Aria
“What colours are you thinking about?” I asked Serfina as we sat on her living room floor with wedding things everywhere.
“I’m thinking teal and gold as the main colours. Hayden would look rather dapper in a teal waistcoat and tie. Gold buttons on the detail.”
“Are we going to go skipping down the yellow brick road as well?” Hayden teased from his spot on the sofa.
He’d been home two weeks now and still needed to rest and heal, but the doctors had said he’d make a full recovery.
Serfina glared at him. “That’s emerald, not teal.”
“Same thing,” he replied.
“You’re lucky you’re recovering, because I would have thrown this book at you for that.” He held his chest as he let out a small chuckle. “If you’re going to sit there making comments, I suggest you get Sebastian to sit with you so you can annoy him instead.”
I shifted on the floor. I thought after the accident, he would have slowed down to take time to recover, but he seemed to have thrown himself back into it.
At least the first few weeks he’d been at home when I got back from the office, but over the last few days, he’d started being more absent again, as if he were slipping back into whatever he was doing before the accident.
“He’s busy,” Hayden said, clearing his throat.
“That man is always busy nowadays.” Serfina rolled her eyes. “Ignore Hayden; he’s got cabin fever.”
“So would you if you’d been stuck in a hospital for weeks and were now housebound,” he moaned.
“Just be grateful we got the housekeeper, so I don’t have to cook for you.”
“That would surely kill me.”
“Speaking of …” Serfina said cheerfully. “I’ve made you both something.”
She bounced up and hurried out of the room. I looked over at Hayden, and he shrugged, as confused as I was.
She returned within seconds, holding a plate with a few BBQ chicken wings. “The housekeeper has been teaching me to cook.” She beamed.
Hayden grimaced. “Nope. Never. Don’t do it, Aria,” he warned.
“Hush. Maggie was there the whole time,” Serfina said, as she held the plate out for me.
I looked at the chicken, hesitating for a beat. It couldn’t be that bad, right? Especially if the housekeeper had been helping. What was the worst that could happen?
I picked one up gingerly and took a bite, pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t half bad.
“Ok, that tastes pretty good,” I said, taking another bite.
“See.” Serfina stuck her tongue out at Hayden.
“You’re brave, Aria. Don’t blame me when you die. I tried to warn you.”
I let out a laugh. “I promise. But hey, if I die tomorrow, it’ll be on the same day I was born. It feels like there’s something poetic about that.”
“Why haven’t we made plans for your birthday?” Serfina asked.
Truth is, I had almost forgotten with everything that had happened. I didn’t feel like celebrating, and with Sebastian being focused on work, I wasn’t sure he’d remembered.
“Honestly, we don’t need to do anything.”
“But it’s your birthday,” she replied, confusion in her voice.
“I’m sure Sebastian has it all in hand,” Hayden added.
“I don’t know. He seems a little flaky at the moment.” Serfina side-eyed him.
“I just think everything has been a lot for him lately. His dad, Caspian. The accident. If my birthday slips his mind, I wouldn’t blame him,” I said.
“Trust me, Aria, he’s never forgotten a thing about you since the first day he met you.”
I rolled my eyes at Hayden. “I don’t believe that.”
“He used to tell me how you made him watch Romeo + Juliet on repeat because it was your favourite, and how he could now recite the whole play.” He chuckled. “And how he’d drag me around after he’d been fighting just to find an open Chinese place to bring you back chicken balls.”
“He used to climb through my bedroom window with them and wake me up. Then we’d end up watching films.”
“He told me how happy you were the first time he did it. He wanted you to have happy memories whilst you were there.”
“He really did that?”
“Honestly, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you. You mean the world to him. You always have.”
“Ok, enough soppy Sebastian. I’ve got a wedding to plan for,” Serfina said.
“Right. What flowers were you thinking?” I asked.
“Fire lilies.” Hayden smiled, looking at Serfina.
“With violets.” She met his eyes.
These two were by far the cutest couple I’d ever seen. They knew each other inside and out. The smile on my lips started to fade as I thought about Sebastian. I’d thought I’d known him like that, but sometimes I wondered if I really knew him at all.
“What’s special about those?” I asked.
“Well,” Serfina said, “as you know, his nickname for me is Nari, Arabic for ‘fiery one’—”
“—And you know she’s fiery,” Hayden interjected.
“Hush, you. So he thought it was only appropriate to keep that going with the flowers.”
“And the violets?”
Serfina smiled to herself and held up her charm bracelet, touching the delicate violet dangling from it.
“This was the first thing Hayden ever bought me. It was for my eighteenth birthday. He said he got it because it was the flower for February, my birth month. That’s when I knew he was the one. He didn’t, though. Didn’t have a clue I liked him.”
“Look, in my defence, I had no idea she ever looked at me in that way. She’d been Sebastian’s neighbour for all those years before she kissed me.”
“I decided I wanted you, and always I get what I want.” Serfina smiled sweetly at him.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world, Nari.”
My stomach did a flip, and for a second, I was jealous that they could still be like this after all these years. That was true love. That was what I wanted, what I thought I’d had.
Until now.