Dedicated to my bestfriend TheOmoope because I don't appreciate all she does for me enough.

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Her therapist was a pleasant faced woman, she smiled at Amirah who was tell very nervous but somehow her smile seemed to ease Amirah's nerves but only a little.
All along she'd kept asking herself what she was doing, numerous times she'd almost changed her mind and gone back to the safety of her home and enjoy her solitude but curiosity won against her fears so here she was in this annoyingly bright office.

"Hello. Please sit." She said motioning to the chair opposite her. Amirah sat down slowly.

"I'm Tara, how're you doing today?"

"I'm fine, good." Amirah said her heart racing, she wanted to leave. This wasn't right, she wasn't crazy, she should get up and leave now, Muhammad shouldn't have set up this meeting.

"Before we begin fully, I'd like you to know that I am not here to fix you, I'm here to help you, to assist you and I can't do that without your help. I understand how hard this might be for you but I promise you there's nothing to be worried or scared about okay?"

Her eyes were kind and her voice soft, Amirah felt her fear slowly dissipate.

"You don't have to fear that I'm going to make you start talking about everything, you can tell me when you're comfortable enough, it's perfectly okay."

"I understand."

"So I understand your husband made the appointment, did you consent to that?"

Amirah nodded.

"That's amazing. How long have you been married?"

"Six months."

"Still a young marriage I see. How long did you court for?"

"I think seven months." Amirah answered promptly.

"I and my husband courted for two weeks." Tara said with a small laugh.

"Two weeks?" Amirah asked surprised.

"Yes, we met on Facebook and three days later we met physically and went on few dates and then out of the blue, he proposed and I never felt so sure of anything so I said yes."

"Wow." Amirah said shocked. "How did your families take it?"

"Typical, they felt I needed to give it time. Did yours have any issue about you and your husband?"

"No, not at all. Actually they persuaded me to marry him, I felt seven months was too short but that's probably a silly thing to say knowing about you."

Tara laughed. "Not at all, relationships doesn't come with a rule book. Everyone should do what's best for them, separate individuals with different mindsets."

Amirah nodded thoughtfully. "I agree with that, I heard of a couple who courted for five years but got divorced after a week of marriage."

Tara bursted into laughter and Amirah chuckled feeling quite at ease now.

"There you have it, you can never fully know someone. You said your family persuaded you into marrying your husband, do they usually have such strong influence on your decisions?"

Amirah scoffed. "it's hard to tell my father no, he could be asking for your opinion but from the question you already know the answer he wants you to give and you dare not say otherwise."

"That sucks, how about your mother? Does that apply to her too."

Amirah laughed. "My mother? Hell no, she's equally a tyrant."

"Wow." Tara said looking genuinely interested. "So how many siblings do you have?"

"Nine, my father has three wives although the last one is late."

"So from your mother how many are you all?"

"Five, four girls and a boy." Amirah answered with a small frown, Tara noticed but now wasn't the time to delve into that.

"So the other four are from your father's other wives?"

"Yes, the second wife has three and the third wife had one."

"That's a very large family, are there fights and disagreements regularly? My grandfather had six wives and I always looked forward to spending holidays there when I was younger because of the unending dramas."

Amirah laughed. "There are fights of course, there's rarely a polygamous house without constant problems."

"That's horrible, how did you cope with it? I know how tiring it is to be part of such."

"It was hard, I had to be the mediator most times since my mother was always the one who started it."

Tara had a sympathetic expression. "Are you the first born?"

"No, I'm the fifth from my father and third from my mother."

Amirah wanted to ask the reason for this idle chat about her family but she also was enjoying it, there was no rush from Tara into telling her what made Muhammad think she needed to see a therapist or why she was here. She wasn't ready to talk about Adnan, Hajiya, Muhammad, her child, AbdulRahman, the anxiety attack, the fact that she cheated and how she felt about her whole life, she just wasn't so she chatted about everything but revealing nothing she wasn't ready to.

