Samar nodded, looking away at the zooming vehicles on the road, his eyes wide. She sensed that he himself didn’t know that his eyes were wide. Or that he was nodding. She had never seen so much movement in his body before.
“Can we go now?” She asked, hoping to break his shock.
“Yes,” he startled. “I mean, hmm.”
He whirled and stalked off to his car. She followed him, opened the passenger door, and settled into an interior that felt like a sudden vacuum.
He drove through town, and she only spoke to supply directions. He did not ask anything else. He did not ask anything more about Khalil. Or her. Or her life. But he did not need to. The silence was charged enough to tell it all. She could feel it. Something. Something dark. Something deep. The kind of electric feeling that was asleep, latent, but there. Charged now, more palpable than it had ever been, it made her skin feel tingly. She swallowed, without a sound. And the veins in his neck tautened even though his eyes were straight ahead. Amaal inhaled, the sound hitching the air in the car. And his Adam’s apple worked a swallow, audibly, eyes behind no-nonsense specs fixated on the road ahead.
The silence was screaming. The night outside was piercing. Then they reached her house, and he jerked.
“Are you serious?” His eyes widened, looking at the vast bungalow gates in front of them. Samar glanced left and right. “You live here? Since when?”
“Khatriji has a house here already. So he offered me his government accommodation because my rental was far away from the Secretariat.”
Amaal got out of the car, walked to the gate and opened it. He drove his car through the paved driveway that was long enough to accommodate a line of Z security vehicles. The bungalow itself was big enough to accommodate twenty family members. It was a single storey bungalow with four gardens on all four sides, seven rooms, two kitchens and two grand halls.
Samar got out of his car without even turning off the headlights or shutting the door and came barreling towards her — “What the fuck is wrong with Atharva? He is letting you stay here?”
“He does notletme do anything. I am responsible for my own housing.”
“Where are your watchmen?”
“He will come by 11 for his night shift.”
He stared at her, incredulous.
“I am not even home in the day!” She argued.
Samar turned away from her, walking to his car and retrieving his mobile.
“Who are you calling? Don’t you dare call Atharva…”
“Hello, Faris.”
She stopped in her tracks.
“Those Jammu robberies, they are happening on Wazarat Road, right?”
“They are not happening in this lane!” Amaal whisper-shouted at him. He held up a finger, listening.
“Where… yes, right now.”
“Samar!”
He turned away from her, walking towards the bungalow, dismissing her as if his phone call was more important than what she was saying. She stared at his back, at the way he was talking. No robberies had happened in her lane! He kept talking, his voice getting muffled as he went farther and farther away from her. She waited for him to turn back, to finish, to listen. But he was on his own mission.
And finally Amaal snapped.
“Samar!” She stalked behind him, picking up speed to physically snatch that mobile off his ear if she had to. “Samar!” She yelled. He did not turn. “SAMAR!” She bellowed. “You are not…”
He turned around and caught her in his arms, twirling her with the momentum of her body and pushing his mouth over hers.
Her voice cut off. As did her breath.
She stumbled, still twirling until his body pressed her close to his and his tongue pushed inside her mouth. Her stomach clenched.
Strong fingers meshed into the hair at the back of her head and angled her head. Amaal could do nothing but flow with it, feeling not only his tongue but his entire being inside her as he pressed her head closer to his, feeling the edge of his specs bite into her skin and relishing the pinch. Tears burst out of her eyes and she wracked, finding her body curving backwards to take him even as everything inside her was at war with each other. For what, she didn’t know.
