His Scandalous Bride

22: Then

It's been six months. Six months of stillness. Six months of engulfing silence. Six months of escaping gravity. There has not been much time to do anything. She just breathes, and breathes, and breathes. There is not much she can do anyway.  Time seems stuck in her throat.

However, it was silent but silence isn't quiet. It was still but stillness isn't unfeeling. She tried hard not to fall but falling isn't the only way to hit the ground. What more could she do when even the familiar fist of grief hits differently? There was a lot more feelings in breathing than she thought was possible when she became conscious of the air getting into her lungs and the air getting out as time wears on hastily despite her tardiness.

Yet it doesn't compare to the ravage she'd bear witness in those days where silence steals into those minutes she wakes yet stays there, still, not quite sure what she was supposed to do with herself or those evenings after a rather particularly hard day of watching Grandpa lose his mind over monsters that lives only in his mind; they were rare and far between but they were there, helpless and alone, trapped in a never ending fear of when or even how her monsters would catch up with her seeing as she too lives in the belly of a beast.

Thankfully, her nights are easier. It isn't silent. It isn't still. She doesn't fall. She just lay and choose. She should grief. She shouldn't. She should be happy. She shouldn't. She should be carefree. She shouldn't. She should feel everything. She should feel nothing.

Most nights, she have nightmares and on the others, she have nothing. Most nights, she miss him and on the others, she begs to forget. Most nights, she likes to pretend he doesn't exist and on the others, he makes up her entirety. But most nights, it is just him, and her, and an endless stretch of darkness.

Bilaal.

Her Bilaal.

She still couldn't believe she met him again after all those years. She couldn't believe he was just right across her room. Alive. Healthy. She couldn't believe. And so, she waits for him, tirelessly, in each tick and tock of the clock, and yearns for him on every inch and edge of the silence that accompanied her everywhere. She had lost him. And she had found him. Yet she hesitates, scared.

It was obvious he didn't want to have anything to do with her. Was it right to push? What if he disappeared, again? It wouldn't be strange. Junaid says he does it all the time.

"He disappears but he always returns. Always." Junaid had laughed at her curiosity when she asked him how comes they don't fear when he does that. She would know how possible it was. He had disappeared on her and didn't return. Ever.

She does the second best thing instead. She hears him. Most night. She hears him walk the hallway. Back and forth. Back and forth. He matches. Or he paints—he is the culprit for the montage in her room. She would wake sometimes and the hallway would be an endless sea, or a tempestuous garden, or an aching sky or a lonely road. It was never the same. It was of no particular order. She could never predict when either. She hears him, but in the last six months, she's only seen him twice.

The first time was on that day when Junaid had introduced her to Grandpa Amadu and she had seen him by chance. He had blatantly refused to hear anything she had to say and had slammed his door shut in her face. She had stood there for moments undefined trying and yet not quite understanding his hostility. Or maybe she does seeing as that meeting wasn't exactly the first time they had met.

Bilaal Yusuf Ahmad.

How can she ever forget him. She couldn't even if she tried. Bilaal is a montage of whatever goodness she could ever wear. And a very long time ago, he was the boy she loved. Desperately.

Bilaal. What can she say about him? What should she say about him? It was like that the first time she saw him. It was like that the last time she saw him. Not much has changed since that January evening thick with harmattan when she had saw him for the first time. She was seven and they had just moved to Mando.