Abi didn’t know how to feel after hearing his explanation.
“A-An unripe fruit? Hey! Who are yo –”
“Shh… go upstairs now.” He cut her off and the jellyfish turned from emitting a warm glow into emitting a cold, chilly gloom. Abi knew that she shouldn’t push it anymore but at that point, she didn’t care. She was too agitated at being compared to a fruit – and an unripe one at that!
Abi puffed her cheeks and left but not before she glared at him, letting him know that she was not happy to be compared to an unripe inanimate object!
Luckily for her, she was already halfway up the stairs – yes, she took the stairs so that she could stomp on his imaginary face every step of the way – when Xavier spoke again.
“Oh, so you’re waiting until she’s ripe and sweet, eh?” Xavier snickered and a cold blast of wind hit his face, so cold that he actually shivered. He then threw his hands up in surrender, mimicking the action of zipping his mouth and throwing away the key.
…
Back in Abi’s room, she stomped her way to the bathroom and filled up the bath with very warm water. She needed to relax and there was nothing like a bubble bath to release the tension from her body. She put some bubble solution in the tub and it filled up with light fluffy bubbles in no time. Once it was filled, she slipped inside the tub and she felt better instantly.
She let her mind drift and it played back the scene of them up on the roof like a movie. She closed her eyes and she smiled. It really was a magical moment for more than one reason. The second being that she actually got him to agree to her request. She felt that it was an almost impossible task but she was glad she persevered. She knew that there was a price to pay, but was there anything in the world that came without a price?
As she thought about the starry night sky, the shooting star and her wishes, her mood changed for the better. She deliberately didn’t think about him describing her as an unripe fruit because she knew it would just work her up. She thought about him and the two items on her list that she has now completed. Two memories that she never wanted to forget. As she thought about it, thirty one items and thirty one days would make thirty one wonderful memories to take with her to the next world. She was sure that once this month was over, and her heart and mind were filled with all the wonderful memories, she wouldn’t want for anything more.
After the water began to cool down, she dried herself up, put on a bathrobe and headed out to the bedside table. She opened the drawer that stored her little book and opened it up. She uncapped her pen and drew another big tick next to the note that said ‘Gaze up at the night sky from a rooftop with my boyfriend’.
She then drew out another notebook – more like a diary – and started to write down the details of her experiences from the night before and that night. She wanted to record every little detail so that when her memory started to fade, she could read what she had written in this book and relive those experiences like it happened just yesterday.
Once she finished with that, she got dressed into her pajamas and laid in bed as she waited patiently for Alex to arrive. After watching the second hand go around five times, she decided that doing nothing wasn’t a good plan, so she went and found a book to keep her mind occupied.
She picked a classic, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This book was one of her favourites. She brought it back to the bed to read and became immersed in it soon after.
—
The hour hand on the clock went around three more times before Alex finally went upstairs. He wondered what kind of mood he would find her in as he pictured her face when she left the dining room earlier. Would she still be angry at him or would she have mellowed down by now? He stopped at the top of the stairs for a second, before he headed straight towards her door.
He opened the door and walked in without even bothering to knock. He entered as if her room was his.
The moment his eyes found her, the corner of his mouth tilted up a little. She was lying on the bed with the blanket sprawled messily around her and there was an open book lying on her chest. She looked like she had fallen asleep reading a book waiting for him.
He walked over to her and stood there gazing down at her peaceful sleeping face. Her face looked harmless, as always. She looked so damn vulnerable that Alex bit his lip as he watched her.
The next moment, he sat on the bedside, picked up the open book from her chest and placed it on top of the bedside table before he returned his gaze to her face.
His eyes then fell on her hair which was scattered on her white pillow and reached out his hand and picked strands of it. He just fiddled with her hair, as he looked to be thinking about something complicated.
After he got tired of playing with her smooth hair and listening to her even breathing, Alex’s eyes shifted to her long eyelashes and he reached out again to touch it.
“Even though you’re still just an unripe little fruit…” he suddenly mumbled as his finger crawled down to her cheekbone and then to her soft and alluring, pink lips.
He stayed there for a little while longer before he finally strode towards the door. He turned the lights off before closing the door behind him.
