“I have already done the swooning part, now I am in serious love with you.”
“Is it?”
“Hmm.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“What?”
He looked away, mysterious.
“What?!” She pushed at him. “Clarify.”
“You’ll know when you know.”
Amaal gaped at him, then burst into a grin. This man had shown her the gates of hell and kept her suspended in purgatory. And just the sight of his mysterious smiles was enough to make her forgive all that and more. She pressed a kiss to his neck. He looked at her, his eyes softening.
He caressed her cheek.
“You don’t know what you have done.” He told her.
“What have I done?”
“You have chiseled this man out of me.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t with you all this time, you did it all on your own.”
“Without you, if not for you, I would never have done it. You were my answer to every question, every roadblock, every exhausting second. You were my end date and you were my endgame, Amaal. A man like me would have otherwise either destroyed himself or this world.” He held her face, his own becoming solemn. “I went back to my house, let my parents go, believed in things I never thought I would believe in, and didn’t stop even when I was tired and done for. At 42, with a body that is half done in, I feel younger than I ever felt. You made this happen, give yourself credit for this like you give yourself credit for every great thing you’ve achieved at work.”
Something wet wiggled at the corner of her eye. He wiped it away before it slipped.
“You have nurtured a party’s media wing singlehandedly, you have been a trailblazing Press Secretary to two CMs of a state as torn as ours, you have set your roots in a city like Srinagar and are soon going to buy your own house there, and the world will remember all that but not your biggest achievement.” He thumbed the corner of her eye. “Saving a man like me.”
The hairs all over her skin stood on end.
His palm pressed into her skin, pushing all the lost touches of the last so many years into it. “You,” he said, the veins in his neck straining, “have waited. I was doing, and it is easy to do because the mind is occupied and there is a dynamic passage of time. Action makes time pass quickly; the goals, the destinations, they keep you going. But sitting is hard. You sat there for all this time, waiting, not knowing what was happening, on just a promise I made to you.”
“I trusted you.” Broken words scraped out of her throat.
“And that is why, the rest of my life is yours.”
More tears slid down the corner of her eyes. His thumb brushed them away.
“And now it’s time to live this life out.” His mouth split into a smile. The stubble around it pricked her hand as she palmed it. Amaal nodded, feeling like this was the pinnacle moment of her life.
“Tell me now,” he asked. “What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t want to leave you tomorrow.” She pouted. And his smile widened.
“I don’t want you to either.”
“But I have to.”
His sigh was long, and loud, and ended in a puff of his breath. She chuckled.
“Don’t raise my hopes like that.”
Amaal kissed his chin. “My term with Qureshi ends in June. After that, I want to take a proper break. If I can manage to find a house by then, then set it up. And, you know… marry you,” she shrugged nonchalantly.
