ALMOST A BRIDE (Open On Annie)

11

Sixty minutes later I floated out of the room.

My feet were those of a graceful Geisha, gliding across the floor.

My arms were like a ballerina, thin, and wispy and delicate.

My hair was in a L’Oreal, commercial blowing rhythmically in the sea breeze.

I was as light as a feather, as soft as silk and as warm and content as a baby wrapped in its mother’s arms.

I was in such a massage-induced daze that I barely noticed T squared (Trev and Tess) as I waltzed out of the Spa, gliding on the breath of a newborn baby.

I got to the room in a state of warm liquidity and melted into the bed. I’m not sure if I even spoke to Chris, or acknowledged his existence. I closed my eyes happily and then everything went black.

***

When I finally woke up, the sky was full of the tell tale signs of dusk. The temperature was cooler and the sky was tinged with a mauve that seemed to melt into pale yellow. I must have slept the entire day away. I jumped out of the bed- my body parts were back to being my own- and I felt energized.

I could hear a frantic ‘tick, tick, tick, ticking’ coming from downstairs and I immediately went to investigate. I’d almost forgotten that Chris and I were now roomies, because when I saw him, my brain took a moment to compute.

He was seated at a table, three big, empty coffee cups in front of him, and wearing a large pair of reading glasses. His laptop was open, his Ipad was lit up like a Christmas tree and he was typing faster than I’d ever seen anyone type before.

I watched him silently; he was chuckling to himself from time to time, every now and again he would pause for a moment or two, before whispering something to himself. He was doing a lot of nodding and it looked like his whole body was involved in the process of writing. He was so wrapped up in his own world, that it felt like a sin to break it.

 But as my foot reached the bottom stair and it creaked, he turned around. The bubble was burst. He looked up at me with a kind of manic intensity and  immediately shut his laptop.

“I see you got inspired?” I said indicating the now closed computer.

He looked at me for a moment or two and then his face did something strange, it scrunched up into a look that can only be described as sheepish. For a second he looked shy, he was probably one of these creative types that got bashful about his work.

“Yes, I got inspired.” His tone was dismissive.

“So what do you want to do now… fiancé?” I said playfully, as I collapsed into the most ludicrously comfortable couch my derrière had ever had the pleasure of sitting on.

Chris joined me in the lounge, “Personally’ he said, “I could quite happily get room service and watch movies tonight.”

Room service and movies? It sounded so pedestrian, so not tropical- island paradise- holiday. Like dry toast and bland, milky tea. I could do that any day of the week. But the more I sat there and felt the undeniable tug of the couches gravity, and the further I sunk into it- the more the idea started to appeal to me.

“I guess we could eat dinner on the roof and look out over the sea.” I added, more to quell the slight twinge of guilt I was feeling towards the terribly unimaginative idea of movies and a couch while on an exotic holiday.

“We could do that.” Chris said reaching for the room service menu.

The view from the roof was spectacular. By the time we were up there with our food, the sun was already setting. Shafts of light from the setting sun, which was now nestled behind large clouds, cut through the sky like those beams you find outside nightclubs. The sea had changed to a pale violet color, it was as if the two colors- amber and blue- had mixed to create the iridescent color that was now rippling across the surface of the water. The palms and trees were tinged with a soft orange and one small, faint star was pocking its way into the sky.