Stories of Love

Up To You

Thirteen years.

"Yeah...?"

And he still knew nothing about her.

"What do you want for your birthday?"

He asked. And he one hundred percent knew with all his heart what her answer would be.

"Dunno. It's up to you."

And then he knew she would instead ask with, "What do you want?"

"Let's not make it be me today," he sighed. Truly, he was somehow frustrated sometimes when she always replied every freaking question with, "Up to you," every single freaking time.

"Seriously, there must be something you want," he continued again when she seemed too busy back in the kitchen to respond.

And she hummed her infamous 'uh-huh' before getting back to her cooking.

"Then what do you want to do today?"

He prayed to God she didn't answer that with the same thing again. But seemed like it's not how He wanted it too, because he could hear her voice saying, "Dunno, what do you have in mind?"

He sighed once again and stood up from his sitting position on the couch. Surely the house felt more quiet with the kids out having a sleepover with their cousins. Ah, he already missed their bundles of joy.

He looked up to his wife from the connected dining room, seeing her still occupied with whatever it was that she was making. And by the smell of it, it was probably a chicken soup.

No. It was chicken soup. Because she always made his favorite everytime something special happened, or expected to be celebrated. Her birth day not excluded.

And she knew his shirt size, shoe size, his irritation towards any music, his wake up time everyday, everything. She even knew whatever he wanted to eat for dinner, lunch, or breakfast without asking him anything. And this morning she even got him his medicine for his migrain before he could say a thing. She knew too much about him.

Yet, what did he know?

"How is it that you know everything?" He wondered aloud.

She paused from her activity for some seconds to check him to see if he actually had grown two heads, because she was sure her husband was not himself today.

"What do you mean?" She asked while she got back to stirring the chicken soup. "I don't even know how to use electronics."

Well, true. He knew she was such a klutz. That's why she was using gas stove right now and no microwave everywhere. She absolutely had no idea how to use a computer, let alone a cellphone.

But she mostly stayed inside so he needn't to worry about not having her picking the home phone up when he called from work.

A ding sound could be heard coming from the clanking sound of the pan and wooden spoon, accompanied by his wife's sing-song voice, "Dinner's ready!"

He sat down on one of the dining chair while she poured some soup from the pan to a bowl. Some heat puffed out as smoke immediately as the soup was poured down to the bowl. He already caught the smell and couldn't help to eat it right then and there.

But then the whole 'today is wife's birthday' popped up again inside his head and he unconciously frowned.

"What's your favorite colour?"

He didn't know why he asked that out of the many that he still wanted to know from his wife. Because he never knew what her favorite colour was, he just picked blue randomly many years ago and just somehow stuck to buying blue things for his lovely, mysterious wife. She never refused. Nor did she ever said bluntly what she liked.