𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖆𝖎𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖋𝖆𝖍

"Nico, I've told you a thousand times, you can either be blind or be in my apartment, but you can't be both!"

"All I asked was if you could sand down your table edges so they don't jab me whenever I walk past."

"Sand down?" I recoiled in disgust, "That's mahogany!"

Through her milky gaze, I could see her make an expression equal to rolling her eyes before huffing and flopping onto my couch. I stuck my tongue at the back of her head and looked away for a second, which was nearly long enough to not catch the couch cushion she threw at me. 

I ducked, surprised at her aim for someone who could not see, "Now when I hide your walking stick I'll be wrong," I crumbled, pouring the popcorn I'd made into a bowl whilst Nico scrolled through the channels on my TV.

She could never see what was going on, but always insisted that she could tell if something was good just by how it sounded. Which is how she accidentally put on an R-rated movie last week that was the media equivalent of a porno.

But yes, in her words, she could feel if the 'vibes' of it were good.

"Nico, I swear, we're not watching another romance movie turn that shit off immediately," I warned, passing the popcorn bowl to an illusion that robotically walked to Nico and handed her the snack.

The good thing about her condition is that I could continue to live as I usually did. She would sometimes ask how I was handing her something when I sounded so far away and I'd say some dumb excuse and she'd take it without too much question.

Nico was just as relaxed as I remembered her to be.

She cared about very little and didn't pretend she could begin to start caring, either. She'd never told me, but I picked up that losing her sight had her feeling rather useless or rather, stuck. Her father was a politician, famous with a title that she never did explain to me, and her mother was a beautiful woman who helped her father empty his bank account.

Her twin, Nicholas, was a pretentious bastard who, I swear, sneered at me when I first met him. It was only when he came to pick up Nico during an emergency did he stared hard at the inside of my apartment with a look of pure surprise in his eyes that dissolved into a barely visible respect for me.

He was in law school, something I was mildly impressed by until I made the mistake of asking him about it and was trapped in a conversation for the next thirty minutes of my life, time I will never get back. Her father recognized me as soon as I saw him, but never mentioned what I thought he was going to, even though I could hear the pure judgment in his every conversation with me.

I suspected Nico had told her family we were dating.

Her mother had slipped up one time and called me her daughter-in-law, to which I threw a confused glance at Nico, who conveniently chose that moment to pretend like she was deaf and not blind. We'd had a conversation about it beforehand when she first asked me out. 

I was honest with her and told her I hadn't gotten over someone in my past, instead of taking this as the red flag it was, Nico took it as a challenge. And until a few days ago, I had thought she'd finally given up on it, but considering we still hadn't talked about what transpired, I doubted it.

What I was interested in, however, was what happened to her. I'd taken a walk through her family mansion when she'd invited me to one of their dinner parties. They had portraits, family ones with all of them painted like they were ethnic royalty. Her, her parents, her twin and three smaller siblings all aging in each photo to represent the passage of time. In all of them, her eyes were as white as milk.

We bonded over being screwed over by higher powers, and laughed at how they ruined our lives, but there were times I would stare at her and almost feel like crying. I couldn't help but feel like she got a worse hand than me, like she was punished more severely.

I wish they had taken my memory too.

I wondered why they hadn't.

But it became clear to me when I'd see her parents whisper about me when they thought I was out of earshot. Her mother confirmed to her father that I was who he thought I was and when her younger sister asked me to check the time on her phone, I switched it on to see my news reports being the last thing she was looking at.

Why wipe my memory when nobody believed me either?

I felt grateful sometimes that they'd given me the chance to have someone else share the horrible experience of being noticed by the Gods. But that gratefulness slowly turned into bitterness when I understood it was like trapping a rat in a cage and trapping another one to give it a friend before shaking the cage violently to torment them both.

But at least we were together...I guess.

"Pass the remote, let me choose something to watch," I finally sighed, reaching out to take it from her fingers when she moved her hand away from my reach at the last second.

"Gods no," she frowned, still flicking through the channels, "The last time I gave you a chance, you put on a horror movie."

"I didn't know the jump scares don't have the same effect when you can't see them!"

She scowled at me and continued trying to pull the remote away from me until I smacked my hand over her face to use it as a stepping stone to crawl on top of her to reach for it. "Give me th-fuck!" I tumbled to the ground as Nico sharply shoved me away from her.

