It's Not That Bad; Chapter 2 Preview

“I just, I don't know Badr. Because I felt like…I feel like you're mine.” 

He stopped laughing, but kept smiling. “You feel like I'm yours?” 

Embarrassment curdled the blood in my veins. When he said it back to me, I realized how absurd it sounded. 

“I- I didn't mean it like that. I just I meant that-”

He cut me off “you meant that you feel like I'm yours.” 

When he said it that time, his smile was gone, replaced by something serious. He took my hand, pulled me off of the tree, and into his chest. I breathed in his cologne, the same cologne he'd always worn. It intoxicated me. The depth of the oud intertwined with vanilla and tobacco felt like one of the many fall nights we’d spent at jazz clubs together. 

I was too drunk to speak, I nodded. 

“No, Salima. I need to hear it from you. You can't just nod.” He whispered. 

There was a desparation in his voice that I'd never heard before. I could feel the hurt I’d once brought him like  it had never really left, but instead stayed dormant for all these years. Like it had been waiting for a chance to come out and hold me accountable for every cutting word I'd ever thrown in his direction. I was so overwhelmed. Minutes earlier he and I were arguing, disgruntled by forced proximity to each other. How was it that now, we were tangled in each other and continuing a conversation we’d sprinted away from years ago? 

“Badr…this doesn't.” 

“Salima.” He paused. 

He looked at me for a long while before closing his eyes and running his hand through his hair. When he opened his eyes, they held an emotion I had never seen in him before. His eyes were wet, as though tears were just about to fall from them, but he’d fought them back. They shook, ever so slightly, as though they didn't want to see me, but he was forcing them to. He was- 

“Please don't do this to me again” he whispered as placed his head in my neck. 

I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I had never seen him or any man in such a state. I've bragged, and bragged, and bragged about how men pine after me, I know they do. I'd, however, never seen the pining in person before that moment. I couldn't believe that I was witnessing Badr yearning. His yearning made me feel electric. I felt so powerful. He could do anything to me. He is stronger than me, I am truthfully helpless should he choose to exact his will on me. But he didn't. He fought back his urges, he humbled himself, and he made himself captive to me. His feelings for me reduced him to begging me for an answer. I pitied him. Swallowing my pride and gathering my courage, I combed my fingers through his inky black waves, cupped his face with my hands, tilted his head up, and said. 

“Yes, Badr. I feel like you’re mine. Do you?” 

“Do you feel like you're mine?” He countered. 

I frowned. I hadn't thought of that. Do I feel like I'm his? I wondered what that meant to him. I felt that he was mine because…well, because despite the years and space, I could still feel his presence. He'd never stopped haunting my dreams, he'd haunted my waking hours by appearing to me in the strangest places, and he'd never let me stop feeling for him. I am my own to control, so, I transformed those feelings into resentment. What else was I to do? Allow them to be love for a man who so flippantly walked away from me? I could never do that. I am no fool. Since I am no fool, I understand that my will is not as powerful a force as the divine. I always knew my feelings for him were different and unbreakable. That he had been mine for many lifetimes. I just decided that we wouldn't be together this go around.