Unlikely To Happen

Part 28 - Mine

Part 28 – Mine

"And your Lord is going to give you, and you will be satisfied."

~ Surah Duha, verse 5.

"She doesn't need me," he whispered. He looked at Taahir, his dark brown eyes shone with his unshed tears. "She doesn't need me," he echoed. The realisation sunk his heart like a ton of concrete-enforced bricks. For several heartbeats, Zaakir stood frozen in his spot, unable to think past the fact that Maleeha would not need him with her father, her sister and her brother-in-law there. Nurses buzzed past him, loud family walked past him, even bumping into him, but he did not notice it. His attention was focused on the fact that he was unneeded, unwanted by the one who owned his heart.

A clap on his shoulder broke his train of thought. "She doesn't even know that you are here," Taahir reminded him kindly. Studying him, Taahir realised that Zaakir was a mess. He looked frantic, his eyes were wide opened, but unfocused as he fiddled awkwardly with his fingers. "Bro, maybe if you go there. Comfort her, maybe. She needs to know..."

Blazing eyes turned onto Taahir. "She needs to know what?" he snapped. "That I am here? It will make no difference to her at all. I have stayed away from her for the last three years. It doesn't matter that I am here."

He shook his head angrily, tendrils of his hair fell into his eyes. "I just don't want to go there and make the situation uncomfortable, or awkward. Besides, this isn't about me, it is about her and her family."

Taahir stared at him in awe. Zaakir was utterly in love with Maleeha and he barely even realised it. She was only thirteen and she didn't realise how she had his seventeen-year old best friend wrapped around her finger. In fact, she had him wrapped around her pinky finger for as long as Taahir knew Zaakir. No one could say a bad word about Maleeha without Zaakir exploding on them. He had been in many fights because of things that his friends said about her.

"And doesn't her family count you and your family as part of their family?" Taahir asked as he stepped closer to Zaakir.

"Zaakir?" a familiar voice called softly.

Taahir turned to find Maleeha's older sister there, Qandeel. He always thought that she was beautiful, but Zaakir thought of her as some high maintenance queen bee. "Assaalamu alaykum," Zaakir and Taahir greeted her. Zaakir's tone was flat, emotionless just like his slate blank face.

"We were just leaving," Zaakir told her coldly. They never got along. Never. Until Maleeha was around, of course. Both loved her far too much to break her heart with their animosity. Neither of them would ever let her know how much they disliked one another.

Instead of reacting to his hostility, Qandeel smiled. "Wa alaykumusalaam," she replied. Gracefully, she turned to face Taahir. "No, none of you have to leave. Mummy will be pleased to see you, Zaakir."

Zaakir watched her with hawk-like precision, trying to determine whether she was lying or trying to pull a trick on him, but he saw no treachery in her words, in her body language. Instead of listening to his heart, he listened to his mind. "I wish I could, but I have to go... Taahir reminded me of a test I need to study for."

She laughed airily. "We are in the same school, the same grade, I know we have no tests to study for."

He winced as she called him out on his lie, but instead of her normally being nasty, she was teasing. It had been a long time since he had seen that side of her, the non-malicious side. "Okay," he relented. "But I still have other projects and other subjects which you are not taking. So, I do have stuff I need to do." Smoothly, he lied his way out of going to visit Maleeha's mother. Internally, his heart felt like it was racing to escape his chest. Meet Maleeha? See Maleeha? No way!