Ishq Kinara[Love Ashore] Complete

26. Steady

Night time for a medical student is always reserved for studying, or that's what Izaan Shoaib used to tell himself. Night is silent and calm, a perfect setting to let the big words of a medical book drill into your mind. Complicated process to make sense and difficult terminologies to look a bit easy.

But tonight he decided to skip all that. He was sprawled on his bed, with his headphones in his ear and a soft melody, the one he was so used to since the song was sent to him by Kumail. The guy was pretty big on music unlike Izaan.

He was lying on his back and scrolling through his phone. Useless apps. But wasting time like this had never felt so fulfilling before.

To think of it, nothing had felt this fulfilling before. He was smiling more than usual, his normal was morphing into something which was once a rarity. And he was happy.

Happier than he ever was.

He had always been the one to live his life with set rules and never regret them. Being happy wasn't the goal. Getting things done was. And if in all this he got even a tiny bit of happiness then that was more than enough.

That was before Safwa Kirmani.

She came into his life like a barely there detail. When someone just slips there and you're perfectly fine with it because it doesn't even matter. Three years back when he was officially introduced to her, Izaan had no idea this girl was going to change the course of his life one day.

The friendship with her came easy. She was easygoing. Or maybe together they were easy for each other. He knew of her and she knew of him but it was just a few months back when they started knowing each other. Filling up the blank spaces of the tiny details and that somehow, made it all the more evident that how they could be the puzzle pieces missing from each other's life's jigsaw.

He wouldn't say he wasn't afraid. He was. He always was. He did his best to run away like he always does. But this time running away was exhausting, like he was making himself do something which wasn't aligning with the vast workings of the universe. Like he was doing an injustice to himself and Safwa both.

And at last he stopped running because it was getting too much to bear. Maybe embracing what life was offering him would be a better choice, not a wise one but a better choice nonetheless because he was tired of the games he was playing with his heart and then his mind. He was tired of this constant state of rope pulling.

So he sat down and just let things run their course. Sometimes with disapproval and over the time with a smile on his face.

Love came to him easy but he made it difficult till he realized he didn't have to. It was okay. It was okay to accept and okay to let it pull him further in.

Because if accepting with open arms was going to feel this amazing then he was a fool to noy try it earlier.

How could he run away from something as homely and as striking as Safwa Kirmani was? She broke all his defenses without doing much. And how far he was going to gather the bits and pieces to build those walls back when all she was going to do was break them again.

So for the first time he didn't even try rebuilding the defenses. He just let them stay the pieces they were. Instead he welcomed her into his heart and whatever she came with.

And so far he wasn't regretting it even a bit. He doubted he'd ever will. This was looking like the bigger plan anyway. His small plan of running away died its own death.

Standing on the seashore, looking at her and the eternities she held in that smile of hers, he realized that this was his destruction along with his salvation so why he'd hell bent upon seeing it from the goggles of a man who was here to lose, when this was what he was gaining. The radiant smile of hers which could marvel any star and even galaxies.