“What?” She frowned.
His smile widened. “It’s all smudged.” He palmed her hair. She rubbed at it, and came up with the red of the sindoor. Amaal turned, and the pillow under her was red too after that intense third time. Her entire body heated up.
“Let me wash my face…”
He pulled her back and set her on the pillows — “Stay.” He kissed her smudged forehead. “Looks nice.”
Instead, he got to his feet, stretching his arms and popping his joints. Amaal caught sight of his back and got to her knees on the bed.
“What happened?” His head turned over his shoulder.
She reached up and rubbed at the stains of her red palm prints, streaks cascading across his back, his neck, over his side. She turned him around and found more, trailing over his pecs and down to his forearm. Red prints over melted skin.
“Looks nice.” He traced an imprint over the grafts on his stomach. Amaal looked up, but his eyes were on the end of their bed, creased in more red prints from her feet.
“These sheets are never going to be white again.” She clicked her tongue. “Unless you have some strong stain remover.”
“Good.” He tugged her waist. “I don’t want these to be washed.”
The sun was emanating the last of its golden rays, painting his eyes in its glow. Amaal held his face between her hands, tracing the fine lines under his eyes with her thumbs. Her smooth, naked skin was tracing the welted leather of his. Her nose was breathing in the scent over his. And she knew that if she had told her 23-year-old self this, that young, naive, ambitious but brash Amaal would have jumped in glee and then dismissed it as nothing but a good dream.
“What happened?” He squeezed her closer with both arms.
She swallowed, seeing the sun go down in the sky behind him but its rays still bursting through their window. “The timing was against us,” Amaal remembered. “But what a time that was.”
He cupped her chin and brought her face back to him. She stared into his eyes. And he smiled. “What a time it will be.”
Epilogue
Cool. Tingle. Cool. Tingle. Cool. Tingle. Cool air blew over him and woke him up. Samar blinked the crusted crystals of sleep, squinting at the sight in front of him. Amaal, sleeping on his arm, the window, left open from last night. He glanced down at her, breathing slow and deep, on her stomach, her legs scissored open to let his rest between them. Samar stroked the length of her hair, pushing it off her back and kissing the skin between the straps of her top.
“Umm…” she fell off his arm and pushed away to her pillow, releasing the tingling sensation. He fisted and unfisted his hand, rolling closer to her.
“Samar, no.” She groaned as he slid his hand around her stomach and turned her over. “No… let me sleep.” She mock-cried, eyes squeezed shut. He smiled, looking at the deep, dark sky outside.
“I want to show you something.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Open your eyes.”
“No!”
He rolled over her and thumbed her eyes, fighting off her slapping hands.
“Samar I’ll kill you!” She snapped her eyes open.
“And now you are awake.” He grinned.
“What do you want?!”
“Come with me.”
“No.”
He crossed over her and landed on the floor, plucking his specs and putting them on. He leaned down to pick her up but she rolled away to the other side. “Ha ha!”
“Amaal.”
