When your hands leap

Towards mine, love,

Why do they bring me in flight?

Why did they stop

At my lips, so suddenly,

Why do I know them,

As if once before,

I have touched them,

As if, before being,

They travelled

My forehead, my waist?

"I don't have a plan."

She was sitting beside him on the pavement in front of the garage shop, munching silently on the bag of crisp in her hand. It was the first time that she had spoken to him in over 8 hours and as she picked listlessly at her crisp, only then did she realise that she had just shot herself in the foot. "I have about R4000 in my account and that's it. I have nothing."

She began twisting the empty bag in her hands, crinkling the silver and yellow foil package before straightening it out again. "I don't know what I'm going to do." She could feel her knees bouncing madly the more she thought about it. It seemed so simple just a few hours ago. She would run away with him and be away from her brother but she had forgotten that she wasn't living a fairy tale. Real life was far, far different than books. She had no money, no degree, no job, no family she could count on where she was going. She had nothing except R4000.

And how would they leave her?

Her mother would make sure they found her. If anyone ever found out that her daughter ran away because her son was raping her- that would mean the end of her career as a judge. She would never leave Tasneem to go talking to anyone.

And her brother- Her brother was poison to her mother. He infected her mind like a snake, whispering and coaxing her into doing as he said. He was Death to her own decisions and it scared Tasneem to think of what he would make her mother do. "They're going to find me."

"Who?"

"My mother and my brother." She admitted, finally looking at him. His face was shadowed underneath the dim lights surrounding them. She still couldn't believe she was here with him. She was going to Cape Town with a boy she hadn't seen in over four years and she actually thought things would work out for her. "I need to go back."

"Why?" He looked down at her, crooking his eyebrow as he took in her state. She kept on twisting that silly little packet between her finger and her knees kept shaking and knocking against each other and in that second, she looked exactly as his mother looked so many times before. She would second guess herself and the idea of doing anything on her own accord terrified her too much into actually going through with it.

"They'll find me and they'll take me back and I don't..." She buried her face in her hands. She didn't want to imagine what her brother would do to her if he took her back. He must have been so angry with her already and when he was angry he made sure she knew that he owned her and she couldn't go through it again. It hurt too much- physically and emotionally- to go through it again. "I have nothing Riaz!"

She finally realised it.

She had nothing. What the hell was she supposed to do? Where was she supposed to live? Where was she going to go?

"You can..." He bit the corner of his lip as he deliberated her words. What was he thinking letting her come with him when they really did have no plan? He had no actual money to help her- He was completing his internship and though they offered him a housing package, he wasn't allowed to have anyone else live with him.

"What were we thinking?" She sounded so sad as she spoke to him. Once again, hope really was too far away from her. She would never reach it. It was an unattainable dream that had once again escaped her grasp.

"We can..."

Could he really do it?

It was ridiculous wasn't it?

But as he looked at her, he realised why he had sent her that first letter. She looked too much like his mother that day in school. Her eyes were dead and empty and for the first time in his life, he knew that he could help someone. He was too small and too insignificant and too late to save his mother but he could help her. And maybe if he helped her, maybe he could help himself.

And as he looked at her, rocking back and forth on the cold pavement, he knew that he couldn't let her become Claire. Tasneem had a great, beautiful life ahead of her. She couldn't be crushed- Not like his mother was crushed so often under the foot of his father.

And maybe, just maybe, he was being a little selfish too.

Maybe he didn't want her to leave. Maybe he needed her in his life just a little more than he would ever let on. Maybe his heart needed her heart and his soul needed her soul and maybe the thought of her taking a bus back to Bloemfontein was killing him. It felt as if she had ripped out a shard of glass from his skin when she said those words to him. He was selfish and he didn't want her to leave not for her- but for him too.

Because he was at peace when she was with him and peace had been something he had been chasing for the past 4 years. He wasn't about to let it go, not now when she was so close.

"Marry me."

Their smoothness came

Winging through time,

Over the sea and the smoke,

Over the Spring,

And when you laid

Your hands in my chest

I knew those wings

Of the gold doves,

I knew that clay,

And that colour of grain.

The years of my life

Have been roadways of searching,

A climbing of stairs,

A crossing of reefs.

She had finally drifted off to sleep. Sleep had been rare for her- ever since she had begged Riaz to leave her alone, she had lost the calmness of the night that had lulled her to sleep. He was still her calmness but she had wrenched herself away from him and she had no one else to blame except herself. She had read and reread his letters after her brother left her room, remembering that at one point in her life, she was happy. She knew what happiness was and revelled in those memories. She drowned herself in the memories of feeling the lightness of her heart, and imagining what it would be like to be near him again and what it might have been like had she never stopped him that day under the tree. If she had let him kiss her as she wanted him too.

