Numbers

Eloise stared at the green door in front of her, momentarily lost in her own thoughts. 

Moments later, she let out a long sigh, before she let herself in with her own key. It wasn’t that she minded spending time with her grandmas, they were two of her favorite people in the whole world, after all. What she minded was the fact that it was Valentine’s Day and it was the first time she didn’t spend it with her best friend. Her best friend tonight had a date. Which wasn’t really the problem, if she was being honest. The problem was that her crush hadn’t asked her out; she was sure it was going to happen. Even her parents had a Valentine’s Day dinner that night, which was the reason why she was there in the first place.

She carefully closed the door behind her and walked the familiar hallway lined with pictures. Pictures she used to stare at when she was much younger, always in awe of them.

“Hey, guys,” she called out.

“Who is there?” her Mimi asked before she could put her head around the living room’s door where she knew she’d find them.

“It’s just me.” She smiled as she said so.

“Who are the guys then?” she questioned, her eyebrow raised.

Mimi was sitting in her recliner chair, remote in her lap. Her wife was sitting on the other recliner chair, book in her hands.

“You were the guys, I was talking to you.”

“Oops! For a moment I thought some handsome guy was going to barge in here and I wasn’t looking my best.”

“You always look your best, Mimi.”

She chuckled in response.

“And she knows it too,” added Nana, finally placing her book on the coffee table. “What are you doing still standing there?”

“I... uhmmm...” she brought a hand to the back of her head “I was thinking of getting a shower before I relax too much. Practice kicked my a— my butt today.”

“You can say ass, my darling.” Mimi winked.

“Don’t encourage her,” Nana rebated, swatting her hand in the air. “Go ahead, dear. We’ll wait here.”

As she made her way up the stairs, she could still hear them. They were squabbling as they often did.

“What do you mean ‘handsome guys’? One of these days you’ll scare off a mailman or a repair guy.”

“Charm them, you mean.”

She could picture her Mimi winking as she said so. She couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but she could imagine it. She shook her head at the thought and walked into her room. Her own room at the house her grandmas had her decorate however she pleased, so she felt welcome there anytime. And she did, she so did. It was like a second home to her.

Not too long after, she was looking down at her phone. She had hoped that she’d find a text from her crush once she was done with the shower. No luck. She put the phone in her back pocket and walked downstairs again.

The first thing she did as soon as she walked into the living room, was to kiss her grandmas on the cheek. She knew she had a pass after practice, but she couldn’t skip altogether.

“For a moment I thought you had forgotten your manners.” 

“Never,” she smile at her Nana and sat down on the floor. One day, when she was little, she couldn’t decide on whose lap she wanted to sit on, so she placed herself on the carpet just in between the two recliners. It had been her special spot ever since. Even after she had grown up several inches and they had to push the coffee table a little farther every time she was there. Before she fully sat down, tough, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and placed it in front of her on the carpet.

“Something bothering you?” asked Mimi several minutes later.

“No, I just...” She knew she was unusually quiet, so she couldn’t pretend everything was normal. She wasn’t really sure there was something bothering her per se. Or, at least, she didn’t know how to word it. Then she thought of something, something that was on the back of her mind ever since she stepped into the house. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” they both replied at the same time.

Then they both quickly added: “Jinx.”

That made her smile and convinced her even more that they were the right people to ask for advice. But not before...

“How did you guys meet?” She might have heard the story before. She couldn’t recall it, though; not completely. Maybe she had just heard pieces here and there while growing up.

“It was a hot summer day...” started Mimi.

“Will you quit it?” protested Nana. “Tell it like it is or don’t tell it at all.”

“Fine.” Mimi finally turned off the tv, which didn’t occur very often. “We met at an art workshop at our townhome.”

“You were into art?” she asked “the both of you?”

“I was.” Mimi smiled. “I don’t know what she was doing there.”

“As if you don’t know...” Nana started saying at the same time as Mimi was adding: “except stealing my heart.”

“I’ll let it slide then. Go on.”

“I was there with my best friend, aunt Kelly,” Mimi continued, “she was there with your great uncle Ekon, her brother.”

“I miss my little brother. I’m gonna have to call him later today or tomorrow. Remind me, Ellie, okay?”

“Sure!” She nodded. She was eager to know more. “So... what happened?”

“Ekon had seen this ad in the paper about an art class being given at the local bookstore. He begged me to go with him, otherwise our parents wouldn’t have let him go on his own. I agreed as soon as he had asked me, trying to be a good big sister, but I wasn’t completely sure... I didn’t have an ounce of talent in me and I didn’t know how I felt about having to paint in front of other people. Paint was the main subject for the first class.”