And at the end of the session, she and Tara had became friends, they'd shared personal experiences about irrelevant stuff and laughed a lot. Amirah suspected Tara was one of those few people who found making friends the easiest thing to do.

Her sessions were Mondays and Thursdays and Amirah was looking forward to Thursday. After bidding Tara farewell, she stood up and left the office. Outside she removed her phone from mute and saw several missed calls from AbdulRahman alongside them were texts that made her question if he was a little loco, her thoughts made her laugh.

Where are you?

Answer your phone?

Amirah! No one is answering the bell at your home.

If you don't pick up, I'd go to your husband's workplace.

I'm sorry, I won't. Did I annoy you?

Is it because I punched your husband? Should I apologise to him? Would you come back to work then?

Fuck you Amirah! Stupid, dumbass. Pick up the fucking phone!

Hey I'm sorry, I shouldn't have insulted you but I'm going crazy with worry. You'd call me back right?

Amirah!!!!!!!

She blocked his number and then decided to walk around a bit. There was nothing to do if she went back home, she wondered if she should go to the hospital and surprise Muhammad but she then realized he was a busy person and that wouldn't be good.

Tara had told her writing would help, whenever she wanted to sort out her jumbled up thoughts. Amirah has never been much of a writer so she found that task hard but Tara had said it was just a suggestion.
AbdulRahman was becoming a nuisance, she was scared he might come to the house when Muhammad was around, she'd been lucky the last time but now he was being a threat to her peace.

"God! I shouldn't have met that man." She lamented before sitting on a bench. It was a deserted park with overgrown grass and cobwebs filled fountain.

The walk had been long but she'd found it nice, it was early evening and she didn't have to worry about going home to prepare dinner, Muhammad had said they'd be eating out. Slowly, his kind gestures were making her warm up to him.

Ummul Khair was equally a nuisance alongside AbdulRahman but Amirah wasn't going to let herself be bothered by her, she wasn't worth it.

•••• •••• •••• ••••

"... And she's so beautiful, she kept on smiling I felt jealous of her beautiful smile." Amirah said. They were in Muhammad's car, he'd suggested they get snacks and go for a car ride and it was nice, they'd drove for awhile before he parked at a secluded place and they sat on the car's boot with shawarma, Irish potatoes, ice cream, yoghurt, burger and a slice of cake between them.

"Your smile is more beautiful." Muhammad said in a cliche manner and Amirah rolled her eyes,

"Here we go again."

He laughed, that deep throaty laughter of his that made her smile knowing she caused it. "You can never accept a compliment."

"Buy me food, that's enough compliment."

He shook his head at her, "well I'm just glad you enjoyed your session."

"I did." There was silence for a few seconds before she said, "thank you Muhammad."

He looked up with a confused expression. "Why are you thanking me?"

"For your patience and understanding, I appreciate it. I know I've been terrible towards you but all along you've stayed patient with me and..."

"I have something to tell you!" Muhammad blurted out. He was guilty ridden from the way she was praising him knowing that he'd kissed Ummul Khair.
He wanted to say it now and just get it over with, no matter the consequences.

"No, I don't want to hear." Amirah said to Muhammad's surprise.

"What?" He asked.

"I don't want to hear anything, atleast not yet. Let's just enjoy tonight and not ruin it, tomorrow we'll go back to reality and whatever it brings with it."

Muhammad was about to argue when she suddenly pulled him closer and kissed him, he forgot about thoughts of anything else before picking her up and setting her on his thighs where she straddled him as they kissed passionately. Tomorrow they'd face life's setbacks but tonight was for something entirely different.

A/N:

And when I saw the date of my last update, I knew I had to start writing now!

Hello, how're we? It's been long kinda, I missed you all. Please forgive whatever errors you might've encountered.

I like Tara, who else does?

I don't have anything much to say in this author's note though so please vote, comment and share.

Wait, OhmyGod!! We're approaching 28k reads, that is HUGE for me. I appreciate you all so so much, thank you. I never expected people would like this book due to the plot but I'm glad you all did and kept coming back so thanks.

Okay bye, I'm out, see you soon.