Of Ginger & Spice

R&N: A Cosmic Catharsis

40: R&N: A Cosmic Catharsis

7:12 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

A bittersweet expression flickered across Mel's face, as she swallowed a sip of wine. "So, Nico. Tell me more about yourself."

7:18 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

The next several minutes had Nico explaining her personal life and career trajectory from a misunderstood, angsty teen to a collegiate with the typical misadventures, which then led to snippets of her police academy days. Mel could have recited the summary bullets word-for-word. She knew Nico just that well.

Mel had memorized, long ago, the shape of Nico's willowy figure, the texture of her ebony hair, the smell of her skin after an early morning shower, the feel of her own fingers interlaced with hers, the way she would laugh whenever she was shown a picture of a cute puppy on Instagram, and how Nico always used to say that maybe, in the future, they'd have their own someday.

The inexplicable sparks that arose when their lips touched, the swooping pit in her stomach each time she gazed at her across a crowded room. The museums they had met at clandestinely, during Nico's lunch breaks, to examine the latest Georgia O'Keefe or Andy Warhol exhibit. The evening strolls around the city they had last inhabited, exploring the vintage bookshops and antique weaponry storefronts that Nico enjoyed so much, holding hands in that distinctive way, playing a hidden game of thumb war that no one else could ever see.

8 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

"Red."

"Snow."

"Iris."

"Cricket."

"...Nico." The four laughed aloud as they said their goodbyes. Of everyone present, Nico was the only one without an alternative moniker (or so she thought). "Red" corresponded to Rani, both due to the first letter of her first name and the fact that when Abigael met her in London a decade ago, she had been wearing a cherry-red holiday sweater. "Snow," oddly enough, was Abigael instead of Rani, due to Abigael's Ashford table and preference for marble-patterned furniture that had withstood the test of time. Mel couldn't help but notice that Rani's patterned knife set matched the Ashford design perfectly.

"Perhaps we can do this again?" Rani looked up at Abigael, who regarded her with a neutral, though not unpleasant, expression.

"Perhaps," mused Abigael, as Rani and Nico departed. After waving goodbye at them for a time, she closed and locked the door, turning to face Mel.

Mel's heart was still burning, smarting, singeing. It wasn't about the puppy she and Nico would never adopt, the secretive museum visits that vanished, the vintage bookshop dates that were no more, the myriad hidden ways they painted their love for the world to see that had long since dissipated. Perhaps, at the end of the day, they might not have survived as a couple. It was, rather, the agony of knowing that she had stolen those memories from Nico, for Nico's own safety. And the awareness that, unlike past lovers who smile nostalgically at fragmented memories of a lone dalliance, Nico would never, to her dying day, hold so much as a shred of memory of the passion she and Mel once shared.

8:01 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

Mel sank to the floor in a heap, physically and emotionally spent. Abigael, after much cajoling, guided her partner to the living room sofa, where she stared up at the expansive ceiling, as if she were in a psychotherapist's room instead of her partner's luxury apartment.

"Mel, I'm sorry," began Abigael, sitting in the cushioned chair opposite her. "If I'd known—Rani's notorious for subtle irony—but I don't think she did this on purpose—I would have warned you, I swear."

"I know," Mel replied, trying her best to take slow, deep breaths to keep herself from crying or hyperventilating at the farce that had just taken place. This had to be some kind of cosmic joke, right? Couples' night with a memory-wiped police academy ex and her celebrity partner, who was Abigael's own ex? Karma truly was a bitch. Maybe the universe is punishing me for wiping Nico's memory?

"It's not your fault," Abigael remarked softly, as if she could hear the remaining vestiges of Mel's exhausted inward thoughts; she moved from the cushioned chair to the upper edge of the sofa where she now sat, tenderly stroking Mel's cheek as tears began to fall of their own accord. She added, nearly inaudible this time, "I love you...I love you...I love you...I love you...I love you..."

9 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

Mel sprang up suddenly and grabbed a couple of napkins from the kitchen. "Tissues," she explained to a confused Abigael, as she returned to the sofa once more. "So I don't stain your fancy fabric."

Abigael gave her a bemused expression. "You just received the shock of your life in the form of a memory-obliterated ex and my own possibly homicidal ex-girlfriend, and you're worried about my furniture? Mel Vera, I never figured you for the materialistic type..." Abigael remarked, albeit jokingly.

9:05 pm, New York Luxury Apartment

Mel couldn't help but smile, wiping traces of her earlier tears away as she rose to a seated position. "Yeah, what a day," she whispered, holding Abigael's hand.

"What do you want to do for the rest of the evening? I owe you that much—" Abigael began.

"Can you dance with me?" Mel asked. "Then maybe an Audrey Hepburn movie night over popcorn?"

"That sounds lovely. Let's."

"Oh, and Iris," murmured Mel, grabbing Abigael's hand as she was about to rise from the sofa's edge, "I love you too."

Mel then proceeded to pull out her phone, turning it to the next slow song on her playlist.

Mel's hand encircled Abigael's porcelain visage as they kissed. She drank in the lovely image of her partner's sylph-like figure and her richly chestnut-hued hair. Eyes locked upon the other, they interlaced their hands, beginning to dance once more in the rhythm of their steady, steadfast heartbeats. Mel realized that Nico was a part of her past, but that Abigael was her future. She was firm in the knowledge that she and this Iris of hers were closer to building a beautiful and altogether unique family of their own with their daughter Tory, someday very soon. Though the early evening had caused her considerable grief, the cathartic renderings she experienced in the timeless period and thereafter made known to her that Abigael was her "forever," in the life they had created for themselves in the city. Her "now, and forevermore."

As it had been, and as she always knew it would be, Mel truly felt at home in the embrace of her one true love, the beguiling, sophisticated Abigael Jameson-Caine, with her complicated underworld ventures and nefarious genius now employed for good. And a thought suddenly occurred to her...what if? What if, in this quest for their family...what if she were to propose to this partner of hers, who had always kept her on her toes from the very beginning of their relationship? The one who was the 'yin' to her 'yang'—the intricate balance of darkness to her light—the winter to her summer, the natural chaotic entropy to her exacting sense of order, and everything in between? She would, perhaps, begin an incognito online search for minimalist-yet-fashionable rings tomorrow. But tonight, she thought to herself, date night had already begun; true love beckoned once more.