Bandaid

February 2019

It's finally February, damn has time flown by fast. This time around, after me and Alex have been seeing and talking to each other nonstop. He would always spam me with messages and love. Usually through snapchat. He told me before and has shown me his doggos. They're so adorable. So let's get to it I guess lol.

February 3, oh what a day I would always remember. It was a Sunday. Alex told me he had the day off and I asked him if he wanted to go out to Mizner. For those who don't know what Mizner is, it's like an outdoor shopping plaza, they have a vast variety of shops and restaurants along with a huge amphitheater that is used for show performances and more, all of these things surround a giant fountain in the center used for taking photos and creates a nice scenery. This weekend however was the weekend of the SuperBowl. Mizner filled the roads and held an art gallery, making it hard for visitors to drive around and find a parking space in the parking garages. Alex was really excited to see me twice in a week. I told him what there was to do at Mizner and he seemed very happy to come there because he never has been to Mizner before. I arrive first, waiting for his arrival. He texts me saying he arrived but he told me that since the art gallery was covering the roads that it was hard to find a good place to park his car due to the congested traffic of cars all over the place. He calls me as I try to direct him to a parking garage but he gets lost and drives farther away. Eventually I found a parking garage with some empty spaces and I send him my location. He finally parks on the second level 😂 I'm waiting outside the garage next to shops surrounding me. I look up and see his confused adorable face trying to find me from the balcony of the second level parking garage. I'm staring right at him, he looks down and sees me and goes down the stairs. He reaches me and we do our thing as we walk around. As we were walking I kept joking to him that I had to help him find the parking spot when he couldn't himself. He told me to shut up as he smiled with his laugh and I laughed along. We reach this restaurant called Villagio, it looked Italian and I knew he loved his pasta. At first we wanted to find a place for sushi but we couldn't find a restaurant inside of Mizner that had sushi on the menu. As we enter Villagio the host takes us to this small little table in the middle ish part of the restaurant. We sit down next to each other and the waitress hands us the menu. As we look at the options we joking make fun of how such a fancy restaurant was so empty because that day there was practically no one at other tables except for a couple of old people sitting a few tables away from us. We order the calamari again as I made fun of him for confusing calamari with caviar. He tells me to be quiet jokingly as he pulls out his phone to post on his story. You see he was smart with this because he would zoom in on the menu and then suddenly very quickly he would point the camera in my direction as I was drinking the water already on the table. When I see he does this I say "stoppppp" and he laughs as he replies with "I'm posting this on my storyyy". I smile and roll my eyes as the waitress brings out these hard little bread pieces. We both look at this thinking to ourselves that "this isn't calamari" but that didn't stop him as he grabbed one of the bread and starts to try to eat it which keep in mind that this was not an easy chew. I look at him trying so hard to eat it I'm a cool way and I'm laughing. Finally the waitress brings out the calamari and Alex posts the story bragging to his friends that he is out on a fancy date with calamari. Wow I know right? Sooo fancy 😂 but I loved him at the time. Going back to us looking at the menu, he orders some pasta I don't remember the name but I remember mine was called the Fussilli al Telefono. As we wait again we both talk about our week and what is going on in our lives. I enjoyed hearing him talk about work and him telling me all the drama and tea he has with coworker and friends in his life. He would listen to my week too and he really listened and paid attention. He was sweet and knew how to charm me with his ways. Sooo here comes the part where our food comes. A different waiter brings our food then asks in spanish "ustedes quieren un poco de queso?" Which means "do you both want some cheese?" (For our pastas) I reply "Sí Por favor" (yes please) and immediately, Alex looks at me with a puzzled look as if he just saw two aliens talk to each other in some secret unrecognizable language. You see, he doesn't speak Spanish like I do and he was shocked to see the waiter speak spanish in an Italian restaurant. He was like "uhh whattt did he say?" And I tell him and he was like "ohhh ok" we wait for the cheese to come and then the same waitress who originally took our order asks in Spanish "queso??" And I said "Sí Por favor" and she begins to add the cheese on both of our pastas. When she left, Alex still had a surprised look on his face because the waitress that was just there looked nothing like a person that spoke Spanish. I make fun of him and his lack of Spanish knowledge and he laughs with me. We eat our pasta and post our food on our stories. The pasta was so good like omg. We both shared our pastas with each other too and I think Alex also liked the way my pasta was. I finish and he nowww claims he is full. We call the waitress over and she grabs the little box to put the rest of his pasta inside. As she does this I look at him with my head shaking of fake disappointment with a smile on my face and he smiles back with the "leave me alone and don't judge me" face. 