The Good, The Bad and Everything in Between

 The number you are trying to call is out of your reach. Please try again later  Dammit! Where in the world is she?  He tosses his phone on the floor in annoyance. His best friend Nabeel, who is accompanying him comes into the room just right then. “Woah!” Nabeel exclaims, looking at the mess his friend has made. “What happened?” “She's not picking up my calls and not even replying to my text messages since last night.” He sits down on the bed, massaging his temples with his forefingers. His mind is thinking of all the possibilities due to which she is probably not able to respond to him. “What? What do you think? Why isn't she responding?” Nabeel says as he takes a seat across from him in the room waiting for him to reply. Nabeel looks at his friend sitting in distress and finds himself pitying him. It is the day of his wedding, he is wearing a well-tailored black tuxedo and today he is supposed to get married to the woman he loves. “I... I don't know,” he mumbles. He rubs his hands over his face. He stands up, grabs his car keys from the dresser and picks his phone from the floor, wincing slightly at the sight of the broken pieces of his phone’s cover. “I think I know where I can find her” “But, the wedding ceremony is in few minutes...” Nabeel tries to reason. “I have to know whether she is safe that's more important to me right now!” He spins around and leaves, haphazardly, making his way downstairs towards his car. He needs to know what's wrong with her.   ***   The car halts with a screech in front of her apartment. He shuts the door behind him and frantically gets out shoving the keys into his pocket, almost bumping into people on his way. When he reaches the entrance of her apartment, he rings the doorbell. He rings it aggressively for more than once, yet, there’s no response. He gets impatient and begins to bang the door, still, there is no response. He calls out her name. ‘Leila, are you there?’ He bangs once more and then gives up. All the strength in his body begins to crumble making him fall to his feet. Just then, his gaze lands on the flowerpot kept near the entrance. She used to keep an extra key below that pot. He knows that, and so he removes the key and unlocks the door.  'Leila! Leila!' He searches for her in every room, every corner of the flat. After accepting this reality that his Leila was nowhere to be found, his head begins to throb with pain and his eyes begins to tear up. Where could she be? He saunters towards her room and looks at her belongings that are kept as it is. He looks around in the hope of some clue that could lead him to Leila. While searching around her dresser, he finds a note that's been neatly folded and kept below the hairbrush. He quickly grabs that note, a handwritten letter.   My dear Sultan,   He reads the first line and his eyes are wide open in shock. He sits down on her bed, trying to keep pace with his unsteady heartbeat. He reads that line repeatedly until the truth sinks in that Leila is gone. She is not going to come back, and she has left a letter behind that is addressed to none other than him alone. She knew I would come looking after her. Dammit! She knew. He wants to crumble the paper and tear it into pieces or might as well burn it but, he is also curious to know what made her abandon him right on the day of their wedding. He decides to go with the latter.   By the time you'd read this, I'll be long gone, far away from you. And in all my honesty I am sorry, I am sorry that I am leaving without wishing you goodbye.    “Why did you have to do this Leila?”  He says to himself as if he is talking to her in real life.   I am sorry that I am leaving you right on the day of our wedding. The day we have always dreamed of. But, believe me, I need to take this step for both of us. Please take your pride to forgive me. Forgive me for this heinous sin. You know, we probably aren't meant to be.   “How can you say that? We were together for 6 years!”   Now coming back to the reason why I'm leaving you. I am leaving you due to that girl. She deserves you and your love more than I can ever deserve.  I know, now you are thinking of who she may be, and even I wanted to know when I read the email she sent to you. I never intended sneaking in your emails but it all happened on that night when we were out on a date two days ago.  “What happened that time? Why don't I remember anything about the email or the girl?”   He removes his phone from his pocket, dismisses the notifications of several missed calls from Nabeel and quickly taps at the mail icon. He glances through the inbox for any emails that can give some clue about what Leila has mentioned. But he finds nothing except for his work-related emails. He sighs deeply and resumes reading the rest of the letter.   Remember when you left your phone with me and went to get our movie tickets and ice cream? The queue was long, and you were taking your own time, so I unlocked your phone to play a game because my phone’s battery had died, and I got engrossed in that game because I was trying to break your high score. Until the notification of an email sent to you popped up and the game got paused automatically. I should have ignored that notification, but I didn't because the sender was anonymous, and the subject of the email was intriguing. ‘If it's meant to be, it will be’ It read.    He unlocks his phone and looks at his inbox again. This time, reading the subject of every email carefully. He scans every folder and then types the title Leila has mentioned on the search bar but, there is only one thing he gets as a response.    Search results: not found.    I tapped it open out of curiosity and because we never had an issue with accessing each other's phone, so I sat casually waiting for the email to load. It looked like any normal email divided into several paragraphs and I was about to go back and resume my game but then my gaze landed on somewhere between the lines which read, ‘I love you Sultan and it's killing me, it kills me because I can't do anything about it’    His heart begins to pound louder than before as he reads further. He can almost listen to his own heartbeat. He can’t decipher how everything drastically changed within two days after he had last seen Leila. And it is only because of that damn anonymous email. It is too much information for him to follow all at once. His throat begins to feel dry and he’s tongue-tied. He gets up and fetches a glass of water for himself. But, a glass of water is not enough for him to quench his thirst. He grabs the bottle instead and drinks it in one gulp, spilling some water on his shirt.   And then, just like any other fiancee would feel, I felt it too. I felt jealous. I glanced your way before I began to read the whole mail, you were there on the counter taking the tickets which meant, you were going to come to me in a few minutes. I forwarded it to my email because it was a long one and deleted from yours. I made sure to delete from your trash folder too so that you never get to read it.     He curses under his breath.                                                                                           I know that was very selfish of me but any girl who loves her fiance would do the same.   “Then why did you leave me?”    Within two days prior to our wedding, I found out who she was. You might think she was just another girl who had a crush on you and that she had confessed her love in that email and I should have let it go but, that was not the case. She had enclosed in that email something of my past. And I know that you have accepted me with my past but there was something else too and I didn’t want you to know. I logged into your email the other night and replied to her pretending to be you. I replied to her saying that I'd like to meet her, and she instantly agreed because I told her that I was ready to call off the wedding.  “What? Why didn't you tell me about this? We could have sorted it out!”   He recollects the password of Leila’s mail and tries to log in so that he can find some hint, but he is met with disappointment as he isn't able to. Leila had already changed it by that time. He gets furious and impatient as he continues to read further.   We met last night, and she was shocked to find out that it’s me who came instead of you. She seemed unfamiliar to me, but it was easy to make out that she was from our high-school because she knew every detail about you. I tried to explain her, I told her that there was no way she could ever get what she was asking for. I told her that you are mine and we were getting married today. But, she was adamant about not understanding. When I came home she had already emailed me a proof of something related to my past which I didn't want you to know because I didn’t want you to think badly about me and that’s how she blackmailed me asking me to leave you. I am sorry. I loved you, I did, with all my heart and soul but, now I’ll have to leave.... that girl was probably right Sultan...   I am not worthy of your love.   Good luck and goodbye, Leila.    He crushes the paper in his fist and throws it away as he reads the last line. Whoever that girl is, He intends on finding her. I won’t spare her. She is the reason Leila left me. My Leila has gone.