.

For days, she had turned her room upside down in search of that old journal, but to no avail. She had always kept her diary under her bed in a box of keepsakes—away from the prying eyes of her brother, who would tease her to no end. But she had checked under her bed, in all her bags new and old, even on her desk, unstacking the neat pile of books lined up against the wall. But her efforts produced zip.

That diary had her whole history with Blake, from first crushing on him through to the weeks after he broke her heart. So what it might say about Mikaal...

Dalia threw herself back down on her bed and squeezed her eyes shut. She inhaled long and slow, held her breath for three counts, then exhaled. She repeated this two more times before opening her eyes.

Her head now lighter, she wondered aloud what she should do next.

"Ardelle!"

She fished for her phone between her pillows and located Ardelle's number in her contacts.

The phone rang for a few seconds before the call cut off and she felt the vibration pattern of a text coming through. She swiped down from the top of her screen to read the message in its grey rectangle with rounded corners.

"Can I call you later?"

Dalia promptly typed her reply. "Absolutely. Sorry if you were with patients! Take your time. No hurry..."

Dalia dropped her phone back on her bed before picking it back up to check the time.

"Oh, man." It was 11:00 am. Nearly half the day was gone and it was already Friday, the end of the first week of her last semester.

After her adventures the first half of the week, she was behind in uni, so she had been focussing on catching up on her missed lectures at the library. Her routine for the last couple of days had been leaving the house early to study, then coming home late just in time for her obligatory dinner with her family.