Nickiepoo. Hmph! I wonder what prompted that. It's almost like an inside joke now. She said it once the week I came back from Boston both half serious and half for a laugh and then again a few weeks later. At first I pretended to ignore it. If I'm being honest, my increased interest in her started with that of all things. And I don't even like the thought of baby talk in romantic relationships, yet I was falling even harder for it. I'll ask her one day how that came about. Thoughts raced in my head what she wanted to do to me in that washroom, but I wasn't about to give myself away to the masses about what my reaction might be to that below deck.
I gotta admit, she's become a beautiful woman over the last three and a half years - inside and out. Except she's got a mouth that shoots a mile a minute like a drunken sailor when she gets upset at non-family and non-friends with the colorful language to match it. Quite a stark contrast to my vocabulary, I can assure you. Back to reality, I was always generally good with slipping in and out of places undetected. By the nature of my social life, I've somehow managed to be come the fly on the wall. In fact, in high school, I earned the nickname samurai playing soccer because I always created open space and the proceed to cut through the defense as if I was wielding a katana in both hands. Never having tested those skills in the bedroom, or anywhere really, I certainly wasn't prepared to do so in that theatre.
...
"That week came and went, and it was a beautiful Saturday morning. I sat at the bench in front of the shelter knowing what I wanted to say and how while being nervous as to what stunts she might try to pull. This park was one that backed up to a creek and had a wooded area. There were many like that in the adjacent towns as well, but I did always find sentimentality in this particular one for some strange reason. My cell phone illuminated to show a text from Dottie.
"Are you here?"
"Man of my word, remember? Follow the trail to the shelter." This was now going to be the third time now that we'd be alone together, and it wasn't any easier than the first.
"Nick!" As I turned my head, I saw her sprinting toward me and before I could notice her attire, she started to cry. "Harley cheated on me," she tried to tell me between the blubbering.
"Shh. It's gonna be alright. I'm not going anywhere. Nickiepoo is here." I don't know why I said the last-most part, subconscious I guess. I generally don't like seeing anyone crying, but now that I was somewhat emotionally invested in this, I felt even more obligated to be there for her.
~~~
As soon as I saw him, I just burst into tears still in disbelief that my relationship was over just like that. I mean he was kinda avoiding me but I thought he was going through a rough patch. Or maybe looking back that was a solution to it. This felt like rock bottom. I tried to suck it up as best I could. But maybe it was best that I went to meet Mr. Fratelli. He didn't even ask a question. to this day, it's the best hug I've gotten from anyone. I had to have been sobbing for at least fifteen minutes not thinking or caring if anyone in the neighborhood could hear though that part of the neighborhood wasn't that heavily populated because of the landscape. After I cooled down, I didn't want to let him go from that hug. If that moment could be frozen in time.
"Are you okay?" He finally asked, making sure that I was done getting it out of my system. I had never realized how good he was at reading feelings. I respect him a lot for that.
"C'mon, lets take a stroll, see how beautiful this is. You wouldn't know we're on earth." Heaven on earth sounded nice right about then. Besides, my feelings for him never subsided. And stroll we did. Directly behind the area where the open-air shelter was lay a perfectly dense field of grass maybe a foot high from both April showers and not having been cut since the end of autumn in the two months since the last frost of winter. Even though the other end of us was the trail to the parking lot, one could argue that this plain was also a clearing from the small forest that lay behind it and just beyond the first rows of trees in one direction ran a creek and more trees alongside the bank in the other. As we got further and further in, I saw so many multiples of species of wildlife that was breathtaking - cardinals, blue jays, even a few species of butterflies. Not the least of which a monarch butterfly that landed on me.
"Perfect!"
"Wait, what?"
"You, in the partial sunlight, with that smile and looking off into the scenery. But also that butterfly resting on your shoulder. That's my new lock screen."
