Page 14 of First Comes Marriage
Zafar hadn’t taken his eyes off her while she’d been talking as they now stood there silently, regarding each other.
She knew that he wasn’t a bad person. In fact, he was a wonderful man. He just wasn’t the husband she had thought he would be. She had thought – hoped – that they would have a connection which finally made her feel like she had found where she truly belonged. A man who, like he did with everyone else around him, would make her feel special and treasured. Like she mattered to him. But that hadn’t happened.
‘Are you telling me that you don’t want to give us a chance then?’ He sounded uncharacteristically uncertain.
‘I don’t know what I’m telling you. But I know that I’m tired, Zafar.’ She took a shuddering breath as she felt all the suppressed emotions in her chest rise. ‘I’m fed up of being the only one trying in our relationship. All my life, it’s been me trying, wondering what the hell it is I do wrong that drives people away or makes them decide that I’m not worth the effort. I’m done with that. I’d rather have no expectations of people than be let down repeatedly because, believe it or not …’ Reshma closed her eyes as she sucked in another shaky breath, willing the tears threatening the corners of her eyes not to fall. ‘It hurts. A lot.’ Her voice broke at the last bit. She felt emotion well up from deep inside her and took three wobbly steps to the armchair beside the sofa and lowered herself into it.
Despite her effort to stop herself, a tear rolled down her cheek as all her pent-up pain, frustration and unfulfilled desires threatened to pour out through her eyes, leaving her with nowhere to hide except behind her hands.
With no strength left in her to hold it back, she allowed it all to come out. She didn’t know how long she sat there before she sensed Zafar come and kneel down in front of her.
She hated this feeling. This helplessness. The sense of weakness and neediness that she was sure made her look pathetic in front of him.
‘Reshma?’ His voice was low as he gingerly touched her hands, keeping his fingertips there for a moment. He slowly eased her hands away from her face and she let him, having zero energy to do anything else. Her tears, it seemed, hadn’t quite finished as her eyes filled with them once more, barely holding back before they made their inevitable descent.
He squeezed her hands and then let go, surprising her by gently swiping his thumbs across her cheeks as he cupped them in his palms. ‘Don’t cry, Reshma, please. I know I’ve upset you, hurt you, but I swear to God, I have never, ever meant to. Please believe me, hurting you is something I’d never want or do deliberately. But I accept that that is what I’ve done. I’ve been so focused on other aspects of my life that I didn’t stop to embrace or even appreciate the change you had brought into it.’
She dropped her gaze but didn’t push him away and after a moment, he got up and moved away, only to come back, holding a bottle of water out to her. She took the bottle from him and after a few small sips, she reached forward and put it on the low table. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth and, after taking a trembling breath, she got up. ‘I’m going to sleep. I’m tired and … Good night.’
She didn’t look at him, speaking to his shoulder instead, and moved towards the bed, getting in and enveloping herself in the duvet. She didn’t bother switching her bedside lamp off, needing the oblivion of sleep more than anything. Anything to stop the torrent of emotions battering her right now.
7
Zafar
Zafar felt like someone had cleaved his heart in two and the pain of it was enough to make every breath he took difficult. A sense of guilt crushed him worse than any he’d experienced before – and he was well familiar with guilt, this wasn’t the first time he was facing it – because this was all his fault.
The sight of Reshma crying, sobbing her heart out was something he never wanted to see again. Her spiky eye lashes, shiny trails down her cheeks, it had made his heart squeeze painfully, knowing he was the cause of her anguish. Her distress had been palpable and he’d felt helpless in the face of it. He hadn’t known what to do or say to make it stop, to make her feel better. He’d felt more useless then than he ever had before. Each sob had felt like he was being flogged – and flogged he should be for this.
He was grateful that she hadn’t pushed him away when he’d gone to her, but then she seemed just about able to sit upright and the fact that she’d got up and gone straight to bed, curling into herself under the duvet despite it being as warm as it was told him how exhausted she was. Of their situation. Of him.
Never in a million years would he want to be the cause of distress to Reshma, one of the gentlest souls he’d evermet. The whole idea behind not telling her the truth straight up was because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Of course, in hindsight he could see that perhaps that might have been the lesser of the two causes of pain to her. She wouldn’t have broken down like this if he’d come clean in the first place.
Zafar padded towards her bedside and switched the lamp off, looking down at the bundle that was his wife.
His wife.
The woman he’d promised to care for. To cherish. To be with through thick and thin.
He’d done none of those things. He cared for her materially, ensuring she lacked for nothing, but that didn’t make him a good husband. Reshma was an independent woman, more than capable of taking care of herself, she didn’t need him for that. She’d never expected or asked it of him either. He’d done it because he had thought it was the right thing to do. But what about the rest of it?
Zafar moved away from the bed and, opening the patio door, he stepped outside.
He had to acknowledge that he hadn’t been there for Reshma.
So, their marriage had been arranged and they weren’t in love with each other. That didn’t mean he had to distance himself from her altogether. Being arranged didn’t doom a marriage or the people involved in it. Arranged or not, it was still a marriage and it required the same level of effort and commitment and the fact of the matter was that Zafar hadn’t given it enough. Any really.
It was a hard truth to acknowledge and accept, but if he couldn’t be honest with himself right now, then when else would he be?
Heaving a beleaguered sigh, he sat on the balcony chair, which during the day would have a splendid view of theocean. Right now, he could only hear it, catching the briefest shimmer of the water if he kept his eyes on the horizon.
His mind went back to Reshma’s statement about wondering why he’d agreed to marry her in the first place. His life had gone through a series of twists and turns leading up to that point. Twists and turns he’d never envisaged before but which had gone on to shape his thinking into what it had become now.
He hadn’t had any plans to get married at the time, he hadn’t even had a serious girlfriend since he’d come back home after three years away. He’d been focused on doing what he needed to do to take the place his grandfather had wanted him to take. The place he was supposed to have taken, until he had decided he wanted no part of his grandfather’s archaic empire and had tried to forge his own path away from it all, only to come back and agree to take the helm at his grandfather’s and father’s behest.
His match with Reshma had been arranged around that time and with everything looking in favour of the match, persuasive advice from his grandfather and with a lack of prospects of his own to put forward, Zafar had seen no reason to refuse and more reasons to agree to the marriage. Not least because aside from the fact that most of his family had been in agreement and approved wholeheartedly of Reshma, he had too.
She had appealed to him in ways he had never stopped to analyse and using his family’s approval as a springboard, he’d gone ahead with the match. But the truth was, he had liked her and chosen to marry her of his own free will. Had his family’s approval contributed to his decision? Yes, it had, but the final decision had been his. At least he’d had more of a say in the matter than his cousin Safiya had when it had been her turn.
