Almost

Like peeling fruits softly, you pushed the drowsiness away from your eyes gently, you didn’t dare to open them all at once, when you had just remembered that you had washed your gray curtains and hadn’t brought them from your balcony yet, they were now probably more than dry and ready to hang, so you opened your brown eyes carefully to look at the sky from the rounded glass window.

The summer’s sun was shining outside so you wondered between your steady breaths, what time is it now? What day is it of the week? So, instinctively, even before you got out of bed or remove the black cover from your body, you tried feel the presence of the phone next to you, you were more than sure that you threw it somewhere in the bed last night before you slept, one of your habits before bed is reading your mails if you had received a new offer or not, you were working as an illustrator, although you own a modest office in New Orleans, but most of the designs offers you receive by mail, so you always keen to read the latest messages, and fell asleep while reviewing the last offer to design an advertisement for the opening of a new kindergarten, it’s true that the offer is trivial, but why would you mind? You don't have much money for the luxury of declining the offers, so you went with the flow.

And that’s how your bright phone screen greeted your eyes, which shows that it is seven quarter in the morning, and it’s Saturday, which is your holiday that you won’t neglect no matter what happens, so you closed  the phone before you throw it next to you again on the bed, deciding in your mind that you’ll steal another two hours, maybe three, of sleep. You closed your eyes again before burying your head under your warm white pillow like a mole hiding itself in its little hole, this warmth you got was more than enough to make your breath slow before you're back to dream land .

But after ten seconds of closing your eyes, the information penetrated your mind, today is Saturday!

Saturday!!!

 It's not another monotonous day of the week, it's the day of your weekly date with your sweetheart Bella who may fight you for two whole days and ban you from her account on Instagram and Twitter if she knew you forgot your special day.

So, in blink of an eye, you got up - or, more precisely, ran - from your bed without bothering to arrange it even to go into the bathroom and take a shower. This was the quickest shower you've taken since you were born. You didn't even have enough time to wash your hair, but that didn't matter. Anyway, you washed it yesterday when you took a warm bath before going to sleep, so within twenty minutes you were in front of your closet in front of a hurricane of clothes.

You already know that you don't have enough time to take a very careful selection of clothes to wear on this special Saturday for both of you, but you also know that your sweetheart Bella is a fashion designer, it’s true that she isn’t a world-renowned designer but she is on her way to the top, so she always trains herself to make the right fashion decisions no matter what happens, so if you dare to come to her wearing whatever your eyes fall on, it means that you have surrendered yourself as a prey to the lion yourself, or in a more clear sense, you became a subject for Bella who will comment on your choice of clothes until the date is over probably, so you have to be wiser and more objective in choosing your outfit for this date, in the last date you heard nothing else from her but her grumbling about the leather shirt you were wearing, well, you’re not the only one who wears a leather shirt in summer, but she's a little bit sensitive when it comes to fashion, and since you love her so much, you’ll try to keep up, even if it is only for this Saturday.

That's why five minutes later you were standing in front of your tall mirror in the middle of the room to check on your black suit you were wearing. It's not that formal suit and has some modern touches that makes it look like a coat at first glance, and it's a very convenient option for a date, attached to a plain black shirt and black jeans as well, pretty obviously, it's your favorite color, but the other reason you chose to make your outfit all black is the fact that Bella finds you more attractive in black, well, you have to admit that you love her crazy.

You took a last look at yourself and your dark brown hair to see if it was neat and if there were no terrible traces of dark circles that swept your face because of working for continuous hours late five days a week, and after making sure that your appearance is good and suitable for meeting your girlfriend whom will now probably be in her best appearance. You went to your table, opened your wooden drawer to take your iron watch - which was your previous birthday present from Bella, of course - to wear on your left wrist. You also took from the drawer your leather wallet and the apartment keys as well. Before heading to your car you went back to your neglected bed to take your red- iPhone from it, and that's how you left the apartment.

