Night Blooming Jasmines?!

 "I got you night blooming jasmines"

I chuckled.

My mind was racing really fast and I was forcing my facial muscles to slow down. But I gave into the wildest laugh.

"I hate those!"

I shouted.

The old couple next to us was staring at us this whole time. I held my mouth fast and turned to him. I almost hit his stomach but he pulled me close to hand me the flowers. I took them and laid my head on his shoulder. How thoughtful.

I had the longest day and so did he but somehow he managed to stop at the flower shop to get me night blooming jasmines. There were six people at the train station and darkness was creeping in.

I lifted my face to look at him and he was staring at the old couple.

"I want old with you"

I want to grow old with you too my Nico" 

I whispered. 

I smelled at the flowers one last time ignoring my pollen allergy. The train arrived but we watched it leave and it was finally just the two of us at the train station. This was pretty much how our Friday evenings went. Intentionally lazy and slow. This specific day the moon was up and so were the stars. I was still laying on his shoulder and I could feel the tension he held so that he couldn't shake me up or ruin my position.

"You remembered."

At this point I was obsessing over the flowers. Hugging them, cuddling them, crushing them. 

"I did."

Night blooming jasmines were the most random flowers I had set my eyes on. I hated them and how they did not give much colour. Like roses and sunflowers. Writing my first book, I included how my lover got me a flower pot of the night blooming jasmines and how he would eventually kill my cat with the pot in one if his anger fits. I hated the flowers and I hated the giver even more. Eventually Nico would obsess over that line and how I was unfair to the innocent flowers. 

He always got me red roses, but this day he got me the night blooming jasmines. Nico would creep into my mind and change all the dim bulbs to new bulbs. He would go in there and water my gardens, summon rains and tend to everything. He would dust off the shelves, draw the curtains and just sitting silently with him meant the world. 

This day he got me the flowers and I thought how cute it was for him to remember a random off the plot line in a book I had written when I was 17.

Nico and I had only met two years ago. Call it an enemies to lovers game play. We were both contesting in the same book fair and he won and I came second. Very close second position. My impulse was to intentionally hate this tall, skinny skimp that stole my mojo. He had an awkward sense of humor that was impressive but I had to hold in my laughter so he wouldn't think he had me on that one too. He planned dates and all I did was show up and mock his clothes, his pick up lines, his shaggy hair that he thought was cute and his choice of book covers. The random dates would eventually be fitted on a calendar and they shamelessly ran every Friday at Jakes books store that had a café. 

Friday nights meant staying at the cafe until it closed, taking the long way to my apartment, carrying a to go hot chocolate, talking about wormholes and black holes and how we wanted to be trapped in a time loop together where we were always taking this walk. As cute as it sounds it scared me every single day. I would feel an excruciating sadness every time he said goodbye when we got at my apartment entrance. He would either hug me tightly or try his weird handshake that he was trying to have me memorize. (Oh now I know it!) I did not want to want him this much while I knew he wanted me as much. I had been know to pensively hurt my former lovers but Nico was kind. He didn't deserve that. 

One fateful Friday, I took the train to go to the cafe first. It was raining hard and I couldn't wait at the train station. By the time I took my stop at the cafe the storm was terrible and I wished I had gone straight home. I waited for four hours but Niko was no show. The cafe closed earlier than usual and the storm had gone away so I got home quite fast. Nico was not responding to my messages, and calls couldn't go through. As stupid as it sounds, I knew the block he lived in but not his house. I slept worried only to wake up to a million text messages apologizing that he thought I'd go home straight because of the storm so he went home too, where the power line in his block was down until that morning.

I cringed hard when I realized that the logical thing to do was to go home but I decided to take a risk for him. I was in love. I was in denial but I knew I was in love. I couldn't wait until the next Friday to see him so I called him immediately I woke up.

"I don't know where you live."

"Won't you even ask how I am Betty?

"Oh shit, how are you?"

"I'm fine now that you called. I slept in after texting you."

I could here from his voice that he had just woken up. 

"Would you want to know where I live?"