😂 he pays again this time, making me needing to pay the next two times. We leave with the box of his leftover pasta. I ask him where does he want to go next and he looks at me saying "i don't know didn't you mention there was a Starbucks hereeee?". This was true, along with me explaining to him the joys of Mizner I told him that they had a Starbucks on the corner end of the shops. We walk and eventually reach the Starbucks. We go inside and I'm like to Alex, "is this Starbucks better than the one you work at?" (Alex works at a Starbucks if I forgot to mention lol) he responds with "wayyy better" we wait in line a notice my friend Lauren up a few people in front of us. She just got her order and was leaving when I called her attention, I tried to like have a convo with her but she seemed to be busy and told me she had to leave because she was with her grandmother. I explained to Alex as she left that she was my friend I see occasionally. He said that it was pretty obvious and I'm like "lol I know" a woman in front of us in the line had a doggy with her and Alex kept admiring the doggo like it was the cutest thing ever. I too loved the dog and the way Alex was talking to the doggo was so cute. We reach the register and I order a frapp which Alex hates because he would alwayssss complain to how frapps are so hard and annoying to make. He orders a strawberry açaí refresher and tells the cashier that he had "numbers" for Starbucks because he worked at one and with those numbers we got a discount. We gotta love saving an extra $1.50 for two drinks. This particular time was also around the release date of Shane Dawson's video on conspiracy theories. Me and Alex are both huge fans of this famous YouTuber but like in reality, who doesn't love Shane? We find a seat near the wall of the Starbucks and start to get used to the fancy chairs. When Alex wanted to show me like a new song or video on his phone I would let him connect my AirPods so we both can share a pod with each other. He connected them and we watch the hour long video. During the commercial breaks I would always tell him "omg these are sooo fake" and he would be like "I know lol but they're interesting" which was true because the theories claimed in the video did seem pretty intriguing. During one part of the video I remember he was looking at me instead of the phone and I see this from the corner of my eye. I look at him back, and he kisses me saying how much he loved me and spending time with me watching Shane Dawson videos. I felt cared for because I felt the exact same way that day. We finish our drinks at this point and Alex then opens his container of leftover pasta and starts eating it in the Starbucks. I laugh again because of the way he was eating it. He told me not to make fun of him but I couldn't help myself, he was too cute. He asks if I had some extra bucks laying around so he can buy another refresher and I comply by giving him three bucks, he disappears to the register to order and I stay behind watching all of our stuff. I get my phone ready to record him coming back. He comes back from around the corner with the drink in his hands and he sees my camera pointing in his way and he was like "nuuu" and I laugh as I post him on my story. The time now was around 6 in the evening, it was getting pretty dark. The video finished. We stuff the overflowed trash can with the styrofoam box from the leftover pasta and our empty Starbuck drink containers. As we leave I see another friend of mine Raquel that was inside near the area where me and Alex were sitting at. She was Brazilian and she was also with her friends. We all exited at the same time and I'm like in Portuguese "Oi Raquel, como você está?" (Hey Raquel, how are you?) and she was like "Hey Marco I'm good" and both of us went separate ways. Alex looks at me when Raquel is out of sight and says "it looks like she didn't really wanna talk to you" and I'm like "lol that's how she can act like sometimes but I know she is a good person". The sky was dark now and me and Alex was just listening to the music on his Spotify playlist. The AirPods were still in our ears as were were walking around the middle of Mizner where the fountains were. He played a lot of his favorite songs and when a song he really liked a lot came on he would skip and