Embraced (#2 Natives series) #ProjectNigeria

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

                       A KNOCK ON HER DOOR distracted Nooriya Adam from her packing. She glanced behind with creased brows to find her brother standing there.

"Yes?" she asked before turning back to her packing.

Munir hesitated at the threshold of his sister's room, his mind contemplative. With a sigh, he stepped into the room and made himself as comfortable as he could on the pillow dominated bed.

Silently, he watched as she dumped clothes after clothes into the Chanel bag on her bed without folding them. Gogo would disapprove of that, he thought but said nothing. Instead he looked around the clustered and unkempt room. Her camera and laptop bags were seated on her vanity table, packed and ready to go.

By her widow was the background she'd set up for most of her indoor shooting. It consisted of a white frilled curtain, fake flowers and fairy lights. A foldable chair leaned next to a tripod and a silver makeup box. Where a ceiling fan ought to be a chandelier made from faux glass dangled. There was a dreamcatcher on her bathroom door and under her wardrobe a variety of footwares that ranged from boot heels to sandals and heels to sneakers lived.

On her dresser, a photo of four girls huddled together with ice cream cones in their little hands caught Munir's attention. Two of them were missing a few tooth and the words The SET Queens was sprawled across the bottom of the wooden aged frame in black marker.

Munir chuckled at the picture of his sister and her friends, her glasses twice the size of her face. He looked up to find more photos of the girls as they grew older.

As Munir dragged his gaze above the mirror where Noor had tapped the pictures, one in particular caught and held his attention. It was a picture of Fatiha in a matriculation gown. She was holding a cake and smiling brightly at the photographer. Her heart shaped face more pronounced in the wine veil she'd wrapped around it.

Munir's eyes took in the ease of her pose and the happiness in her smile. He looked at the picture beside that one and this time it was Noor who was matriculating. One hand held the tilted cap on her head while the other was gripping firmly onto the neck of a wine bottle. By her side, her best friend had an arm around her and the other holding up a small cake.

Again Munir's eyes stayed longer on his sister's best friend. Her smile sent a wave of guilt and regret coursing through him.

Although he had apologized for how he'd treated her in the past, Fatiha hadn't forgiven him. He couldn't blame her. For years he and his friends had taunted her and in the process they'd ruined her self-esteem. Ruined the way she saw herself.

He could still remember her parting words to him the day her engagement had been called off. "I don't need to hear those from you. Do you want to know why? Because after everything, it is hard for me to believe them when they come from you."

Like words that felt like they had been engraved onto his mind with fire, they had hurt then and they still did.

"Do you want it?"

The question startled Munir out of his reverie. He tore his gaze from the photos to look at his sister. "What?"

She jabbed a long and slender black nailed finger towards the direction he'd been looking at. "I said do you want it? The photo." She reiterated.

He looked back at the picture. At the smile he wished was constant and not occasional. At what could have been had he not been blinded by pure arrogance and stupidity.

"No." He shook his head. Moving away from his current seat, he settled himself down at the other end of the bed which was a safe distance away from the photos.