“Do you remember?” Reese asked lazily, not looking up from his latest iPhone X.
“What now?” unconcerned, Rayna threw an unwilling question at him, her eyes glued to her Kindle book she did not wish to part with.
“The night I lost my phone…” As he said this, Reese sprung from his side of the bed and leaped onto the couch where Rayna was busy reading.
A tiny smile played on Rayna’s face instantly, no match to her partner’s sparkling eyes. “What are you indicating?” she finally offered bait.
“Let’s just re-live that night.” Reese quickly slipped into his shoes and ordered Alexa to switch the lights off.
Rayna followed him out, displeased with the hyper-energy displayed by Reese. Dragging herself out of the door, she mumbled complaining, all the while realizing it was futile.
As they zoomed across the city that never sleeps, Rayna noticed that she had forgotten to carry her own phone. “Reese, we need to return. I forgot my phone at home.”
“Oh, how mundane! Do you remember that night you did not have a phone too?” Reese turned towards her to flash his warmest smile, his eyes twinkling like a three-year-old.
“I did not forget my phone purposely, that day. But today…”
“Shh… If you hadn’t missed your phone that day, we would not have met. So possibly, today is just a day like that.”
“What good are you expecting, my love, after 7 years of marriage?”
“Who knows what we might find?”
Their playful banter continued till they reached Marine Drive. At 3 am, the crowd was waning and the tides were mounting. In the distant, a Navy ship’s signal was playing hide and seek with the lights bordering the Queen’s necklace.
“Now what?” Rayna demanded, hoping that Reese had a plan in mind.
“Breathe. Just breathe,” he responded spreading his arms embracing the wide expanse of the sea in front of him. “Enjoy life without cables on you, darling!”
~~~
“Excuse me… may I borrow your phone? I needed to make a call but I seem to have misplaced my phone somewhere.”
“Sure,” he turned around to notice a doe-eyed lost girl, frantically eyeing the cellphone he was holding. He offered to hand it over to her after unlocking it. She turned around, paced a few steps and halted to listen to the ring at the other end.
“Did you get through?” he called out aloud. Instantly she turned around, only to drop the phone clumsily into the lashing waves. Instinctively, they both leaped to try to hold on to it but realized that it was too late already. She was almost in tears. He was confused. Together they smiled- one sheepishly, the other courteously.
The phone was gone, but that night, two phoneless people found each other.
~~~
“Imagine what would have happened, if you had not lost your phone that day?”
“I would have never discovered how clumsy you really are.” A long lost, yet familiar laughter echoed through the night.
______