Please, Find Me

Chapter 39

Is'haaq had walked away, ignoring Ihsaan's silent plea. Too much had happened between them to forgive him just yet. He stared after him dolefully, watching his wide frame escape into the elevator before he looked back at the bed. For the first time in months, Mikaeel looked at his friend sober and clean. His clothes were ironed and he smelled relatively okay but most of all his eyes were clear and there was not even a whiff of weed or cigarette smoke around him.

"You scared the shit out of me last night." Ihsaan said, unknowingly standing in the exact same spot Is'haaq had occupied just a few minutes earlier.

Mikaeel looked up at him, wondering if the asshole even knew what he had done the previous day.

Ihsaan looked at him awkwardly, stumped at Mikaeel's lack of response. He cracked his knuckles, looking out the doorway at a random painting hanging on the wall trying to gather up the words floating around in his mind. "I hardly remember the past few months." His voice was soft and he himself seemed surprised to have spoken at all. "I remember bits here and there but it's mostly a complete blank. I remember waking up in stranger's beds sometimes and I remember waking up in my own bed but I don't remember much in between."

Mikaeel's stare was beginning to unnerve him. It wasn't as if he was just allowing him to talk- it was more like he was having a fucking hard time keeping it all in and Ihsaan was sure that if he wasn't stuck in a bed, he'd probably have his ass handed to him on a fucking silver platter.

"I was fired three weeks ago." He confessed heavily. "I was fucking stoned while they were talking. They were pissed when I started laughing and had security take me out." Ihsaan knocked the back of his head gently against the wall behind him. "And I sold Dahlia's wedding ring three days ago..."

Mikaeel only lifted an eyebrow at the statement, his face growing more and more angry with each word. "It was white gold with a 12 carat diamond and I sold it for a thousand bucks." He laughed almost pitifully as he said that. "It was from Sterns. I paid what... almost 15 grand for it and I sold it for 1," He said running a hand through his thinning hair. "I actually sold my baby's ring."

"She's still your baby?" Mikaeel's voice finally echoed in the room, reminding Ihsaan that there was someone who still loved Dahlia even though he had forgotten how to.

"She'll always be my baby." He said, smiling sadly as he looked down at his faded all-stars.

"So then why'd you do it?" He didn't need to specify anything. Ihsaan would know well enough what he meant.

How was he supposed to answer that question?

"She would always get dressed up before she went out with her clients and I would watch her. I would watch her wear her silk panties and her matching bra. I would watch her put on her make-up with shaky fingers and I would zip up her dress whenever she couldn't do it herself. And when she came home, she would first shower and come out dressed in these... fucking ugly rags and we'd sit in the lounge together." His voice sounded hoarse and breathless as he put words to all the memories of his beautiful wife. "And as we lit up, sometimes her sleeves would drop a bit and I'd see the bruises on her wrists and when we were in bed I'd see the marks on her neck and her hips and her legs..."

His voice screamed of months and months of regret and heartache and tears that he never allowed himself to feel. It felt as if every valve in his heart and every vessel in his body was exploding as he spoke and he remembered his wife's dyed blonde curls and her chubby stomach and her round thighs...

He remembered her pink and blue braces glinting in the sunshine and her giggle that seemed to erupt from deep within her belly whenever he kissed her nose. He remembered how she used to drip chocolate ice-cream down the front of all her white t-shirts and her smile whenever he opened her can of coke for her. His heart finally mourned for the years and years and years of love that they had that was destroyed in an instant. He allowed her to be used and abused by assholes who never knew her like he did. Who only had sex with her. They never made love to her like he did. They never told her that she was beautiful and kissed the blush off her cheeks every time she heard it. They never kissed her or held her hands like he did as if he was afraid to hurt her. They only took from her and took from her and took from her and they never once allowed her to feel anything. She was dying from the inside out and they only ever kept on hurting her more and more and more.