Page 44 of Writing Mr. Right

“Well, because it’s a romance, I think I should use a romance-focused one,” I say. “I want to be sure I’m hitting all the right plot beats. I have an outline I used for my last romance, and I liked it a lot.”

I pull it up on my computer to show Aashiq, and he sets his bottle of chocolate on my side table before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sidling up to me. He leans over my shoulder to peer at the screen. A faint hint of lavender and leather clings to his neck, the smell drifting toward me. A wave of relaxation rolls over my shoulders. It’s become such a comforting smell I instinctively lean into it, which puts me in closer proximity to his skin. I abruptly turn my face and cover my cheeks with my hands to cool them down.

“This all sounds great!” Aashiq exclaims, and I jolt in my seat before staring up at him. He straightens, then suddenly gets down on his hands and knees on the floor.

I wait for an explanation, but as I watch him grab my favorite cardigan—thick white cotton with gray stars stitched along the elbows—from its spot underneath my bed and then stand and head for the door, I raise a brow. “Where are you going?”

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Weare going for a walk,” Aashiq decrees.

I wrinkle my nose but get up anyway. “Why is everything about exercise with you?”

“Come on,” he pouts. “Fresh air is good for creative juices.”

“You think everything is good for creative juices,” I point out.

“That’s because you can find creativity anywhere you go!” He shakes the cardigan in his hands. “Now, let’s go.”

I roll my eyes but hold my hand out. To my surprise, instead of giving it to me, Aashiq weaves the sleeve over my arm. Instinctively, I raise my other arm and shrug it through the armhole, and Aashiq pulls it up until the fabric settles against myback. The ends of my hair get stuck between my shirt and the cardigan, so I raise my hand to pull it out. Before I can, though, Aashiq does it for me; his fingers delicately gather the strands and brush them all the way to the side. His warm breath tickles my neck, but that tickle quickly shifts into a shiver rushing down my spine all the way to the tips of my toes.

I wait for Aashiq to step away, or to drop his hand. I need him to be the one to move first, because my muscles have betrayed me and frozen the blood in my veins. No matter how much I yell at my useless limbs, they stay firmly in place.

Just when I finally think he’s going to step back, the pads of his fingers lightly skim the place where my shirt meets my neck. Goose bumps burst all over me, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I swallow thickly, but the bulge in my throat doesn’t soften.

Finally,finally, Aashiq backs away. With his presence no longer behind me, my lungs contract normally again, and I subtly suck in a deep breath. I also regain control of my body, and I discreetly yank my cardigan all the way up so the material properly covers my neck.

I wait a second for my face to return to a normal temperature, then turn to Aashiq. He doesn’t quite make eye contact with me, but he doesn’t let that ruin his cheery demeanor as he wraps his hand around my doorknob.

* * *

I carefully drink in my surroundings as we walk. It’s way past Maghrib, so a stretch of black sky has replaced the bursts of orange and pink of the sunset. The dark street is lit only by dim lamps, a couple of which flicker as we pass under them. It’s a slightly warmer winter evening, but a breeze cuts the top of my ears every now and then, and suddenly I regret not bringing a hat. Other than the occasional uptick in the wind, though, it’s not too cold out. Thankfully, the cardigan is thick and I’m wearing a thermal shirt, so my body is mostly warm.I bury my hands deep in my pockets. “I’m not sure how safe it is to roam the streets at night,” I say.

“It’s okay,” Aashiq assures me with an easy air, like always. “I’m with you. It’s safe.”

I cock a brow. “And how exactly are you going to keep me safe?”

“As your writing muse, I can take any shape or form. I can do anything,” he explains as he swings his hands freely at his sides. It’s funny—Aashiq is way more bundled up than I am. He’s in a light blue long-sleeved shirt paired with jeans, a thick black coat buttoned all the way to the top, and a knitted hat. It’s weird, when he first emerged into the real world, it was like the weather rarely bothered him. But now, he says he doesn’t like the cold, and is trying his absolute best to stay warm. “Because of the unlimited power of the place in your mind where your creativity lives, I can be anything you need me to be.”

So, I just happened to need him to appear as a superhot guy? My brain is a funny place. “So, if I need you to morph into Godzilla, you can do that?”

“Oh, definitely,” he says. Then he scrunches up his face. “But please don’t ask me to. That shade of green does not suit me.”

A chuckle bursts from my chest, but I quickly school my features.Get down to business, Ziya.“Okay, so for this next book, where do we start?”

Aashiq makes what I’ve dubbed his “concentration face”: brows knotted together, mouth pursed, and nostrils flared. “What about names?” he suggests. “What do you want the main character’s name to be?”

“Ohh, that’s a tough one,” I say. “Usually, I scroll baby name websites until I find one I like. But most of the time it’s extra hard, because I’m picking Pakistani names, and you have no idea how difficult it is for me to find a girl name that isn’t the name of one of my relatives.”

“How about I start listing some names, and you can choose one?” he offers.

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Aashiq pauses for a moment, then says, “Tasneem.”

“No. That’s my sister’s name, remember?”

“Oh, right.” He hums. “Fatima?”

“No. Aunt’s name.”

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