— HIS BROTHERS LIKED TO COMPLAIN HE HAD IT THE EASIEST. Youngest to four overachieving older brothers and born to parents who decided to pack up their family of seven and move to a developing country, for no reason except to give their sons what they never had, he wouldn’t deny he had it easy. He had read that ‘Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes’, but he begged to disagree. The world as he know it has just splattered paint down his cheeks, pulled rabbits out of his ears and covered his eyes with tinfoil. He’d just been tossed into the Pacific Ocean head-first, screaming, and suddenly his hollow life purpose has been redefined. He was Maaz Sidhu and he was destined for greatness. He was intelligent, not academically, but he saw the world in a way no one else had. He was charismatic, perhaps his greatest feature, so it was no surprise when his brothers jet out to become doctors and lawyers, and engineers, he had inherited the family business, and to everyone’s disbelief— he helped it flourish.
He deemed himself a traveller, a worldly one at that, and he had seen a lot more than most thirty-two year olds due to his apparent success. When he met her, his now fiancee, he had never expected to get married. He met her at a point in his life when he should have been married already (at least, that’s what his mother kept telling him) so after fourteen months of dating, the question had rushed out of his mouth without enough thought. Now, he was on his way to becoming a married man. Meeting her family wasn’t difficult; he was a charming man, and just as he had suspected, her parents fell in love with him. All that was left was to meet her sister, another feat he deemed more than possible. When she leaned into him, telling him that her sister was approaching behind them, he turned on his heel, more than ready.
There is a feeling of electricity in the dining hall, and he’s turning to grin at her, wide, with his canines. Though his charismatic persona falls short when his eyes stall on her. Without meaning to, he runs his tongue against his teeth, and they feel like miniature moons cradled by his gums. She is right in front of him. He’s never seen something so strange in his life. In his mind, he recognizes that she is the type of bird who should be preserved in a zoo – the last of a dying, exotic, eternally unique species. He recognizes her as the girl he would never forget, not in a million years. He’s happy now, he truly is, but nothing could tamper his memory of that girl— of the girl standing in front of him now. He doesn’t say anything. He simply stand there, feeling ridiculous in his formal suit, and watches her slowly starting to fumble. He watches her until he feels a sharp elbow burrowing into his side and he clears his throat, gaze sliding to his fiancee before back to her.
“This is— this is your— sorry, your sister? It’s nice to see— meet you.”