Zemira

By the time we raced towards Leo's apartment door, Amara swung it open.

It was a welcoming sight to see Romeo jumping on his feet and thrashing his tail on the couch. He howled upon seeing Leo.

Leo ran to him, dropping the bag of food on the glass table. He nuzzled his head into the thick fur on the dog's neck, whispering something.

Romeo's excitement saw no bounds.

He hopped off the couch and stood on his hind legs, trying his best to embrace me. He then ran circles around the couch, sniffing Leo, barking at me, licking Leo's hand, and nibbling at my knee before doing it all over again.

"Buddy, you need to calm down." Leo pointed a finger up, wagging a no.

The dog adhered instantly, drooling, panting.

Then, as he did always, he broke command and hopped over to the bag on the table which had our date-night food.

"Stop it." Leo's instructions fell on Romeo's deaf ear.

Amara and I couldn't help but laugh as we watched Leo struggle to grab the creme-colored tote bag out of the vicious hold of his pet's jaw.

"Romeo. Drop it."

Nothing.

Leo struggled, tugging the bag to his side while the dog pulled on the opposite.

"I'm telling you Rome, you're going to lose your teeth. Then you'll be put on a water diet. I swear."

As if Romeo understood Leo's intentions, the wide black of his irises dilating further when he unclasped his jaw, tilting his head.

With a soft woof, Romeo dropped the bag and leaned on the grey carpet, head resting on his paws.

"Good boy..." Leo tried leaning but arrested his steps at the last moment.

His left leg trembled like a dead leaf in autumn. Steadying his arm on the transparent coffee table, he leaned back.

Romeo must have understood his master's apprehension. He crawled over the carpet, head dipped lower than usual, till he reached Leo's feet.

"Very good boy..." Leo panted. "Let's get you some medicines."

Holding the back of the couch, Leo stood up.

My eyes remained trained on his left leg, having observed a certain drag to it for the first time.

"He's going to make such a good dad," Amara addressed Leo and Romeo's retreating figure, a smile drawn across her face. "He loves Romeo like his son."

I smiled but my insides felt rotten.

Amara was Leo's friend who helped him through his struggling period. Some part of me felt a pang of jealousy, knowing she knew him better.

She witnessed his suffering. She was there to hold him in the middle of the night.

Did something happen between them?

Just as doubts encircled my mind, the predatory instinct to protect what was mine rose from the back of my body.

"How long have you been friends?" I asked, turning to Amara. "With Leo?"

She had pretty, brown eyes, hazel-colored skin and a soft mole on the left side of her upper lip that made her look a lot like Cindy Crawford.

It added fuel to my insecurities.

Leo was vulnerable. She was a beauty to be adored.

Would they have...

"Not long." Amara's voice had a certain softness. "I got to know him better only after we brought him back to the country. And since I'd seen him wounded, almost to the point of death, I decided that some things in life need priority. So I left the service and come back to my son..."

I wanted to ask more - about Leo and what he underwent - but decided to remain quiet. It wasn't Amara's story to tell, neither was it my right to ask.

It was Leo's wound which he kept under wraps.

Though every day that I saw him, I wanted to rip that perfect-fitting shirt of his and take him under me - that part was subdued because it also reminded me of what he asked of me.

Time

God. How much more time!

"Zem." Amara walked to the kitchen, dug something from her bag - a legal pad - and walked back. "I'd recommended Leo for some therapies but he's a stubborn one... Never listens to what I have to say." She smiled at the ajar door where Leo and Romeo went. "But he's a gem when it comes to anything else. Even for my son, he's done so much..."

Why?

I gulped down the residual sourness that coated the back of my throat. Jealously wasn't a good shade on me, especially not when I wasn't aware of Leo and Amara's equation.

"Can you talk to him?" she asked, "...about the therapy. He won't listen to me. Gosh... Of all my brothers, he's the worst I've had."

My back straightened. Brother.

My eyes widened not with surprise but with guilt. Having misjudged their relationship, I felt a heaviness over my shoulders. My hands moved ahead but were arrested at the thought of touching a stranger without her consent.

Amara didn't resist, taking my hand into hers, and patting my knuckles.

"Leo's lucky to have you, Zemira. I swear, if I'd known he'd smile again after meeting with you, I'd have forced him into a car and driven him to meet with you." A brief pause made me smile. "You both are really lucky."

