Beep. Beep. Beep.
It was my wake-up call. After snoozing the alarm for the third time, I finally woke up. My karma has shown up fast, I was an hour late to my class. I hurriedly got out of the bed, put on my clothes that were lying on the floor and pulled the blanket to wake her up, she was naked. The quiver on her neck travelled down to her rear. She shifted to her side, her left breast hanging, massaging her face with her hand “Why the hell do you want me to get up this early?”
She finally sat on the bed, naked, and stretched her hand for her clothes. Her clothes were lying next to me, but I decided to have little fun and threw them across the room. Now, she must walk butt-naked across the room to get her clothes. “Did you really think I would hesitate to roam naked around you?” she stood and started walking towards the television. “Hey Kara!”, she turned around and I clicked a picture. Kara dropped her clothes and slowly walked towards me, with a cunning look on her face. She put both her hands in my hair and pulled me closer, 'I love you, Faruq.' And gently placed a kiss on my lips.
I woke up and found no one lying next to me, I was all alone in my apartment. I must have dozed off for long as the time was seven in the evening. This is the third time in this week I dreamt the same dream. It seems very real, like I lived in it. It is less like a dream and more like a moment from my past. The hell I would know about my past, I couldn't even remember how I got into that accident I had, three months ago. That accident put me in a month's coma. And only last month I recovered fully and re-joined at work, as an English professor at a local college in my city. Today, was Sunday, I had a day off. So, like every other day, I pushed my thoughts aside, I got into my denim jeans and sweatshirt and went for a walk.
As I was walking, the events in my dream haunted me. Who was she and why does she keep popping up in my mind? Why wasn't I able to see her face? Was she someone I knew from my past? It looks like we were very close. If we were so close, where is she now? I am exaggerating, ain’t I? It might be just a dream. Blinded by these thoughts, my legs pulled me to a new alley where I have never been before, there was a pub on the corner. I went inside, Ed Sheeran's Perfect was playing on the radio.
I sat at the bar and ordered a beer and listening to Ed singing for his perfect girl Well I found a girl beautiful and sweet, I never knew you were the someone waiting for me. I closed my eyes and started to picture the woman in my dream, the more I try to picture, the quicker she slips away from my thoughts. She was there standing in a bright blue Georgette dress with capped sleeves and matching nail paint. She was blonde with a medium cut hair and she left her hair loose. Why couldn’t I see her face? Finally, I gave up and opened my eyes, someone was standing in front of me. She looks worried and I came to know why when she said, “Are you okay? You were making weird noises and faces.”
“Yeah, I am okay. It’s just that something has been bothering me for a month. You see I had an accident and was in a coma for a month and I couldn’t remember anything before that. More like, the past six months before the accident. But deep down I don’t know why I keep thinking that those six months was the only time that mattered me the most”, I laid it off my chest but to a stranger, to whom I didn’t even introduced myself. But she took it well, “Whoa… that’s a bummer. Listen, let me buy you a drink then we can bat about that thing.” She bought the next round and we sat in a booth at the corner of the pub. “Let’s just say you remembered everything and everything around you made sense now. What if what happened is not good and makes you even sadder? You don’t want that, do you?” Maybe or maybe not, but I wanted to know who the woman was in my dream. If she is real, I want to know whether I loved her as much as she loved me. Because no one in this world, not even the devil himself, would deserve this kind of punishment. To see in the eyes of your loved one and to find out they don’t remember you, that bums me out. I wanted to tell this to her, but I couldn’t, something held me back. I thought that would make her sad and I didn’t want to see her sad. But, I didn’t know why. “You are making that face again”, she said, laughing at me. For a minute, I forgot that I have a past. She was making me live in the present and I don’t even know her name. “I am sorry that I never told you my name. I am Faruq and you are?” “I am Karaleigh,” she said that blushingly. Is it me or did she really look beautiful at that moment? “Listen, it was really great talking to you but I am getting late to a party”, she wrote something on the tissue and gave it to me, “This is my number, call me. We will meet some other time. It will be a date.” She left. She has been the missing part of my deluded life for like ten minutes and I miss her already.
I called her the following week and asked her out on a date. It was Sunday again, this time there was no dream about that girl. I was very exuberant to meet Karaleigh and hoped she felt the same. Maybe the fallacy surrounding the love at first sight is not all true. I am in love with her.
We met at my favourite restaurant, ate a fancy meal and had a good talk about our hobbies and other things. At the end of our date I asked, “Would you like come over to my place?” That was the hardest thing I ever did in the past two months. Asking a girl out is different but inviting her to home is a courageous thing, according to me it was. “I would love to”, she agreed. We were walking to my place and she asked, “So, tell me, you are not bothered about your past anymore?” “No, not anymore.” Somehow, I knew this wasn’t the answer she was looking for, because she was silent for the rest of our walk. Finally, we were inside my home. She was hanging her coat, I stood behind her, placed one hand on her back and the other on her hair, moved her hair aside and started kissing her neck. I turned her around but she couldn’t look me in the eyes. Maybe she was shy. I lifted her chin up and looked her in the eye and said, “I love you, Kara. And I really missed you, all these days.” Tears filled her eyes, her lips trembled and finally she smiled, “When did you come to know?” The tears in my eyes made everything look blurry, I quickly wiped them out because I didn’t want her to get out of my sight even for a second. “The night at the bar when you asked me if I was okay, you were in the bright blue dress, the same dress you wore on the day we first met. I fell for you all over again. I had a dream of you, but I couldn’t get your face right. Then I saw you standing before me with a distressing look on your face, no matter how hard you tried to hide it, I pictured you. Then it came back to me.” She was smiling whilst leaking tears, “Then why didn’t you say anything?” “You know how I like to tease you. I wanted you to feel to be loved once more. You deserve it. You went through a terrible trauma and this is the least I could do. I am sorry I have been away from you for so long but I promise I will never let you go”, I held her tightly in my arms and kissed her.
We fall in love with the likes and dislikes, perfections and imperfections, similarities and dissimilarities, best and worst of the person. Love can heal two wounded hearts and make them fall in love again. The love Faruq and Kara shared was impeccable and selfless. They were destined to be together and blessed by the power of Love, which brought them together. Without Kara, Faruq would always find his life to be incomplete and without Faruq, Kara would never find happiness.