[25] 

“do you realize there’s only two options for our future together? it’s either we break up or we get married”, i said, all-human, all unknowing. 

“don’t you think i already know the answer to that?”, lisa replied, all-smiling. probably giving away all the answers, she held me tighter. 

“i once attended a lecture,” lisa shifted her position to a way she does when she’s about to tell a story of her explorations of historical times. 

we were laying in bed side-by-side, lulled by the music of 1970s rhythm & blues a.k.a. the golden era of soul. 

and maybe ohio players was right, heaven must indeed be like this. 

“hmm?” i replied, lost in thought, but eager to listen to what she has to say. i always learn a thing or two whenever she speaks. 

“the lecturer kept asking us, ‘what is time?’ is time universal? is there an audible tick tock throughout the galaxy? a master clock?” lisa said, quoting the professor in her next utterance, “the answer my friends is no. time is not absolute.” 

i gawked at lisa. how she was the person i love and the one who loved me back was beyond me. unfathomable how the cosmos had created such distinct set of atoms that made up this being in front of me. 

“…he continued baffling us with his disheveled gray hair and the next words he spoke, ‘the distinction between the past, present, and future is but a stubborn illusion’ then he just started writing e = mc² on the board about eighteen times making us close our eyes to imagine what the sun might look like. it was formidable.” 

i froze in place. e = mc²? where did i hear that? 

“wait,” completely shocked and filled with amazement, i tried to get a grip of what i have just learned by reducing it into a palpable sentence, “you attended a lecture of albert einstein? THE albert einstein?” 

“was that his name?” lisa’s cheeks formed up almost rendering a grin, ”now that i think about it maybe it was mr. einstein”, she grinned playfully. 

i threw a pillow to her face. i’m so jealous she got to meet the greatest physicist of all time. i couldn’t shut my nerd up! 

but now that I think about it, lisa was never nonsensical. she would never mention things on a whim, or just because she feels like it. my lisa is more than superficial. 

“hey,” i stated calmly, “why did you tell me that?” 

“oh you know, just to brag”, she replied, laughing. 

i was just about to throw another pillow at her face — she doesn’t give me reasons to be jealous of all the other people she had been with in her past, but i was surely jealous about this one. 

“do you remember rule number seven?”  lisa said, while straightening up to sit on the bed. 

of course, how can i forget, “rule number seven, time is not the boss of you”,  i said like a top student in a class i was the only one atten