"Yes immediately "

I said shamelessly.

"What have they done to my Betty?"

I brushed the question off and asked for directions. I showered and hurried out leaving my apartment in a mess. I stopped by a store to get us breakfast and headed to his house.

"That was fast Betty."

I looked up and Nico was coming down the stairs in their apartment. 

" I figured you'd almost be here. Don't take the elevator, I live on the first floor."

He took the goods off my hands and hugged me. Tighter than usual. His robe smelled like baby fabric softener and I chuckled while he let go since it reminded me of my nephew Sean. We walked side by side to his apartment. I was getting cold and hungry. I had not eaten the previous night and my stomach would start to rumble and embarrass me any minute. He opened his door and I stood there for a moment absorbing the interior.

Is there a single bad this about this man? I thought to myself.

His walls were painted in abstract dark hues of grey and were contrasted with black stripes. A huge blue painting sat on one of the walls like it was saying welcome to royalty. How do you make such a small space so aesthetically pleasing?

He saw me stare at the painting and walked towards it.

"Raine did this one. She said it fitted the space. I chose the colours on the wall and she painted them as well. Mum picked up the curtains for me. Those are never coming down"

The curtains matched the couches but in different shades. He always talked about his mum and how she had exquisite and expensive taste. And now the sister can paint? I walked towards him in the kitchen while he was unwrapping the breakfast. His hands fascinated me, veiny and with an abundance of hair but mostly how they also wrote. He was quite the expert with pen and paper. He chose his words like his life depended on it. Well it did because he was a professional writer. But how he talked, how he wrote, his chain of words to sentences to stories was magic and beyond. 

He caught me staring at him and I walked away like I wasn't about to jump and suck his soul through his lips. I switched on the television and SpongeBob was playing. We both laughed hard. He began making eggs when power went down again. Wow! It was only 9 a.m what were we supposed to do with the rest of the cold Saturday.

"Can we just eat out?" I said

This day certainly had something against my stomach. 

"Or your house!"

Nico said giddily.

 He lit up like a child when he said that since I had no right to say no now that I was in his house. He picked up a couple of stuff and we left. My house was a mess but I did not care. My house was always a mess. My room growing up was a mess as well and my mum said that was how my mind was. I did not care much. We got there fast and I welcomed him into my pink painted walls and towels on the floor house. He picked my jacket from the floor at the door and put in on the hanger. I laughed with him and I directed him to my couch where again he picked up my mickey mouse pajamas. I didn't know what those were doing there though. The day ended with a lot of roasting, bad jokes and certainly my jaw was hurting from how much I had laughed.

Fast forward to the night blooming jasmines at the train station. We had moved in together, decided we did not want kids, filled our house with plants, written a comic book together, kissed a lot, fucked a lot and we were certainly doing life together. Looking at him across the table at the cafe I thought about how we had little time left. How I felt like smacking his face on the table for not showing up in my life earlier. I thought about how I couldn't get enough of him in one life time and how I would want him in the next and the next. Staring at the stars was only meaningful because I did it with him. Writing books only made sense because he got to read them and make bad jokes about them. Building a Christmas tree only made sense because he got to lift me up and have me put the star at the top.

Thinking about love previously I thought about war and mind games and building the stronger ego and making a partner jealous and hoping onto the next. But loving Nico meant softness. Soft conversations, soft love, easy love. His favourite colour is yellow yet he does not own a single yellow item. He hates pepper in food yet he cooks with it all the time. He tears a little when he laughs too hard. He calls me My Betty even on a random Wednesday afternoon when he should just call me Betty. He cleans the dishes before bed. He wears mickey mouse pj's because it's my fondest childhood memory. He catalogues our bookshelves in alphabetical order without fail. He wraps his hands around my face when I'm sad. He still kisses my forehead when we part ways, without fail. He memorizes the most meaningful lines from my books. We still go to the book cafe on Friday. We still take the long way home to our new house. We still use our weird handshake. We fall in love with each other every day better than the last day. We are still going to get old together. I love you Nico!!