Your driving to your destination where you will meet Bella was a bit turbulent, you were in a hurry to get there in time, so maybe you missed out a rule or two of traffic safety rules, plus you gave up playing the radio at the song station or the player that contains a CD of your favorite songs from your college days, and it's a mixed collection, as if a DJ made it especially for you, combining the songs of your favorite artists, "Chris Brown", "Justin Bieber" and "Rihanna". This is in order for you to drive quickly without any disturbance, so it took you a quarter of an hour or maybe less before you reached the Golden Plate restaurant, or your usual date spot with Bella.

As you push the glass door into the restaurant escaping the outside heat of the weather, you look at your watch. You were a bit surprised to notice that the time was eight and three minutes. This fact should be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. It has not even been an hour since you woke up. So you headed with a wide grin to the usual table where you always have breakfast with Bella every special Saturday.

You sat at the table by the window and that big smile didn't leave your face yet, your date was always exactly eight, but since Bella is very slow in driving her car like a turtle, she is likely to be late on the road, she will arrive maybe in ten minutes or so, so you decided to take your seat more comfortably and order food for both of you, so you raised your hand to indicate the waiter to come and take your order.

The waiter gave you a friendly smile as soon as his eyes fell on you, you were one of his regular customers so he was expecting you to arrive on Saturday with your girlfriend, that’s why when he came to you he repeated your order which he had already memorized after several previous ordering of it, "Two bacon, one with hot sauce, a slice of lightly browned eggs, a cheese sandwich without salad, a cold Americano and a Latte," and so you nodded at him with a grateful smile and made a note in your mind to do him his right with the tip later, and so the waiter left you to prepare the order.

In the meantime, you were thinking about how to pass the time until your girlfriend reaches you, of course you won’t call her so as not to disturb her while she is driving, the last thing you wish for her is to get herself into a traffic accident, so you prevented yourself from searching for her number among the contacts on your phone and so you decided to do something else on the phone, that's why your fingers lead you to open the gallery, specifically to the file that was full of your pictures with Bella.

In fact, this file was your outlet from your life's stresses. Whenever you feel things are too hard to bear, you look back at this file. It was a huge collection of photos, 25% were of the two of you together and the remaining 75% of her, a rare collection of Bella Richardson in all her glory, smiling, sad, angry, playful, frightened, sleepy, upset, with tears and a red face, even when she's sneezing or blowing into a tissue, you have many pictures of her in all expressions, it's a legendary collection and ready to be exhibited in a special gallery, so you couldn't stop yourself from laughing a bit as you moved from one photo to another in the studio.

Everything was so natural until a notification popped up on the phone, it was a text from Mike, he's an old friend of yours whom you haven't seen since he became a doctor at the university hospital, so you seemed a little bit surprised that he remembered you so suddenly to text you, but the text was like the following . .

"Calvin Blake, I'm really sorry about what happened to you lately, I just heard about your misfortune. My deepest condolences to you."

Suddenly, and like a room that was covered in darkness, in which the electrical plug was lit once, your unconscious mind suddenly remembered what happened, and then you felt the instability of your breath and a violent pain in your heart, which made you hold your chest tightly and your other hand tighten on the end of the table searching for something steady to keep you from falling on the floor.

Your mind is working again now, which means that your mind has gone back to the last years' summer or was it the year before? everything about your life is blurred after that day so you're not sure, but your remembered that incident where you learned that your girlfriend to whom you had devoted your whole life had died that day of a heart attack she had been driving towards the restaurant to spend a special Saturday together with you, the paramedics were unable to save her, so she died at the same moment.

This happens a lot, you always forget that Bella Richardson, the only definition of your happiness, has left you without return, you always forget that she won't come to your special Saturday, this is no longer something new to you, you always forget it and come back to it later and the pain comes back and sinks in you again, looks like you can’t overcome this trauma.

You almost forgot that she's not alive, yet you didn't.