"What happens after a year?" Saddiq asks trying hard not to let on his mounting fears as he cuddles her while watching the Kdrama 'Encounter' on Netflix.

It was a Sunday and a month since that Friday he met & married her. They've settled into quite the routine and if he says he wasn't loving every bit of it, he was lying. Coming home after work to Aisha and spending all day during the weekends with her was by far the happiest he has ever been in his thirty years. If it were a dream, Saddiq was prepared to dream forever.

"It is too much, too fast," Faysal had cautioned, "Slow down, man, Please!"

"Is it truly worth messing your relationship with your entire family?" Zainab had asked rather disapprovingly too.

They were right. He knows. However, the crazy thing was he doesn't feel in control of anything in his life anymore yet what's even crazier was, he doesn't seem to mind. He was acutely aware of how much his life had changed completely in the last month since Aisha had 'literally' crashed into his world. How can he not be when there was simply no part of him which was same or sane? But it doesn't surprise him as much as he thought it would considering his brain and heart were for the very first time in his existence, in alignment in some sort of enlightenment.

He was suddenly hyper aware of things, like his heartbeat. How whenever he would hug Aisha, it would lull and match hers and how when she's far, it would beat as if in anger, in fistful, like a tightrope on the throat of a banshee. It might seem weird but he could sense her presence even before he saw her. His heart would know, somehow, and like some sort of beacon, or rather antennae it would lead him to her, always. And that's why it would beat and he would listen, and he would know, beyond any doubt whatsoever, he would know, it had met his match

It was, however, his mind he finds most strange.

How was he to explain finding fulfillment in merely sucking the same air as a person who didn't exist in his world until a mere month ago? And that's why he needs to know. Surely, her stance must have changed, right? She still couldn't be the same. Not after all they've shared; he could feel the heat burning his cheeks at the memory of how much he had 'shared' with her. Surely. . .

Right?

She pauses the movie and shifts so she can look him in the eyes as if to make sure whatever her answer would be sinks in. "I leave!"

One. . .two, he hears his heart beats in his throat as he swallows the hourglass he'd purposefully etch in there in a rather painful gulp as he dares time to a halt. She would leave? Still? Three. . . Saddiq hugs her as if to rewind the time he had swallowed.

He didn't believe her. He couldn't believe her. Though, in retrospect, he wonders why? Yet that time, he was almost certain she wouldn't leave. How can she still consider leaving him? How can she when there was no part of her body he hadn't imprinted his soul?

He kisses her hair which smell of coconut and life desperately wanting to share his impounding feelings which she clearly doesn't seem to reciprocate if she was still considering leaving him when, even now, despite cuddling her after another round of what could be nothing less than heaven, his entire existence still tingles with an even more desperate urge to merge himself into her.

Her entire body was alert, tense, beneath his touch and he knew without a shadow of doubt that she didn't lie. She would leave. Even in this instant when they were the closest a person can ever be physically and he was overwhelmed with this blinding urge to merge their bodies permanently together in a way no living soul has been able to for her to feel enough, to be enough. She would leave him.

He could feel her slipping away.

He could feel. . .

"And if I won't let you go?" Please don't let me go. Please. . .

He just needed hope, and time. Especially time. He needed time for her to see, to know. He needed time for her to see and know just how much he wanted her for her to perhaps change her mind. But would there ever be? Time for them?

"It won't matter."

His heart broke. . .

She wraps her hands around his neck, "It won't matter, Saddiq, but—"

. . .and mended, only to—

"'—But I am here. Now. Here. Present. And you can have me. But just for today."

—break again.

Even after this? He had been tempted to ask but he doesn't. Instead he tickles her and they had laughed, and watched the movie, and he had being momentarily made to forget that she would leave him in less than a year.

Besides, he still had time.

She can still change her mind.

She might—

She didn't.

Saddiq grudgingly wipes off the tear that had slipped away despite his determination to not shed another tear for her. Ever.

