Ancil“I know right. But since my mom died, I just couldn’t see myself spending the money in any other way than fulfilling her wish of going to Tobago. One day, I plan on using this money to go to Tobago and search for the most gorgeous Tobago man I can find and tell him all about my mother and how badly she wanted to meet him.”
“I’m sure she’d like that,” I said.
“I’m sure she would.”
We spent a little more time in the attic. Kate showed me some of the books that she had read, which was a hefty amount, and we also shuffled through an old photo album of her and her mom. Her mom looked just like her, only older. It was as if Kate was just an eighteen-year-old version of her mom because from what I could see she took nothing from her father. Well — Kate did kind of have her father’s ears but that was basically it.
With everything that had occurred that day, I had almost forgotten to invite Kate to the show on Friday but luckily it crossed my mind as I was about to leave.
The next morning I woke up incredibly tired. I felt as though aliens snuck into my room and sucked all the energy out of my body in some sort of energy mining project for some distant planetary shortage. Note to self: don’t ever paint half a house and then go have sex for the first time. There are only so many strokes a man could give before his body succumbs to tiredness. What made it worse was that my cell phone was ringing and it was all the way in my jeans pants in the laundry basket all the way on the other side of the room. It was only three footsteps away from my bed but it seemed like 1000 feet to my tired body.
“URGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” I groaned in the hope that it would have made my phone magically appear near my ears. But it was useless. The phone remained in my pocket and with each ring the decibels grew. It was now the most annoying thing on the planet but its annoyingness in no way affected my negative urge to get up.
The phone eventually stopped ringing and the place went quiet. I used that moment of silence to just lay on the bed. I stayed like this for about twenty more minutes before finally sitting up. I was still tired but I forced myself over to my cell phone which went off again but only for a couple of seconds. I picked up the cell phone and the first thing I saw was a missed call from Kate. The expression on my face didn’t do any justice to the excitement that was welling up inside of me. My facial expression almost matched my inner excitement after I read the text message that Kate sent me.
It read: “I miss you already.”
Like a volcano, I felt my smile bubbling up to my nose until it finally erupted all over my face. I was missing her too and I would have probably sent the same text after I got over my fatigue. I was initially planning on sending back a message saying “I miss you too” but that would be too lame and typical, unlike the extraordinary writer I had made myself out to be.
I thought for a second and sent: “Your poetry is flawed.”
After about thirty seconds Kate responded: “Flawed? Really?”
“Yes flawed. The first three words are fine but the adverb at the end defeats the whole purpose of our relationship. I can also say that I miss you but I won’t go as far as saying already because as you said, time is irrelevant. Adding already to the end of your sentence gives time relevance and meaning but how can time be relevant when every second I spend apart from you is an eternity? There’s no such thing as time when we’re together, therefore your poetry is flawed.”
I was expecting Kate to respond in a timely manner but after an hour, there was no reply. I was beginning to think that my response may have messed something up. Damn, I should have just replied with “I miss you too.” It was too late to change my mind now though. While I was waiting on Kate to respond I brushed my teeth, grabbed breakfast, and told my mom good morning on her day off. She was rather chipper. More bubbly than her usual self actually. She was cooking and cleaning with her towel on and singing along to music blasting out of her headphones so loudly that I could also clearly hear the lyrics to ‘Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran’.
“Didn’t know you were an Ed Sheeran fan,” I said to my mother.
She was so caught up in the sink and with her highly out-of-tune singing that she didn’t even respond to me, even see, or hear me.
“Mom!” I shouted.
She jerked a bit then took the headphones off. “Oh sorry dear. What is it?”
“What if the house were on fire?” I asked. I surprised myself with how mom-like I sounded.
“I do have a nose for a reason. What do you want?”
“Nothing really. I just found you to be a bit chipper today.”
“Hummm. I wasn’t going to tell you this but I may as well,” she paused for a while took a deep breath, and said, “I’m going on a date today.”
“With a man?” I asked.
“Yes, with a man.”
“That’s great,” I smiled. “It’s good to see you finally moving on with your life.”
“It’s been three years since he died and I feel like it’s something he would want me to do. To move on.”
“Well, that’s questionable but I still think you’re on the right track,” I said. “So what’s his name?”
