meraki.

Birthday Boy!

The morning of Friday, Febraury 1st 2019, started with Anna getting woken up by her phone loudly buzzing on the nightstand next to her bed. 

Anna tried to ignore it as long as she could, but when she realized that the phone would've have stopped buzzing anytime soon, she turned her head towards it, her left cheek pressed into the pillow, and peeled one of her eyes open. She reached her hand out, blindly groping around the nightstand's surface until she found her phone and successfully unplugging it from the charger and bringing it closer to her face. 

A string of notifications were appearing on her screen, one after the other, all from the same number. She recognized the name on top, and after she let out a loud groan, she sat up, rubbing both of her eyes with her free hand, and unlocking the phone to read the - now - 89 texts. 

Apparently, Dom was a morning person, because every text was chirpiers than the previous one. Anna loved the guy, she really did; he made her laugh, he made her feel safe, he made her feel loved - which was never taken for granted, especially coming from a man. 

But texting her at 6:45am of a Friday morning, 89 times in a row, only to go over what they had discussed ad nauseam in the past week was not it. 

She scrolled through them, skim reading them all, knowing that no new infos were contained in them, then sent back a "Thumbs up" emoji to Dom, to let him know she had read it all and was present and operative. It was quite the dry answer, but it was also barely 7am, and Anna wasn't properly functioning. 

She fell right back on the bed, her phone forgotten somewhere on her chest, and tried to fall asleep again, even if it was just for a quick 30 minutes nap, before she had to wake up to go to work. 

Then her phone buzzed again, and she was ready to smash it against the farthest wall from the bed. Then she unlocked it and read the full text from Dom. And her homicidal instinct immediately tamed down, replaced by a soft smile. 

This time, she wrote back a proper answer, taking her time to write the words correctly, half an eye open and one thumb hovering over the touchscreen. Oh, how she missed when she was ready to go one second after waking up. 

Once the text delivered, she placed the phone back on top of the nightstand, plugging it in again, and leaned her back on the wall right behind her bed, knowing she wouldn't have been able to nap. She was wide awake by then. 

She yawned and got up, streatching her whole body to get ready for the long day ahead of her. 

For some reason, Dom had chosen her to help him prepare the surprise party for Harry's birthday, that would've taken place that night at the coffee shop they both worked at. He had pitched the idea to her the previous Saturday, January 26. 

He had called her, whispering into the phone like he was in some kind of spy movie; at first, Anna hadn't understood a single word he was saying, and she had asked for him to repeat them all. He had justified himself, telling her that Harry was in the kitchen, baking something, to which Anna had responded that he could've simply walked away, if there weren't many clients. Dom had remained a bit taken aback from her words, then had quickly followed her advice and when he had spoken again, Anna had been able to hear him loud and clear. 

"I'm throwing him a mythology themed party!" - he had announced, his voice coming out incredibly excited, as if Dom was talking about his own birthday, and not his best friend's. 

"What?! Why? He hates mythology!" - Anna had answered him, holding her phone close to her ear with her shoulder as she parted books into different piles for different shelves.