sweet ocean waves

chapter four

"Alright I can't take this any longer. If you keep hitting your plate with the fork like that it's eventually going to break."

Jasmine winced at my words.

I had been watching Jasmine poke angrily at her food for what felt like an eternity. My father had gone to another meeting in some place I did not remember the name of, leaving me and her to have breakfast on our own.

When he said it would be nice for us to spend some time together, I admit I was nervous at first and became really anxious about what to talk to her, but this was not what I had imagined it to be.

For the last thirty minutes she had been constantly groaning and sighing, her eyes squinting meanly at her food and none of us even said a word. The stony silence was only interrupted by the continuous sound of her moaning. Though I had tried to talk to her, to start a conversation to make it less awkward between us but she barely said more than two words.

Her behavior was getting on my nerves and it drained all the patience out of me.

When she looked up at me, her face turned into a mixture of sadness and confusion.

"Look at your food. It looks like a bomb fell on it and you haven't even had one bite " I exclaimed angrily.

She looked down at her plate, blinking at it a couple of times before she glanced up again. Her movements were too slow, it made me so mad.

"Have I done something to upset you?"

"What?"

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong or are you going to keep stabbing those poor eggs?" I asked, trying to sound less annoyed and a little more consulting.

She just sighed for the hundredth time, putting her fork down next to her plate and leaning back in her seat. I watched her collect her thoughts for a moment before she spoke again.

"It's not about you."

"Then what is it?"

Another sigh. Hundred and one.

"It's about your father."

"What's wrong? Did you two fight or something?"

"No. Actually everything is perfect with him."

"I don't understand?"

"Well, I love him and I know he loves me too. We're happy together, happier than we have ever been."

"I don't see how that's a bad thing?"

"That's exactly the problem. I don't understand how we're so unbelievably in love and yet not married."

"Wait, I thought you guys were already married?"

"Yes, we have the nikkah and we've been living together for the most part of it, but I want it to be a legal marriage. I want to have a wedding and wear a wedding dress, I want to be his wife and not only his fiancé, I want to be Jasmine Priyanka Anand Said!"

She exclaimed in a sad voice before she continued to speak.

"We've been engaged for five years and I always told myself it wasn't the right time. I understand that no one wants to commit to anything when they just got divorced, and the years after that his work just took off and he was so busy growing his own business, but now? Now is the perfect time, we're just perfect, I just don't understand what he is waiting for."

Jasmine sobbed and for a moment I had lost myself in the load of information she had just shared with me. I sat there awkwardly looking from her back to the table and I wished I had just let her break the plate.