Raymond lay there kissing Reni on the fingertips. She giggled. She giggled each time he did it, looking right up into his eyes from down on her back with her hair tied into twin pigtails in a quasi-ironic bid at the fact she was his "baby." She was not his "baby." She was twenty five years old. Yet sometimes they liked to play at this. He would slump around the house in a too-large t-shirt and baggy jeans and no socks and cook her food and she would hug at his leg and ask him to feed her and he would shove strawberry toast into her mouth. She would gulp and say muffled words around it, something to the tune of "thank you," but it would usually sound more like "sausage."

Now and then they'd drift around the garden, always with her holding his hand. If she was not holding his hand she would say: "Raymond, why aren't you holding my hand?" And it would sort of go on like that for several minutes until he did, in fact, hold her hand. She was apparently a sucker for hand-holding.

Now and then she'd stand by the gnome. Upon standing by the gnome, Raymond would groan. He'd say, "Please, Reni, not again--" and yet she'd look him dead in the eye and shout: "I'm a gnome!" And then she would refuse to leave that spot.

"Gnomes don't walk!"

"Gnomes don't talk!"

"Gnomes don't leave the place you put them!"

Until eventually he'd scream (of course): "You're not a gnome!?"

And it would sort of go on like that with the two of them refusing to believe one another. She would say in an exacerbated tone how she could've been a gnome in a past life, and Raymond would groan. He would swipe his hand across his face and sort of look at Reni like she was completely mad. Then she'd simply smile at him prettily and he'd forget all about how annoyed he'd been at her and they'd go on walking through the garden.

Sometimes they'd go down to the stream, and in a rare show of very real intimacy they would sit down on the bank and hold one another. She would lay her head against his chest and sigh about how tired she was from work, and how Mr. Peddler was bothering her again. And her small hands would spread across his chest, taking kitten-licks at his hair. And something would bumble from her lips to the tune of: "I love you..." And he would simply roll his chin against her hair. She would then say: "Say I love you..." to which he'd quickly utter: "Love--" and she would cut him off with: "Not as much as I do."

Sometimes it would rain, and Reni would cry for hours.

These short inescapably lonely moments were the upheaval of his heart. Reni would stand in the garden watching as the rain washed away the end of the garden for perhaps the third time that month. All the plots she'd worked so hard to cultivate would once again slide into the stream. He had tried to build rocks to make a more sturdy landscape, but in all honesty the garden just wasn't meant for it. The hill was simply too steep and the river too wide and--well, Reni wouldn't accept it. She had grown plants at the top of the garden and she longed for a square hedgerow of little apple trees and nice little hedges. But all she had was a sloping, muddy view of a stream; and she would lie against his chest sobbing and sniffling and watching as all her hard work was washed away. In his pity and genuine defeat he would hold her close and tell her everything would be okay. They would try again, even though it was the third time that month.

Sometimes they would make love. Hotly, mostly in the middle of the night. In the night they were adults. He would wake up to her on the couch and feel across her socks and she would stir, murmuring simple words to his voice as he breathed hard into her mouth. He was relentless; a soft stroke of her nipple or a gentle touch of her womanhood and she would open up to him. And soft and wet, he would put himself inside her; and then her eyes would half-open and she'd stare up at him heavy-lidded as he made love to her. Always the same. With his hands about her cheeks and his lips claiming her mouth. They always came. Both.

You see there is a love so elegant and pure out there in the world that sometimes all you have to do is be truly honest with the one you love and there is a hope that if they are the one they will accept you. That no matter the topic or the complicatedness of your spirit if you truly belong together then they will understand. That was Reni and Raymond. He was lazy and unkempt and passionate and creative. She was strict and worried and sweet and well-organized. They fit each other like a glove yet seemed like complete and total opposites. Sometimes when they were out people thought they were best friends until they kissed; and it was not odd or unusual, it was simply love. They were comfortable enough to be around each other with or without romance but they were always better for it. Their house was a little orange house at the end of the lane and they lived in it for many years and Raymond painted all the time in the basement. Remi went to work at the local shop and was by all accounts a florist. He painted landscapes and she worked weddings. They were unmarried, but very much in love, and their friends were musicians and artists; sometimes photographers and sometimes students. More often university professors or teachers from the local schools. In quiet moments, Raymond often checked himself and wondered how he could be so lucky, and thought he perhaps didn't deserve someone as sweet and loving as Reni. Reni mainly worried. Worried for Raymond, worried for herself, worried for the garden; but she never thought that she belonged with anyone else other than him. To her, Raymond was a certainty. A part of her life that she never questioned nor doubted. She loved him in an inescapably pure way that was to her, over and done with. She was simply waiting for him to propose and realise it himself. In all likelihood, she would be the one to propose. She would do it on a hot summer's day, perhaps during a picnic, and present the topic as something airy and ill-thought of.

"Raymond. What do you think about us getting married?"

"Well I think it a lot of fuss?"

"Yes but don't you think we should, for our parents?"

"What? For them and not for us?"

"Well we could do it for us."

"Now that's a thought...."

And then he would slowly smile; and she would slowly smile. And then she would sit there with her feet out in front of her, curling her toes whilst licking at her icecream, quite unable to take her eyes off've him. He would then grin in that cocksure way he often did and lean back on his elbow like the Buddha; and in her madness and elatement she would suddenly leap at him, throwing away her icecream as she landed upon his lap.

"Truly!?" She'd beg.

"Truly."

"You wouldn't joke about it would you...? Oh! That would be so cruel!"

"I wouldn't joke you. Not about this. Not ever."

She would press her kitten lips to his like the final notes of a piano score. She would stare into his eyes longingly; her pupils like small black pebbles waiting to be rescued from a shallow pond. She would breathe and her lungs would seize and she'd wait for him to give her one last breath; and then they would be married.

Reni collected herself and sighed. She was arranging flowers in Mr. Peddler's shop. She put a stop to her imagination and ceased to let it run wild.

Those were her hopes. Her girlish hopes for the future; that she might one day marry Raymond, that they might one day be husband and wife. That they might go to honeymoon in Spain and she would see the bullfights and festivals and have sangrias like Hemingway out on the Mediterranean. She wished to transform. To no longer be a girl but a woman. To have a ring on her finger and answer only to him, her peers and definitely not her parents. She arranged the flower basket still. It seemed to need a lot of arranging. Then suddenly she heard Mr. Peddler calling and she let out a hurried sigh. "Coming...!"

If only Raymond would notice...