The Memory Of Us

Chapter 17

Mina's kiss with Sahil was everything she had expected it to be, and she couldn't stop thinking about it no matter how hard she tried.

It had been as hungry and passionate as she had expected it to be, devoid of any awkwardness.

It had been as rhythmic as if they had done it a thousand times before.

It had been long and full of a thousand different emotions all at the same time.

It had been utterly perfect and she wasn't afraid to admit that fact to herself, so she didn't understand why anytime she reminisced about it she felt a knot growing in the deepest bowels of her stomach.

At first, she thought it might have been guilt, then shame, then anger, and now she wasn't sure what any of those emotions even meant anymore.

All she knew was that, afforded the opportunity, she wasn't sure if she would kiss him again, not when Khalil's kisses lit her alive in a completely different manner.

And, just like that, suddenly her thoughts catapulted from one boy to another to her misfortune because no sooner had Mina started thinking about Khalil than the espresso machine she had been standing idly in front of began billowing deep gray clouds of smoke.

Mina coughed open-mouthed, waving a hand through the thick air. Her eyes were half-open, half-shut, squinting at the deep smog burning the edges of her eyes as she threw a cautionary glance over her shoulder to the patrons impatiently tapping their toes against the harsh, cold linoleum of the rec center floor.

She opened her mouth to shout in their direction, to warn them that it would be a minute longer on their orders, but her words never touched the air and were instead swallowed by a painful scream as a high-pitched whistling trilled through the air, practically tripling the amount of smoke in the air.

Wrenching her eyes shut completely now, Mina grasped her left arm tightly as she felt something akin to electricity shoot through it.

She stumbled backwards, clenching her teeth tightly as she blew out a tight breath between them.

"MJ!" Mina heard Willow's voice exclaim from the void of smoke to her right and, a mere moment later, she felt what she inferred was Willow's hand grasping tightly onto her wrist.

Pulling her backwards, Willow had semi-cleared her line of vision, though smoke still lingered at the edges of her peripheral but that was far from the least of her problems as she became aware of an unbearable sensation shooting through the arm she had steadily been cradling.

This sensation wasn't like the previous, it was longer, it was more intense, and it was becoming tears from the brink of Mina's eyes.

It felt like fire, that was the only accurate way to describe it. It felt like a raging fire that only burned brighter and brighter by the second.

This was karma, she had no doubt about it.

This was the universe's way of punishing her for allowing Khalil back into her life, for thinking about him when she was supposed to be thinking about her incarcerated mother and her father buried in a shallow and untimely grave and especially for thinking about him when her lips were locked onto someone else's.

Mina grimaced as another electric volt of pain shot up her arm, punishing her painfully.

"I think I'm cursed." She whispered out, unaware that her whisper had still been loud enough for Willow to hear.

"You're not cursed." Willow replied, though she barely sounded as if she believed herself, as if even the effort to lie had taken a heavy toll on her and she continued to convince Mina of this even as she closed up the coffee shop early for the day and opted to drive Mina to the nearest urgent care.