"I will lay you flat, Mostafah," she told me, pointing the remote at me threateningly.

I narrowed my eyes at her and launched off the ground, tackling her wrist. She screeched slightly, tightening her fingers around the plastic as I tried to pry them back to get her to release it. "Acting like you pay any bills in this house," I hissed, still struggling as the channels changed rapidly behind us on the TV.

"You didn't even watch TV before I started coming here!" She argued, "You paid for the package because of me!"

The couch groaned slightly and suddenly the both of us were tumbling off of it as it tilted backwards due to our weight. Popcorn went flying as we slid off the leather and landed in a heap on top of each other. We both took a second to breathe until I spotted the black rectangle in the corner of my eye.

I was halfway to scampering towards it until I felt two nails digging into my thighs and dragging me backwards. "You can't even see where it is!" I shouted as she crawled on top of me to get to it.

"I can guess."

My hands curled into her jacket as I tried to pull her back, the white popcorn kernels that were stuck to it falling off due to the rough movements. "Ha! Sucker!" She gloated, allowing me to pull her jacket off her shoulders so she could escape and grab the remote.

With reluctant defeat, I picked myself off the floor and turned my gaze towards the TV just in time to see a shocking face on some celebrity news channel before Nico changed it. "Wait, go back to that!" I yelled before I could help it, almost tripping over the fallen couch to take another step towards the TV.

"Fat chance Versailles, I'm not watching the news," she disagreed absentmindedly, still flipping further and further away from the channels. "It's all depressing propaganda bullshit, anyway."

"Yes, I know the media is rigged, but just," I felt my mind descend into a whirlwind of panic, wondering if I'd really just seen what I thought I had or if my mind was playing tricks on me. "I just want to take a quick look at it again."

Begrudgingly, she agreed and clicked the remote for a few seconds until the channel was back to the one that'd caught my eye. The camera seemed to be on the interviewer, which annoyed me, even more when I realized I could barely hear what he was saying, "Increase the volume," I told her before adding a small, "Please," to avoid another fight.

"-I mean your mother has turned herself into one of the wealthiest women on the planet and you're practically worshipped in the media as being a," The interviewer looked at the crowd, chuckling a bit, "What do they call you, 'Golden Girl'."

My heart dropped in my ass as the person being interviewed was finally shown on screen. Her hair, much longer than when it was then I'd last seen it and her face older than I remembered. She sat in a gracious way, flipping her hair over her shoulder in a way that could easily stop a heart.

My lips parted as she spoke, my ears not registering anything she was saying and my eyes drinking up her appearance where a sophisticated pantsuit hung off her body and expensive jewellery dripped from her arms.

"Are you done getting your daily scoop of the day?" Nico moaned, clearly bored with my choice of entertainment. I resisted hushing her and instead kept my eyes trained to the screen as if I were to blink she would disappear.

"Well, let me tell you dear, the world has missed a face like yours," She blushed, tilted her head away to fake shyness in a way that had her locks falling into her eyes. "Let me be the first to not only welcome you home but ask, really, what are your plans here? Why only come back now?"

Her teeth sunk into her red lips as she looked at the crowd, "I'm not supposed to say this," She admitted, before sighing, "And she's going to kill me for giving up the secret but I've been keeping it so long and I'm just so excited!" 

It felt like all my worst nightmares were coming true as she pulled her left hand from underneath her right, exposing a rock that caught every light in the studio and sparkled on camera. "I finally proposed to my soon-to be wife!" She practically squealed, showing all thirty-two teeth as applause erupted from the studio crowd. "I'm getting married!"

The host, who had probably known about it considering it was his show, acted like he was going to fall off his seat, rushing to look at her hand. "Oh, look at the size of that folks!" He gasped, making the camera zoom in on her hand, "If this is yours I know you put a weight on her finger!"

She shrugged coyly, "I have to make sure the world knows she's taken."

"There's no way you were the one worried about tying her down!" He exclaimed gesturing to her, "I mean just look at you, if you were mine...why I'd never let you leave the house!"

"Me?" She shook her head, clasping her hands together, "I could never be the catch when I'm marrying Versailles Mostafah."