jump on the fountain and dance. He danced so cute and as he realizes I am watching him dance he looks at me and smiles. I loved that smile. That cute little laugh that he made made my heart feel all nice and in love. He loved the same songs and artist as I did, he even showed me some new songs which I still listen to today. We reach the center big fountain of Mizner as the art gallery was being packed up and getting ready to clear the roads from earlier in the day. He posts on his story of him walking around the huge fountain being all happy. We reach the amphitheater next and I show him the huge cube that lies on the side that belongs to an art museum in Mizner. I told him that the last time I was here I spun the cube and he at first he asked me if it could even be spun around because it was so massive he thought it would be so heavy. I prove him wrong and then he says he wants to try. I see him push the humongous cube and I smile. He smiles back and when we were done we walked to the stage. We didn't go on the stage but we could've because it's always open and empty. We continue to walk and we leave the amphitheater and we go through the center of Mizner again with the shops we passed through before. Instead of staying in Mizner though we walk towards a new area outside of the general area. There's a little strip mall just outside Mizner which includes little shops and restaurants. There's a restaurant in particular called ramen lab where I used to go a lot with other friends of mine to hang out. I told him this and we walk passed the place into this little park area. The trees here were so tall and they had strips of lights wrapped around their barks. It created a nice illuminated environment as me and Alex walked through. We reach an old not working fountain and we stop for a moment taking in all the bits of nature around us. The music was still playing in our ears from the AirPods. We look at each other, and we kiss again near the fountain underneath the trees. It felt nice and when we finished we walked to a little bench that was in front of this very abstract statue. Alex takes his phone out and takes a video of his surrounding, starting from his feet as he was sitting, to the statue, to the lights emitting from the the barks of the trees around us. I do the same and I surprise him by including him in the video as he was looking around. He sees the selfie cam pointing in his direction and says "nuuuu" again. I save the video and we get up. We hang out around this area and decide to walk back to Mizner. We are back in Mizner with the music still playing, we dance as we walk and we arrive at this shop where they sell macaroons. We both never had macaroons before and we both wanted to see how they were like. It took a moment for us to decide and as I was looking at the options Alex again posts on his story of us being in a macaroon store. He captions is with ":)))" and then after he did that we ended up choosing the coconut ones. As we were paying I noticed the sign at the register had something in french and I said the the lady who worked there that I speak a little of french. With her curiosity I also told her that I know how to speak english, spanish, portuguese, russian, and some little bit of German and French. She and the assistant that was behind her were impressed as she rang up the coconut macaroons I just bought. I told them that it was nothing and that I loved languages. I look at Alex and he was the face of being impressed too, even though he already knew I loved learning new languages. I say thank you to the ladies and me and Alex leave the store. We open the little baggie that came with the macaroons and I give him one of two and I eat the second one. They were pretty good. I loved them. It was getting extremely dark now and the time was already around 8:30 pm. I told Alex that it probably was time for me to start heading back and he said it was ok but he wanted to go back to Starbucks to use the restroom before I left. He goes inside and I wait outside. Eventually after two minutes I get tired of waiting for him and I go inside to wait. He comes out when he finishes and it was time that I had to leave. We said our I love you's and we did our thing. As we went both ways, I turned my back to see him looking back at me making sure I was leaving safe. I smile and we both went home. That night was so fun and so romantic at the same time. I never actually been on date that would usually take this long, but it was so worth it because I had an amazing time, I loved every moment I spent with him. He felt the same because when we texted later that night he told me that he loved it as much and that he loved me so much too. What can I say? I was in love, and he was too. He made me feel so special. My heart was beating with love and all the good moments we shared that day. I didn't want it to end, and neither did he, but that same week we would see each other again. To go out on a new date, and create even more memories together.