Before Time (The Time Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

Impassioned:
Take care.

ME:
You too; take care and sleep tight.

Impassioned:
*kisses in the middle of your forehead as a mark of respect, you too.*

And then he left. I lingered for some time, flipping through channels, but it was all so boring. I left my computer on standby and went upstairs to watch the television.

When I returned around eight, he had left me a message.

Impassioned:
I think that your popularity graph and fan following has increased so much that people are mixing up you with me.

He pasted me messages from a person, who was kind of an enemy to me, and who was asking him if he, Impassioned, was me. Weirdo!

ME:
Hahahaha! He hates me!

But he had already quit.

Chapter 8

It was colder than yesterday, and I felt like my fingers would freeze and drop off my hand. I sat closer to the heater and pulled my shawl tightly around myself. Aliza grinned at me as she passed me to go to the kitchen. My reaction to cold amused her and the rest of my family. They were used to the way I curled up near the heater and continued whining about the freezing weather. I hated winters, and now more so, because I felt colder than anyone else in the house. I used to wear three layers of clothing. I couldn’t help being like that; perhaps my blood had turned cold.

I sneezed, then stood up to bring my laptop upstairs from my room. I wanted to check my email, but I had a more important reason to fetch it. I wanted to check whether he was online or not. A ghost of a smile crossed my face as I thought of him. He was considerate, understanding, and a good listener, and I was slowly growing closer to him. He always had solutions for my problems, and if he didn’t stop it, I would never learn how to solve my own problems.

I picked up the laptop from my bed and came back upstairs. After checking my email, I tuned in my favorite song,
All for Love,
by my favorite singer, Bryan Adams. It was my dream to attend one of his concerts. So far, that hadn’t happened yet, because I was born in the wrong era...at least I could sing along with the lyrics.

I sighed deeply. Authors describe love as a beautiful emotion, but why was it that I had never been able to feel it until now? It was like I couldn’t relate the songs to any feeling that I could call love. What was love? I guess I would never understand. Maybe it was only a feeling about which poets wrote; it was a figment of their imagination and that’s it. I had seen people in love, but I could never relate to it. Why? Maybe there was a mental issue. This thought confused me. Was I incapable of loving anyone? I loved my parents and siblings, but we had a rather different relationship. I never felt the need for anyone, the need to talk to them, to listen to them. Addiction was different, and people get addicted to each other. I did too, but did true love even exist?

I believed love to be an overrated emotion. In this time and age, when technology was being advanced day after day, who had the time to fall in love and spend hours writing corny love letters to their lovers? Nobody had the time
and
the inclination to waste their energy on such foolhardy notions, but they did want someone to care for them. Perhaps, love was care, affection and sex all merged together; I was not sure. At twenty, I wasn’t really sure what love was.

I smiled to myself. Perhaps there would be a day when I would understand love and answer all these questions.

As was usual, when I logged in to mIRC, he was already online. I couldn’t fail to notice that he had been online at night for quite a few days. I decided to ask him the reason.

ME:
There?

Impassioned:
Yes?

ME:
You’re online here at night. All okay?

I was under the impression that he didn’t switch on his laptop at home and refrained from going near technology. He preferred to relax at home rather than come online at night; that’s what he had told me.

Impassioned:
I am just working on some reports, as it’s the end of the year. In January, we have our appraisals, so I’m preparing reports for that.

ME:
Oh! I see!

Impassioned:
Well, you see, I have spent many years in this job. Now that this is my career, I have to attain perfection in it. After all, everybody needs a promotion.

ME:
I am sure you’ll get it.

Impassioned:
Everyone has their own addiction, like, every person is running after his or her own addictions. For example, some like love, some like sex, some are addicted to drugs. Therefore, everyone receives satisfaction according to their addictions. In my case, I am addicted to gaining corporate excellence.

ME:
It happens. I am sure you will be all better when you find your “right one”.

Impassioned:
There is no such thing as the “right one”. That person is under tons of soil at the moment and took everything away from me. Now, all that I have left is to live for my parents and gain corporate excellence.

ME:
I’m so sorry to hear that.

Impassioned:
I don’t want to reopen my wounds, because people believe that it’s a lie or they think it’s an excuse to gain sympathy. What they don’t know is that behind every hard, cold and cynical man, there are many secrets, which cannot be shared with everyone.

ME:
I agree, but those who are cold, hard and cynical, actually have a very soft and warm heart.

Impassioned:
I’m heartless, to be honest.

ME:
I can’t believe such a thing.

Impassioned:
I am a different kind of loser, who lost everything before he gained it. You have to believe it, as it’s me who’s saying all this.