Amara scribbled some therapies she wanted to suggest for Leo that I slid into my handbag.

Arms encasing me, she pressed her body over mine, patting my head.

She must have been my age, probably a few more years older or close to Leo's age, but the way she patted my head reminded me of my mother.

I embraced her, smiling into her shoulder. "It's really nice to meet you, Amara..."

"Well, friends call me Ama. I don't expect any less from you."

While I'd been contemplating Amara's relationship with Leo and how it made me feel, Amara, uncaring of anything, paved her way into my heart.

"Ama it is then..."

"Good." She smiled. "I thought I'd have to put up another fight like I had with Leo when we returned. I'm a good friend, you know."

"I'm sure you are. And I'm thankful to you for what you've done for him."

Her lips pursed. Her head nodded.

People said little gestures spoke volumes. The way she spoke about Leo, a tinge of concern dipping her voice made me realise there were still things I needed to learn about him.

She knew he needed time to recover. And time to realize I'd accept him no matter what.

More than that, Leo needed Amara in this new city like that one friend we all had who would have our backs no matter what.

That one friend, whom we could rely upon and know from the bottom of our hearts, they'd fight the world for us.

Like Kiera is for me, Amara turned out to be that friend for Leo.

After brief conversations that passed with Amara telling me about her son, and how she needed to get back to him, she checked her watch and bid adieu, hollering to Leo - to be good to me - as she closed the door behind her.

I chucked at her words, standing in the now-empty hall and wondering what to do next.

By the time I unwrapped the food boxes, the spaghetti had cooked further inside the container, and the sauce formed a skin over it. What remained of tiramisu was a gooey mass with crumbled amoretti base.

The date I wanted - an intimate dinner for Leo and me at my place - was now going to be an eat-it-before-it-cools-down-contest, at his place.

Yet, I never had a better date than this.

One, where we flung strands of overcooked spaghetti on each other's faces, reenacted the lady and the tramp scene before we drank our dessert in a cup and challenged each other to a brain-freeze competition.

Leo won. Obviously.

He had the tolerance of a rock.

We sat on the couch, my head leaning over his shoulder and his arm curled around my back. We kept listening to the background noises of the city, streaming through the small gaps in the window.

Leo ran his thumb over my knuckles, occasionally kissing it and sighing.

Oh, that soft sigh warmed my heart.

After an hour or so, we walked back to the small room adjacent to Leo's, to check on Romeo.

The fluffy boy was resting with all four paws rendered up in the air.

It was funny, watching him see in a weird, twisted sleeping state.

"He's stupid to sleep with his underbelly exposed," Leo ran his arm over my shoulder, aligning his chin over it. We watched in silence, the snoring beauty before walking into Leo's bedroom. "Every time I see Rome sleeping, I want to bite his little paws." He ran a hand into his hair. "You must think I'm crazy, right."

"Yes, but you're my crazy."

Leo tipped my chin up, warming my face with his minty exhales.

A tinge of residual cigarette stench lingered on the tip of his fingers when the pad of his thumb ran over my lower lip, separating them.

My fingers dipped into the bridge of his shirt, carefully unbuttoning it.

Eyes trained on me, Leo's breaths grew heavier, his grip over my shoulders tightening.

"No...Please..." he said, an airy prayer to what he had asked before.

My head tipped up but I didn't speak. I was hoping he'd understand that whatever he underwent, I wanted to be a part of it.

When the last of his button lent way for me to see his glorious chest, the ridges of his abs and the soft 'v' that dipped into the waistline of his pant, Leo arrested my hand from peeling his attire.

"You'd not like what you see..." There was a certain edge to his voice.

I braced myself for what was to come- to see what he assumed was an imperfection.

"Let me see," I whispered, moving him towards the bed. "Please don't push me away."

We stood near the edge of the bed, the fluorescent lamp on the bedside creating a soft halo around him.

What could have happened to Leo?

After careful consideration, I peeled off the shirt from his back. It slid off his arms and arrested around his elbow.

"Show me what you underwent," I said. "I want to be a part of it too."

"You'd not like what you'd see, love. My body...it's not the same anymore."

My wrist moved up for him to see.

I was revealing the worst I had undergone.