Yet nothing was working

He couldn't forget.

And trying hard not to was making it even worse.

He doesn't want to remember but he can't forget, not when memories, like the sea which he had swallowed, drowns him

Yet, there was the anger.

There was the frustrations.

Shouldn't a part of him had prepared him for this inevitability considering they had been obviously doomed. He couldn't understand. What had made it seem certain that there was going to be a happily ever after? She never lied. She never gave him any hope either. So why? Just why had he chosen regardless to risk everything and everyone for her? Shouldn't it be over after she'd made it blatantly clear she wanted nothing to do with him? Why. . .

And that was why he stares warily at the apparition of Aisha staring painfully at him as he struggled; to remember, to forget.

What more could she want from him apart from all he'd given and she'd refused? He couldn't understand why he has to be seeing a ghost of her staring in disapproval at him in his living room in only God knows time—he had done nothing but pray, remembered and hurt after he'd somehow found his way home after meeting Aisha and having his broken heart shattered once again. It might have been a few hours or even days; he wasn't certain. He wasn't certain of anything anymore.

Yet he needed to know. Was hallucinations part of the process of mending a heart which won't stop breaking over and over again? And for how long was it going to last? Was he supposed to ignore the apparition or reply since it would seem it kept asking him questions through judgmental eyes? A judgment he wasn't quite sure if he deserved. He did just got his heart broken in all the wrong places.

"Why are you doing this to yourself for me?" The ghost fumes once more and he shut his eyes, beyond exhausted.

Yet, it angers him.

Why should he let a mere imagery berate him?

There was no need. He had loved and it has ended. Big deal. He would get over her even if at this moment it feels Herculaneum. However, he must! There was no way he was going to spend the rest of his life like this, it simply wasn't possible.

"It can't be, can it?" The ghost sighs quite loudly causing him goosebumps. "It can't be just because of the sex, right?"

Sex? Sex? Is that all she thinks this was all about? Sex? Seriously?

"Do you really think that low of me?" He asks yet he was a bit unsure if it was in his head or did he actually voice those words.

"I don't know what to think of you, Saddiq." She tossed back, pissed, marching back and forth in what he had learnt to be anxiety,"You knew, you always knew I was going to leave at the end. So why are you suddenly acting as if I cheated you or something?"

So it wasn't in his head. But—

He finds himself truly looking at her apparition which wouldn't stop pacing with the possibility that she might be—

—real?

Rubbish. What is he even thinking. Aisha can't be here. She couldn't. . .

"Aisha?" He asks tentatively, slowly, and she pauses, looking at him. "You are here?" How are you here?

"For how long are you going to do this?" She ignores him. Perhaps not quite grasping the impact of her presence on him. "I told you, didn't I? Right from the start, I told you—

"I know," he cuts her off not wanting to hear another speech of how it was his fault that he was in pain. "I know!"

"So—

"There has been nothing about meeting you up to this very instant that was a deliberate choice, Aisha," he began in utter resignation as if it has finally dawned on him that they were truly over. The end. "And there's nothing I can do about how I felt, or feels. But you're right. Whatever we had ended months ago. I know now." He closes his eyes as if to keep the sharp pain that pierced his heart at bay and swallowing hard, he went on," However, I need time." Time to forget you.

He pauses.

"I don't know if you're real or not, but if you're really here, please leave me alone, Aisha, I beg you."Let me grief. Let me find peace.

"Please. . .,"

That word again. Please. . . God! He hated the word. How can he not when it was the exact word that brought him here. But where exactly is here? He began crying hard and wild, too tired of emotions he can't conceal or carry, wanting desperately to leave it all behind until his voice dulls and the tears dries off.

Aisha kneels on the ground in front of him and with her hands which reaches to console him, she cradles her face and for moments undefined, silence slammed, and shrieked, and yelled, until she let's go of her hands and faces a broken Saddiq with tears rolling down her cheeks;

"What do I do, Saddiq?"