“Once we got there, I relaxed a little as I realized we were supposed to start with those ‘paint by the number’ kind of thing.”

“Too relaxed, maybe,” Mimi continued, as if they had rehearsed the story before. Or as if they had told it enough times over the years. “We were in the middle of the class, I was focused on trying to decide what to paint next — grass or sky — when someone tapped me on my shoulder. I have to admit, it was the best interruption of my life, because when I turned around I was met by the most beautiful brown eyes I have ever seen. Which she lowered immediately, shyly lowering her head slightly as well, causing a lock of her curly hair to fall on her face. Then she asked...”

“I asked her, very seriously I might add, if she had any number 7,” Nana continued, “you know, the paint. And she looked at me with the cockiest smile ever, you know the one, and she told me: ‘I don’t think I do, but I can give you my number.’ I was stunned.”

“She really was. She didn’t speak for several minutes. I was starting to wonder if I had made a huge mistake, when she nodded just slightly.”

“Really?” Eloise asked. “Did she call you after? Did you call her, Nana?”

“I did.”

Mimi scoffed.

“Okay, I didn’t. Not at first.”

“When she finally called me, two weeks later, I tried to play it cool. But there was something about your grandma here...”

“That wasn’t playing it cool?!”

“It could’ve been worse. I could have pretended I didn’t know who you were.”

“You did pretend you didn’t know who I was or what I was talking about. ‘I never took any art classes,’ I almost died of embarrassment.”

“Ooops.” Mimi chuckled. “Maybe just a little bit.”

“What made you finally call her?”

“My brother, I think. He saw me staring at the piece of paper with the number for days. One afternoon he looked me in the eyes and very seriously told me: ‘Jasmine, if you don’t call that girl, I will!’ I remember asking him why he would say something like that and he replied he had heard it in a movie. He was only 14.”

“Did you go on your first date after the phone call?”

“We did. We went to the amusement park near my old house.” said Mimi.

“Nuh-uh. We went to the movies.”

“What?! No, that was our second date.”

“It wasn’t.”

Eloise looked from one to the other, confused.

“Dear, be a doll and go fetch me one of my older journals,” Nana told her, “you know the ones that are on my bookshelf. There should be a red one labeled ‘1995’ on the lower shelf.”

As she was getting out of the room to do just that, Mimi added: “while you are at it, get the picture where we are in front of the ferry wheel that’s in the hallway.”

Five minutes later, she came back with both items and handed them to the respective requesters.

Nana paged through her journal, while Mimi carefully removed the picture from its frame and turned it around.

“Aha,” she exclaimed, “I knew it.”

“Aha what?” asked Nana, “I was the one who was right.” She lifted the journal up and pointed at a movie ticked glued on it.

“You called me on August 10, and we went on our first date on...”

“... August 12,” they said at the same time. They locked eyes, then they exchanged the items.

“We were both...” started Mimi.

“... right,” finished Nana.

“How could we forget?”

“I don’t know.”

The way they were looking at one another, Eloise knew that they were seeing each other, not as they were in that moment, but as the teenagers they were the day they met.

After a few moments, she cleared her throat and said: “that’s so romantic.”

“Now, my darling, I know you didn’t just want to hear two old bats babbling on and on about their younger selves. What’s been bothering you?” asked Mimi.

“Are you waiting for a text?” added Nana, “you have been staring at that phone a whole lot more than usual.”

“Kinda,” she admitted, “I was so sure that my crush was going to invite me out for Valentine’s Day, and nothing... Not that I mind spending it with you two, of course.”

“Of course not. Have you tried asking them out?”

“Me?! But he is 17, I’m 16.”

“What does your age have to do with anything?”

“I mean, he is older, isn’t he supposed to be the one asking me?”

“Oh, darling!” Mimi exclaimed, “I am younger than your Nana and I made the first move.”

“But...”

“Don’t ‘but’ me. You got her DNA running through your veins. And you are just as stunning as she is. But you are not as shy as she was at your age.”

“That’s true,” Nana agreed.

“You are as bold as I am; we do share the same name, after all. Go call that boy.”

“It’s already 4 o’clock, I couldn’t possibly ask him out now.”

“Then invite him in.”

“Uh?”

“Invite him to dinner, we always have enough food anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

They both nodded.

She grabbed her phone and got to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

Before she got out the door, she turned around and observed her two grandmas for a moment: Mimi very gently took Nana’s hand in hers and kissed it. ‘Oh, to one day have a love story like theirs,’ she thought to herself and smiled widely.