The cut I'd inflicted to end my life had healed. Only a scar remained. A scar to remind me, my life was worth the fight.

Leo's eyes widened. His jaws clenched, straining a muscle on both sides. Breaths dragged out harshly, throat bobbed harder as if he found it hard to swallow the reality.

"Was this before I left-" he began.

"No. It's because I gave up on my will to live...momentarily."

"I'm so sorry, Zem. I didn't know." Leo dipped his forehead over mine. "I was stupid to think I was doing what was best for you."

"Don't apologize, Leo. You didn't know."

I embraced him just as my throat thickened. My hand ran over his back, tightening him over me. I wanted to have him, hold him and forget the past and the things we endured.

But it was easier said than done.

Something felt different.

I wasn't touching Leo's taut muscles anymore. I was touching something uneven, calloused.

From the base of his neck to the lowest point where his pant hugged his waist, the uneven texture draped his skin.

Under the dim lights, I looked up at Leo.

With eyes forced shut, his eyelashes glistened with a sheen as if diamond-dusted over them. Residual tears had escaped when I touched him. Felt him.

His breath hitched as I closed our distance, cupping his face in my hands.

"Leo...I'm going to see it... I want to..."

He didn't speak. Only his throat bobbed harder, eyes bound shut as I walked over to face his back.

His head dipped into his chest, harsh wheezed breaths diffused the silence in the room.

That's when I saw it.

His back was scarred.

Burnt badly, it was a mess of layered skin. Crimson and pale purplish patches over uneven layered skin, pulled as my breath hit them.

My hand roamed over it, feeling the vibrations from Leo's body as I examined him in the pale skylight of the room.

Everywhere my eyes fell, scars encroached upon his skin.

Whatever he endured burnt him, his confidence and what remained of my happy Leo.

"How did this happen?" I asked, holding onto Leo's shoulder and turning him around.

His head remained dipped as if he was somehow ashamed to show me his real, war-endured body.

"Suicide bomber." One word made all things clear.

I didn't need to know the how and when of it - my mind already aligned with the understanding from the letters he'd sent.

What I wanted was for Leo to look up. He refused.

"I'm not the man you fell in love with, darling. My body is also not the same." His left leg solidified its grip on the floor, hand gripping his wrist so hard, a crimson hue formed over his skin. "I'm broken. I'm damaged."

"You are still perfect for me..." As if it wasn't my mind that countered but my heart; an answer sprang. "You are still my Leo. My crazy, annoying, loving Leo. You've not changed. Only your outlook has."

"Do you still love me the same?" His head jolted up. The air inside the room thickened, statically charged with his words.

Did I still love him the same?

How could he even ask me that?

Was he thinking my love for him was so superficial that it would diffuse the moment I saw his wounded body?

I could have felt angry. I could have yelled at him for thinking so less of me, of my love.

Yet, all I felt was calm. Like something had clicked between us since I saw his body.

It reminded me that we both weren't very much different. We were two souls fused in pain and love. Our suffering may have been different, but its path was the same.

"I love you more than you could ever imagine."

My answer was the hammering reply to break free of what I kept buried deep in my chest. Love.

Leo needed to see what I felt for him, endured for him. He needed to be told that I didn't love him for his beauty. I loved him for the man he was.

"I'd have loved you had you died at war. I'd keep loving you because I didn't fall for your smile or your muscles or even your wealth." My eyes flooded. My voice wobbled. "I love you for what you made me feel, and how you cared for me and protected me."

My throat pricked, refusing to utter the next words. Words, which would give him the power to destroy me.

There was something about love that would convince you to be destroyed. There was no other kind of love that than one where the other person wielded the power to destroy you but you'd know in your heart, they would never use it.

"I love you because...because..."

"You complete me," he said, fusing his lips over my forehead, the pad of his thumbs rubbing away residual tears and pain. "Because I'm much more of you than me. I don't know where I end and you begin, Zemira. But I know where we're fused."

Heart.

Leo filled the gaping hole I had felt in my chest since he left for his mission. He stuffed it with love, light, and happiness.

It made me realize how much he meant to me, and how much I needed him in my life.

How much I craved to spend the rest of my life with him. 

~

And with that, one wall breaks.

How long before Leo lets Zem see all his imperfections?

Thoughts?