ME:
Tell me about it.

Impassioned:
You want to trade secrets because you told me yours?

Ouch! That hurt. I had no such intentions, and look at him. He was so rude and blunt.

ME:
I just want to share in order to lighten your burden. I guess it will make you feel good afterwards.

Impassioned:
I don’t want to lighten this burden. You might’ve trusted me with this burden because you thought I would take it. I might not trust you back equally.

Now, that was really rude. I didn’t know he would overreact like that, and, well, I really didn’t like the way he behaved. Everyone has hurt and pain in their life, but to be so poisonous about it was cruel. If he didn’t want to tell, I wasn’t forcing him at gunpoint. It was his own choice.

ME:
Alright! That’s fine.

Impassioned:
I’m just being realistic.

ME:
Yeah! I’m cool. :)

I closed his private stream and did not message him again. What did he think, that I would go around telling people his secrets? Did he think that I was naive? I trusted him with my secrets because I felt comfortable talking to him and I believed that he would die before telling anyone else about me. He’d misjudged me so much, I couldn’t believe it. He made me wonder whether what we had talked about was a farce as well. Was he the same person whom I looked forward to talking with every day? He had simply disappointed me. I wasn’t even worthy enough to share his burden. After all, he was the one who said that it was time one of us trusted each other. So, he didn’t trust me. Big deal! He could go ahead and do whatever he wished to; I couldn’t care less, and I didn’t want to know about him.

It was almost four in the morning, and I was planning to shut down my laptop and go to bed. I yawned loudly and played another song that caught my attention on YouTube. My mIRC icon blinked just then, indicating that somebody had messaged me in my private stream. I switched the window to mIRC.

Impassioned:
Do you have a little time?

I was still angry at him.

ME:
Yeah.

Impassioned:
You won’t type a single message until I write “the end”, okay?

ME:
Okay.

Impassioned:
It was 2006 and I was twenty-two years old, freshly graduated from a British university and recently returned to Pakistan. I was arrogant back then because of my education, and believed that I was more qualified than other individuals. I had recently joined Mobilink as the customer service supervisor in the Multan branch. It was the second day of July. I received a message from the front desk that a customer wanted to speak with the supervisor regarding a complaint. I asked the receptionist to send the customer upstairs to my office. They told me that the customer refused to come up to my office and that I had to come down to the front desk.

When I stepped in the lobby, I saw her. She was gorgeous, with long straight hair, reaching almost her waist, and she was extremely fair, with bright, shiny eyes. She was wearing heels, but I could tell she wouldn’t be taller than 5 feet 8 inches. It was then I noticed her doctor’s scrubs. I approached her and tried to listen to her with patience. She wasn’t really impressed with my British accent; actually, she was focused on a very logical complaint. Anyways, I solved her issue and she left. The next day, I went to a shopping mall, and when I was leaving, I saw her. We greeted each other with a smile.

I already knew how egotistical she was, and assumed she wouldn’t talk to me, but she spoke casually. I inquired whether her issue had been solved. She told me that I should ignore and forget the way she reacted in the office and that we should talk about something else. We sat there for some time. That day, I found out that she was a first-year medical student in a reputable medical college, but she had her roots in Lahore. It was just a casual conversation, but we did exchange phone numbers.

The next day, there was some kind of party in her college. She invited me, so I went. She introduced me to all of her friends; it was just like a start of a casual friendship. She was a topper and the vice president of student association in her college. Indeed, she was a mixture of brains, logic, reason, wisdom, and beauty. There was something about her that I’ve never seen before; she was simple and humble, but she never was fully honest with everyone. After spending time with her, I found out that she was only nineteen. So young but still mature, yet so bold. She would always go with the truth, regardless of the fact that she got hurt. She would fight for the rights of other people.

Would you imagine that after I invited her for a dinner in Holiday Inn, Multan, which is a five-star hotel, she dragged me to one of the cheap hotels where the food was more delicious than Holiday Inn? Our story was like that Bollywood movie in “Jab we met (When we met)”; she was like the heroine and I was like the silent, sophisticated, very official guy. On the fifth day, we met twice. First, in the morning when I went to park, and later, at her university. She also used to teach high school students for some extra income; she didn’t like burdening her parents.

She always used to say that she was a normal girl, but I always found her extraordinary. Once she was teaching her students, and I was there in her class as well. All the students called her ‘sister’ with respect. When I called her name, everyone turned to me and asked me to call her sister as well. My face turned bright red, just like tomatoes. Everyone started laughing, and she did as well, but she understood my reaction. She was a good badminton player. She was a happy-go-lucky girl without any problems in her life; she was a full package.