The Wrong Wedding

Act-36

It was already the 4th event, Mayu, today and I was busy doing the final checkups, when a familiar person creeped up beside me.

"God! You're not even related to Haniya! How pretentious can you be, Zaira??" I heard Hafsa snicker behind me, but without paying her any heed, I continued to give instructions to the helpers who were decorating the stage with Marigolds.

"You may have fooled everyone with this act of yours but I know the truth. Also, your relationship with Rayyan—" She was still going on and I had made up my mind to ignore her as always, but she was just being too much.

I hadn't seen Hafsa, after that time, Alhumdulillah and initially, I thought that she didn't come to my wedding, despite being a direct relative of Rayyan, only because she hated me. However, Haniya told me later that her parents had grounded her after finding about her illicit affair with some guy. She did come up with claims that he was going to marry her and he ought to have seeing how far things had transpired between the two—But unfortunately, he completely vanished from the picture after their shenanigans were made known to everyone.

Haniya had went over an extra mile to make sure she didn't have to see Hafsa until the actual wedding started. Hence, her whining at being left out in this manner.

Releasing an exhausted sigh, I felt my head falling back from sheer exasperation, before I could manage to look at her with a fake smile plastered on my face.

"Right. Of course you do. But don't you always, Hafsa? And I honestly would've loved to hear your thoughts on it, if I didn't know you for a miserable, vile, lying creature—! So, why don't you take your heaps of wisdom and scram from my sight, before I have someone else do it for me? Now, you won't like that very much, would you?" I continued in a levelled tone, unfazed by her mouth hung open in shock and humiliation. With a roll of eyes and a scoff, I had turned to leave but she pulled me back to face her with a jerk. I caught from the corner of my eyes, her hand raised up, ready to make impact with it's victim. However, before she could, I was forcefully pulled away from her grasp.

"What do you think you're doing to my wife?" Rayyan didn't scream and he didn't need to—Just the harshness of his tone and the coldness of his voice, had rendered both of us frozen on our spots in shock.

He had said all this while coming to stand infront of me. His one hand going behind my back to hold me against him, protectively.

I watched Hafsa gape at him frightened; tears pooling in her eyes and cheeks reddening as she tried to get out a word but couldn't. The fact that it was Rayyan, whose mouth had uttered those words, had made this whole situation a lot more serious than it could've been.

"Take this as my final warning. Don't push me so far to use those letters against you." He exclaimed through constrained anger and before she could say anything in response he had turned away, pulling me beside him and not stopping until we had returned to our room.

"Are you okay?" He inquired in a worried voice, giving me a one over while holding me at an arm's length. I had to gulp to be able to get a breath in and shake my head at him in confirmation. At this, he exhaled a long sigh before slumping down on the bed; the tips of his fingers pressing against the socket of his eyes.

I felt so bad for this man, sitting infront of me. Really, how much more would he need to go through, because of this place and it's people.

"Rayyan?" I began in a small voice, crouching down on my knees infront of him on the floor, before trying to pull away his hands.

"I am okay. I swear—" He didn't let me finish and pulled me up to his lap to hug me against himself tightly. His face hidden in the crane of my neck.