She wondered what he would have felt like. What his lips would have felt like atop her own or what his skin would have felt like as she held onto him.

She had nothing except memories of feeling happy and she fell asleep clenching those memories to her heart and as sleep slowly claimed her, her heart slowly loosened its hold on her memories letting them fly as butterflies through her dreams. And as she lost her mind to her subconscious sleep- one of those memories followed her and opened up its wings to show itself to her and what it could be.

She knew she was dreaming, that much was clear, but even in her dream she knew it had been a very long time since she had dreamt of him again.

He was right before her- tall and strong and handsome- dressed in a pair of jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt holding his hand out for her to grab onto. She reached forward barely grazing his wrists with her fingertips before he took hold of her hand, tucking it safely between his. She looked up at him, praying that love and adoration in his eyes were real as he looked down at her and pulled her to stand closer to him. If this was a dream, she wanted to never wake up and have the sunlight touch her face.

This was all she ever wanted. She wanted him, looking at her as he did as he traced the soft skin beneath her lips. She smiled at him, waiting for him to kiss her but he only shook his head. If he was to kiss her, it wouldn't be in her dreams. It would be in real life, where he could kiss her and taste her lips and touch her and hold onto her, memorising every curve of her body and every freckle on her face.

He leaned forward, brushing a simple kiss to her forehead before he leaned back...

And just like that, sunlight washed over her face forcing her to evade her dreams and open her eyes to her real world.

"You want to marry me?" She looked up at him, unsure if she had heard him correctly.

"Yes." And the more he thought about it, the more he was certain he never wanted to let her go. He never wanted her to give him the choice of leaving her.

"Why?" She shook her head. "I have nothing to give you. I can't...." She looked down, forcing herself to breath. "I can't give you what you want."

Her body was broken. She wanted so badly to be with him. She was sure if ever she had to be with someone fully and truly- it would be him. She would want nothing other than his hands to tease her spine or lose itself in her thick brown hair. She would want no one else to kiss her and undress her- but her body couldn't do that anymore. She was.... infected by him and nothing Riaz did would ever make her feel clean and safe and whole again. She was just...

She was dirty. Her legs were dirty, her thighs were dirty, her stomach was dirty, her breasts were dirty. He had dirtied her with his hands and his mouth and his actions. He had bruised her and bit her and nothing would make her feel clean again.

"What do I want?"

"You want..." She almost jerked at the word. It hurt her to say it to him because she knew that if she said it, he would know everything. He would know that she couldn't do it because her body was exhausted with it. Her brother had taken away so much from her- he had claimed bits of her soul and her heart and her body but the worst had been her dreams of loving Riaz in every way possible. "You want sex."

His ears strained to hear the words that had been forced out of her.

Did he?

Of course he did. He wanted to touch her and taste her and hold her. He wanted to feel the softness of her stomach and caress the skin of her heavy thighs. He wanted to kiss her till she was breathless and he wanted to see her brown, tanned, beautiful skin against him but he also wanted her. Just her- not her body.

Her.

He wanted his little bee and he prayed she would help him find her again.

"I want peace Tasneem," he said quietly, knowing she could hear him. "And you give me peace."

"We have nothing Riaz," she said, once again,"we need to be practical. We can't get married."

"I have a job and they're giving me a flat. It's not big but if we could do it together, I think we should come out okay." He tried calculating his monthly income with the cost of his monthly food and water expenses.

"I never finished my course," she admitted, hating the bitterness in her voice as she spoke the words. "I could never focus enough on the food in front of me."

"You could get a job packing groceries at Shoprite."

Tasneem laughed at the suggestion and only as she laughed did she realise she was actually crying. "I'm scared, Riaz." She said through the thickness of her voice. "I don't want to be scared of you but I'm scared of what you'll ask of me."

"I'll never, ever touch you unless you ask me to."

She looked at him- just looked at him- trying to understand the garbled messages from her heart.

"Will you hold my hand?" She asked, turning her palm upwards as she rested it on her knee.

As soon as she felt the pad of his fingers against her, it was as if the missing words to the messages had been filled in....

The years of my life

Have been roadways of searching,

A climbing of stairs,

A crossing of reefs.

Trains hurled me onwards

Water recalled me,

Until both your hands

Closed on my chest,

Like a pair of wings,

Ending their flight.

"Ask me one more time?" She looked up at him, smiling as she took in his green eyes beneath his glasses.

"Marry me?"

She squeezed his hand beneath hers- he was still real.

Yes.

A/N The poem used in this chapter is called Your Hands by Pablo Neruda.