The Lullaby Nights

♥ 16

NIGHT THREE

NINA

Gina let me keep the rubber duck. When I woke up from my nap, it was floating in a crystal clear bowl, which had been filled with water and left on my bedside table. It looked pretty next to the flowers that Asher had brought me the other day. What I couldn't understand, though, was why someone had closed the cubical curtain around my bed.

'Harley?' I muttered, bewildered.

His voice quickly emerged from behind the blue fabric. 'Give me a few minutes, pumpkin.' He seemed busy, not to mention the noise he was making, which sounded as if he was shuffling through a box full of pens.

I frowned, confused. I was somewhat nervous. The image of me crying last night flashed through my enervated mind. I didn't want to ruin another evening. I didn't even mean to break into tears, but when Neil had taken the picture, I just could not to. I was smiling to the camera, letting him capture that lovely moment, as if I needed it seized in pixels, so I could look back to it in the future.

But I didn't have a future.

Harley had been putting so much effort into making my days special. I couldn't tell him how I'd felt. It would've made him think that whatever he was doing, wasn't a good idea. He deserved that picture to be taken. He deserved to make memories for himself. That's why I hadn't disclosed my thoughts to him.

I glanced over at the duck and laboured my hand to poke its yellow, rubber body. It undulated smoothly in the glass bowl, making one memory in my head come forward.

'Nina, help me!' he'd screamed that day, running away from a lake and a duck that had been chasing him for good ten minutes.

I found it hilarious. 'She wants your sandwich! Just give some to her!' I laughed.

'I can't! It's with roasted duck!' he yelled in panic. The bird, as if it understood his words, quacked loudly and picked up the pace, furiously flapping its wings.

I laughed even harder. "Just throw the bread!"

And so he did.

I inhaled deeply. That memory, along with others, were all I had. I wasn't going to make any new ones. Not like those from the past. It stung. It stung right in the heart.

'Ready?' Harley's voice filtered out into the room.

'Sure,' I said, still somewhat asleep.

In a blink of an eye, my boyfriend sneaked in, marginally spreading the curtain but for some reason maintaining it closed. He then stood in front of me, excited, waiting for my reaction.

A laugh bubbled up my throat. 'What on earth are you doing?' I couldn't help but let out another giggle.

He was wearing a green-red-and-yellow motley costume and a cap with bells that jingled each time he moved his head. He looked ridiculous but sweet in some way, not to mention the clown make-up that he'd applied to his face. Now I understood the noise I'd heard before. He hadn't been shuffling through pens but cosmetics.

'Don't you like it?' He pressed his index fingers against the corners of his lips, which were smeared with red lipstick, and dramatically dragged them down like a real clown. 'I thought I kind of pulled it off, you know,' he said, convinced. 'My butt looks lush in these.' He turned around and stretched, making his bottom, clad in the lustrous, diamond-patterned fabric, appear right before my face.