Besabriyan

6|SIX

Maheen growled into her coffee mug in utter pleasure- feeling the bitter drink warm her throat as it made its way down her food pipe. She had gone out of her way by sitting in the university cafeteria with the man who had come for seminar sessions but then her life had been provoking her of late with things she had never even dreamt of. She was utterly thankful to have the cafeteria empty since it was class hours and the students would be busy in their classes or bunking it somewhere else. A handful of students that she spotted weren't from the business department and they didn't seem to know Zaviyar so she could lay back without any trouble waiting to bug her.

She knew how the students were. She knew how they perceived her for bumping into him. She knew how they hushed each other whenever she was inside their vision. She lifted her gaze to steal a glimpse at the man only to find him engrossed in his phone that vibrated every other second. To say she drank his details would be an understatement, she had noticed how his dark brown eyes shone prominently under the evening sun the first time they met. Zaviyar was an enigma that she wanted to solve but it wasn't in her to do it. He was engaged to some other woman after all.

She almost mistook the disappointment for ache the minute she learnt about Noorul Ain. The disappointment was so heavy that she felt like drowning and perhaps for the first time she understood the suffering she wrote upon the fate of her characters. Authors are indeed very dangerous- someone had added to one of the reviews of her first book and she had chuckled at it. Even though her characters developed as the book progressed, they were still sadists who laughed at others' pain just because they weren't able to come out of it. She remembered dumping all her agony on her characters to finally feel light and how she did.

"Shouldn't you be in the seminar hall?" Gulping the last drop of coffee that lingered in the back of her mouth, she asked and gathered all his undivided attention to herself.

He blinked, catching on her words and looking at his watch. He shook his head, "Not before two." He sighed and went back to work on his phone, leaving Maheen to wonder on her own.

She always wondered about businessmen's obsession with their phones. Her father was the same. Although they hardly met twice a year, her father would busy himself on his phone for at least fifteen minutes but her father was not a businessman- Kamran was indeed well off but his family was nothing close to what Ali Dawar family had been all these years. And for a second, she wished him to be different. She wished him to spend time with her- to talk to her, to laugh with her even if it sounded absurd. But before she indulged herself more into it, reality cut in and she clamped her eyes shut. The moments- these moments with him were only ephemeral and not meant to last forever. So what if he felt the same as her, some things simply weren't written together.

"It's not even half past twelve, why are you here so early?" An abrupt question. It made him put his phone down and look at her. A smile fighting its way to break out.

"I wanted to see you,"

And the fact that he wasn't attempting to hide it. Maheen almost choked on her drink but there was nothing expect a smile on his face. When he smiled, his forehead birthed creases, his eyes shrunk and a smile lines formed on either side of his face. She had caught glimpses of him at nights after that night. She had seen him five more times and he wore five different shawl each time. The restlessness that she saw on his face at nights left no marks on it in the morning and the live evidence was sitting just beside her- now looking at intently as though she held a key to his secret.

"Why?" A woman who was well versed and eloquent with words was having troubles to find one so she asked what came to her mind instead.

"You see it more than anyone ever can, Mahi, so no don't ask me why." And something in her moved. His tone so warm that she felt something in her melt. He said it as if it was nothing. He said it as if she was a nobody. He said it as if he hadn't just almost confessed.