RomCom Cliché

Chapter Twenty-Six

Weeks passed by and summer was well under way, boiling hot days giving way to blissfully warm nights more often spent outside than in. 

Rebecca took Freen to outdoor movies at the park and Freen took her on sunrise hikes up in the mountains and they ate out at restaurants overlooking the bay or with outdoor patios, drinking sangria and burning their shoulders in the sunshine.

They took their promised anniversary trip at the start of June, Rebecca booking some remote stone house in the desert for the weekend. It had a fire pit that was useless in the heat but which Freen lit at night anyway, a haze of smoke drifting up to the indigo sky as they sat outside, sharing wine and enjoying the peace. 

There was a copper tub with a nice patina situated on the porch and they lounged about, sunbathing and reading books and cooking dinner together, the domestic intimacy of it feeling far different to their usual routine of dinner at home.

The act of being secluded together made them feel closer, driving out to hike the sandstone foothills and getting coffee at a small shop that only sold organic products, playing Scrabble around the coffee table with the old stereo tuned into the radio. 

It wasn't anything fancy or ridiculously expensive, the compromise leaving Rebecca out a few hundred dollars and pleased with herself for sticking to Freen's wishes.

Shortly after getting home, it was the anniversary of Ania's birthday and Freen hesitantly asked if Rebecca wanted to visit the cemetery with her. Leaving work early on the day, Rebecca went to pick up the bouquets she'd ordered - four again, so Freen could have one too - and then met Freen outside her office around lunchtime. 

She drove them out to the cemetery and they walked the path to the headstones, and Rebecca hung back as she let Freen arrange the flowers and tidy things up, although Nun maintained them well for her.

Teary-eyed and brooding, Freen said she was ready to leave half an hour later. They went for lunch at Noonan's afterwards and Freen picked at her food with an unusual lack of enthusiasm as Rebecca ate her salad and watched her closely. 

They went back to her place afterwards, closing the blinds so the apartment was cast into darkness, and Freen brought out her old VHS of Funny Girl and they watched it together while she occasionally offered up a snippet of information about her mother. Rebecca filed it away, cherishing the rare moments of vulnerability that Freen offered up.

Engfa and Charlotte's wedding was a month later and they didn't really have time to talk about things then. Freen was so busy at every moment that Rebecca felt like she barely saw her, even though they still spent almost every night together. 

So much of that time was taken up with Freen anxiously rattling off things she was sure she'd done, and things she had left to do, and things she had to check with Engfa about. 

It was amusing to Rebecca, who watched her scatterbrained girlfriend pace back and forth on the phone with her sister, while Rebecca sorted things out with Charlotte on the side, her meticulous spreadsheet shared with the other woman as they went about things in a calmer, more organised manner.

One might have been mistaken in thinking Freen was getting married with how seriously she took her duties. Even to the point where on the most recent game night, she'd been tucked away with Engfa and a bottle of wine, conversing in low voices about the number of centrepieces and how many candles they would need, while everyone else geared up for the next hand of Cards Against Humanity. 

Engfa and Charlotte had become a permanent fixture at any event with Rebecca's friends, and over the last few weeks, since meeting them, Freen's other friends had been invited too, swelling the ranks to double what they'd been before.