“Are you seriously taking me on a date dressed like this?” Ethan asked again.
“Yes, Ethan. I know you’re not happy with this right now but trust me, this is going to be a good date. We’re going to do a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
I rolled my eyes. “Should I spoil it for you? No I’m not going to do that.”
Ethan looked down at his old clothes that I had told him to put on. He had on a faded worn out blue T-shirt and sweatpants that he no longer used.
I led him into the garden.
“Are we having a picnic in the garden?”
“No. Today were going to find you a new hobby.”
“For me? But I do have a hobby. I like to write.”
“But do you ever do that? No. You want to do that when you’ll be old and when you’ll have a lot of time on your hands. But that’s not okay. You need to have a hobby now as well. Don’t worry. We’ll find something you’ll enjoy that also won’t be time consuming.”
“But why are we in the garden?”
“Were going to start with gardening! We’re going to plant a lot of flowers.” I said, pointing to the dozens of different and colorful flowers placed near a tree.
“I’ve marked a patch of land here where we’re going to plant those flowers. We’re going to take care of them everyday and water them and talk to them and watch them grow.”
“Sounds like we’re making children.”
“These? are? our children. Because we’re going to plant them together. Won’t that make us their parents… sort of?”
Ethan let out a hearty laugh. “Let’s do this. Let’s make children.”
We burst out laughing as we each took a shovel and began making the hard soil loose by digging into the earth.
We argued over how we wanted to plant the flowers. I was adamant on making flowers of each type to be planted in rows so that it would look uniform but Ethan wanted to do it randomly. In the end, it was Ethan who won because he said that they were searching for his hobby so he should have a say in how he wanted to do things.
It was good that I had dragged him there in the morning because the sun was burning hot on our skin when we finished with it after two hours. We were both soaking wet in our sweat but proud of our work as we stood admiring it. The flowers looked healthy. I had bought them just last night and none of then had wilted. I was glad we decided to plant them randomly because they looked really pretty. Doing it in a uniform way would’ve made it look controlled and we preferred it to look natural as if we didn’t plant them and that they had grown there on their own.
“This is so beautiful!” Ethan exclaimed. “I’m going to take a picture.”
He pulled out his phone from his pocket and clicked a dozen pictures of the same patch of land from various angles. Then he took pictures of us with the flowers in the background.
Ethan liked gardening. He showed a lot of interest and worked hard to plant them with me. This could be a good hobby for him. He enjoyed the process even though there were a few unpleasant moments for him like when we found earthworms and he didn’t want to touch the soil for some time after that. We had to call the gardener to pick up the worms and deposit them in the soil somewhere far away from us.
“So what about gardening? Can this be your new hobby?”
“It’s fun… unless there aren’t earthworms. I like gardening. But I think doing it alone would be a little boring.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something to do. Meet me in my room in fifteen minutes.”
We decided we needed a shower after which we were going to do next thing in my bedroom.
“I’ll water them again in the evening.”
“You don’t have to. I’m sure the gardener will water our plants too.”
“But I want to water our plants.”
I chuckled at his enthusiasm. “Okay, you do that. I’ll water them with you.”
We went to our respective rooms. I took a quick shower because I had to set up things for Ethan’s next potential hobby.
As soon as I was done, I set up a wide table on my bed and searched for the videos that were the easiest and connected it to the TV in my room.
Ethan knocked on my door two minutes early.
“Come in!” I called out.
He had changed and his hair was a little damp. I think he even put on cologne which was not necessary because we were just at home.
“So what’s this?”
“Origami!” I said as I pulled out some papers used for the same. “We’re going to make butterflies, flowers and fishes.”
I passed him some papers and started the video.
To say that we were frustrated during the whole thing would be an understatement.
I groaned as I crushed another paper into a ball and tossed it behind me. I took another one and hastily tried to remember the steps and fold it accordingly to catch up to Ethan whose butterfly had taken a weird shape.
“I do not like this.” Ethan said, staring at his butterfly which wasn’t bilaterally symmetrical like a butterfly should be.
“Me too. Let’s just make flowers.”
We took new papers, our butterflies lying near our feet.
“This is definitely not it. Origami is not something I can ever enjoy.” Ethan said. We were successful at not getting anything to look anywhere near to what we were aiming it to be. Tons of used papers surrounded us.
“Let’s clean up. This is more stressful than my job.” He sighed as he crushed the fish he was making.
I chuckled. “Sorry. I thought it would be fun.”
“It was… kind of. It was something I could do without fearing failure. It felt nice.”
“Then let’s not throw these papers away.”
“Why? You want to remind me of my failure?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s for whenever you want to feel this way again so that you can look at these papers and remember how it felt like. I’ll keep them in my drawer.” I said and placed the papers in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.
Ethan looked at the drawer for a few seconds with a small smile on his face, then he looked at me. “So what’s next?”
“How good are you at drawing?”
“I don’t know. I never drew except for when I was a kid.”
“Same. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s draw and paint whatever we want to. We can both be terrible at this.”
“As far as remember, you weren’t bad at art. You were actually pretty good.”
Shit.
“I mean it has been so long since I last drew. It has been nearly two years. I might’ve lost that flair.”
“I don’t think so. You’d go months without drawing anything and everytime you did draw after that, it was amazing. I know I always said that it wasn’t that good but I was just lying.”
“But it has been? years.” I insisted. “I’m going to be really bad at this.”
“Okay, well, let’s see.”
I had made a mistake. I never thought of Juliet’s talent in art. I thought she would be average because I couldn’t picture her being good at art.
We sat at my table at the opposite ends with a drawing sheet, paint and crayons around us.
“What’re we going to draw?” Ethan asked as he ran his fingers over the paper and looked at the paint.
I shrugged, having never thought of it. “Just anything you want.”
“What’re you going to draw?”
“You.” I replied.
“Me?”
“Yeah.” I said then realized it probably sounded creepy and so added, “Because you know, you’re right in front of me and if not for you I might draw mountains, a river and a house with birds who look like the word ‘r’.
He chuckled. “Alright. Then I’m going to draw you too.”
“Okay.” I blushed.
This was a win-win situation. Not only did I have an excuse to look or stare at Ethan all I wanted, I also had the pleasure to see him look at me with just as much concentration as me.
We began working on our sheets. I wasn’t particularly gifted in the art department. But I had give my best effort to do this better than what I was capable of. Because unfortunately Juliet was really good at this and if I show him my sheet with stick figures on it, it wouldn’t take a lot for him to connect the dots.
So I worked hard on meeting the Juliet standard. I didn’t know how good she was. I was obviously going to fall short of meeting her talent and I was starting to think this was a bad idea.
By the time I was finished, the sheet was near ripping apart by the number of time I had drawn and erased on it.
“Are you done?” Ethan asked just as I was finishing up with the last strokes of Ethan’s portrait with my brush.
“Yeah.”
“I’m definitely not good at this. This can’t be my hobby.” Ethan said, turning his page around to show me the comical painting of mine with an embarrassed smile on his face.
I laughed. “Well mine isn’t any better.” I said, nervously turning my sheet around to show him.
He squinted and examined my painting a few seconds longer than necessary. “Twenty four months really did some damage.”
I smiled uneasily. “Yeah. I told you.”
“You should start practicing. I’d love to see you paint like before. Still, it’s not that bad.”