She frowned. She turned the handle silently and pushed the door enough to take a peek. Samar’s head came up. And Amaal’s heart thudded, then stopped, then melted. Under the glassy dark night and still trees, on a pallet mattress, Yathaarth lay cocooned on Samar’s chest, covered in a blanket, out cold. The heater supplied a steady hum.
Samar’s brows rose inquiringly. Amaal shook her head and smiled —Goodnight.
Wait,Samar mouthed.I’ll come out.
She nodded, left the door ajar, and took two steps down. He came out a few minutes later, keeping the door half-open, carrying his jacket.
“Come.” He put the jacket around her and descended a few more steps, far enough to keep their voices from waking Yathaarth but close enough to keep an eye out in case he woke up.
Amaal left her weight in his arms, going down with him as he sat down and pulled her into his side. She set her head into the crook of his neck, inhaling. His arms came around her and she pressed closer into him, nuzzling the textured skin under his kurta. He did not mind it, in fact, he pressed the back of her head close into his flesh. And Amaal wrapped her arms around him, finally letting it all go and melting into him. He leaned back into the wall and she felt her body meld with his.
“Exactly what I needed at the end of this,” she sighed, feeling all of him around all of her with her eyes closed.
He stroked her hair and pressed his mouth into the top of her head. “It’s the start of something new now.”
“Mmm…” she nodded. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“What?”
Amaal pulled back and looked at him; his specs had slid down his nose. She smiled, pushing them back up — “I got a lot of time to think when I was in London. And I thought about the last ten years. Honestly, until I saw you at the airport today, I did not let myself fully trust that this would happen, and until right now, I did not let myself fully believe it either. Something always happens and we are the first to give away.”
“Not anymore.” He threaded his fingers through the hair at her temples, his voice a low whisper. “I have wasted too many years, and now that I look back, I realise maybe they were necessary. Life did things to me and I did things back to it, without letting myself live it like it is supposed to be lived.”
She raised her brows.
“For the love of life, and the person next to you.” His fingers tightened in her hair. “I cannot think about this life without you in it. So, trust that this has happened. We have happened.” He pressed his mouth to her cheek. “And we will keep happening.” His forehead met hers, and their eyes fell closed. “I have so much to say to you, and so little time again.”
“We have all night.”
She felt his lips curl up. Samar finally let her go and she moved down a step, widening the V of his legs and lying back on him. He widened his stance even more and wrapped his jacket even tighter around her with his arm, holding her head on his chest.
“Tell me.” She said, looking at his face.
“What?”
“Everything.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple again. He had been doing it a lot lately. She had zero complains.
“I had been trying to grow out of my mindset for a long time, but the turning point came when we went to Sirmaur last February.”
“The cloudburst?”
“Hmm. There, Atharva told me something and it finally made sense after so much fog…” Samar looked at her over the rims of his specs. “He said that Shivji didn’t swallow or spit the poison but transformed it in his throat. And that was the choice I had to make. Until then, I thought the only way to be ok was to either internalise everything and keep suffering or throw it out at him or you or anybody close to me and take perverse pleasure in seeing them suffer. And then this third option was open to me and I began working towards it.”
“How?”
“I didn’t tell you then, because I didn’t want to raise your hopes or become an annoying man singing his daily woes…”
“You are annoying but you will never sing your daily woes to anybody… also, you SING?!” She squished his rough cheeks, making him vibrate. She squished them tighter, making his lips pout and open in a low laugh. “Oh my god! What a talent house am I marrying!”
“We all sing.” He chuckled quietly.
“Adil and Qureshi, too?”
“In SFF, everybody sings. You have no option but to join the chorus. And then eventually you learn to hold a tune.”
“If I wasn’t already in love with you, I would have gone all swoony and fallen down…” She tripped her head on his chest. He popped it — “What’s being in love with me got to do with not swooning when I sing?”
