Filed to story: Loving You In My Final Days
“Hi Kai. I finally found out what your real name is! I’ve been calling you Mr. Black Leather jacket this whole time,” she confessed with a shy smile.
The moment she smiled at Kai, she felt a chill coming from behind her. She immediately turned to Alex and made puppy dog eyes at him and tried to distract him. “Alex, I’m hungry… Can we eat?” Her stomach grumbled right on cue and the frozen iceberg melted a little.
Without a word, Alex strode towards the table and sat down and waited for everyone else to take their seat.
Abi was relieved that Alex didn’t ask her to sit on his lap again. Was it because Ezekiel Qin was not around? She noticed that the table was only set for four people – one for Alex at the head of the table, one to his right and two to his left. Maybe Ezekiel Qin wasn’t back yet.
Xavier walked towards the seat on the right so Abi and Kai took the seats to the left but before they could seat themselves, Alex looked at Xavier with cold daggers in his eyes.
Xavier knew that look but his expression clearly said he had no idea what he did to earn that look. The words, ‘what did I do wrong?’ flashed in his eyes.
Xavier racked his brain but could not solve the puzzle at all! Luckily a savior arrived. Charles the butler, walked towards Xavier and whispered in his ear. “Mr. Xavier, I believe that seat is reserved for Miss Abigail.”
His eyes became as round as a full moon as realization finally dawned on him. He immediately flew to the other side of the table and stood next to Abigail. “I’m sorry, Abigail. I didn’t mean to take your seat.”
Abigail, who had no idea what was happening, just stared at him. ‘Huh? My seat? I don’t have my own seat… What was he talking about?’ She looked at Charles, then Alex and at Xavier as he motioned for her to take the seat on Alex’s right hand side.
She was so confused but she did as he asked because, one, she didn’t want to upset anyone and two, she wanted to tame her grumbling stomach.
As she took her seat, the other two did also.
Dinner was comfortable and lively as the two men across her bantered back and forth, with Kai getting the better of Xavier most of the time. Alex sat quietly like he was away on a different different planet, while Abi ate her fill while observing Alex’s visitors.
Abi tried to drag her meal out for as long as she could because she knew what was coming. She was going to be sent back to her room while all the men talked about their ‘secret squirrel man business’ – that she now referred to as.
As expected, after she finished her meal, the order came. “Go upstairs and wait for me in your room,” he said and she just sighed in resignation.
Before Alex or Abi could say anything else, Xavier butted in in surprise.
“She has her own room? You’re not sleeping in the same bed?!” he was surprised. “Why?”
Alex wanted to glare at Xavier and tell him it was none of his business but Abi also looked at him, as if she, too, was curious about the reason. She too was quite surprised and wondered why she got given a separate room when she first arrived at the house. She fully thought that when he said that he needed his girlfriend to live with him, that he would expect her to sleep in the same room as him. So yes, she was definitely curious as to why he didn’t.
“Because this little fruit is still unripe…” he explained as he put his big hand on her head and rubbed it. “I don’t eat unripe fruits,” he added as he smiled at Abi.
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.
