Legality, maturity, adulthood, womanhood, full-bloomed, ripeness, etc. I'm too excited to own all those names and descriptions to consider myself. It won't be long for me to step down that elegant stairway, decorated with blooming hybrid tea roses of dazzling peach color, coordinated with the same shade ribbons. Mom chose this resort as a venue for my debutante ball. It has an event hall with space fair enough for the celebration, a peculiarly grand and sublime scenery, a more classy ambiance, and a grandiose central staircase with a dressing room at the top.
" I want to present to you our most gorgeous debutante!!.. Cloe Gargante!!!" The powerful and booming voice of the master of ceremony echoed around the entire hall. The next time I heard is the unanimous and overpowering applause with a slight shrill from my visitors.
The moment I stepped out from the dressing room, a flashing and blinding spotlight made me winced, obstructing my vision. Although not long enough for my eyes to get used to the brightness and slowly expose the event hall's contexture. The rarest and fairest peach tea roses that I specifically requested. Besides, being my favorite flower, it matched perfectly together with my coral, peach, silk gown adorned with crystals, around my neck down to the sternum and glitters aligned in the slit from my thigh down to my feet, 'till to the excess fabric that's softly touching the floor. The cold fascinating varicolored lightings induced such lustrous and elegant fells over the ambient and decorations.
My eyes went through my visitors, my relatives, classmates, and friends. These eyes got restless, wandering back and forth looking for someone I haven't seen, it's my best friend, Ziggy. Allowing the fact that I'm aware of the indefinability of his presence since he had been teed off. It made me look back on the melee that happened in a basketball game and what Ziggy aforesaid about Nixon after punishing him. "You scoundrel, you cheated on my best friend!!". Made me suffer this fierce, bittersweet pain as that memory of that scenario haunt me. I got distraught with him, talked roughly to him, accused him of rabble-rousing my relationship with Nixon. It's just, at these present circumstances, that I have given a chance to understand that his words are no deceit at all. He didn't hanker after something else for his sake; instead, he's just carrying a chip on his shoulder for me. Still, my heart set's on praying for him to show up.
At the foot of the stairway, I clapped my eyes on my mother standing side by side with Nixon. Enacts me to brood with a smirk. "Huh! there's the magnificent Nixon, the swain who's simultaneously boating on two rivers. Heh! He doesn't have clues yet that I'm cognizant in everything he had done."
I tried to make my way down the stair surefooted and free from interruption, in an endeavor to look gorgeous on camera, despite the fact that there's a sense of outrage, nerve-racking inside me.
When I made it downstairs, Nixon offered his hand, only to give him a sullen glance, and went straight to the stage without brushing up against him. I can feel his slight touch at my back, guiding me 'till I reached and ensconced myself in a small divan that the party coordinator prepared and will serve as my throne that night. Nixon, as my escort, stands right beside me.
The party's in full swing, one by one my eighteen candle, which is composed of my lady cousins and friends, lights up their candles and set forth their messages and wishes for my birthday. After which they installed the candles on my birthday cake that's almost as tall as me. I feel amused and satisfied, gazing at how gorgeous my birthday cake was. It's even more beautiful than I imagined.
Upon my contemplation, I rubbed eyeballs in a certain corner behind the cake. I had able to perceived someone, a man, wearing a tuxedo like the rest. Just wondered why he is standing alone in that shady corner, away from the crowd, seems to observe or hiding.
In a while, the men are lined in sequence for my cotillion dance. Began with my uncle, which was supposed to be my father's place, who was gone departed, followed by my male friends, and lastly Nixon. They are my eighteen roses, may not be in the last bust Ziggy supposed to be there, supposed to be one of them. Mom includes him in the list as one of my eighteen roses, but he's not there. I counted them in line, and it's just 17, one of them failed to attend, and it was Ziggy.
One after the other, They handed me their peach roses and danced me with the old-fashioned yet elegant tune of the waltz. The exact dance that Zig taught me years ago when we're just a kid. He promised to dance with me in my debut, as he also promised to be my last dance. But nevertheless, he didn't even show up. I can't hold back my tears from falling as we carry on with the cotillion dance. Everyone might think that I'm just emotionally happy and what I shed are tears of joy, but what I truly feel is contrary to what they expected. I found out that my boyfriend is cheating on me and the only guy that I've been expecting and wished for years to dance with me didn't make his appearance on this very day as he promised.
Nixon approach with his noticeably insincere smile. "Happy birthday, babe." Hand me his rose and lean down to kiss me. I internationally turned my head away, ways and means for his lips to just land on my check, not on my lips, where he was supposed to.
As were dancing. "You look so beautiful in your gown. Makes me love you more." He commends.
"Thank you, I hope I can say the same." With a smirk, I look away as I respond, not giving him even a glance.
"You don't look happy. Is anything wrong?" There's confusion in his inquiry.
"Yes, and I want you to tell me the truth to make everything right!"
There's a stain of surprise in his disconcertingly serene and thoughtful stance."Wh-what did you mean?"
"It's Amabel; I want you to tell me the truth. Who is she in your life?" Nixon has taken aback, showing his evident and involuntary discomfiture. "During the Year Ender Party, she's your first passenger. You send her first to the party before you fetched me home that makes us terribly late!"
"Oh! come on, haven't we already talked about it?" He said.
"Yesterday, I saw you at the mall; I followed you at the arcade. Nixon, I saw everything, I saw you kissing! I even saw you during the basketball game. You and Amabel came out together from a room. Nixon, is it the reason why Ziggy hit you? Is it because he knows about your rendezvous with Amabel?" I haven't able to restrain myself and spill out to him everything I know.
"Babe, I'm sorry, yes, we have something, but I think we can work it out."
It only took less than a second as my raging palm finds Nixon's face. " We're not going to work it out; we're off!" I slapped him hard and my voice harder, loud enough to get everybody's attention including my mom. The expressive silent and open-mouthed spectator, some even shriek in surprise as I wonder my eyes around the partygoer makes me want to disappear in thin air.
Without a second thought, I speed out, send myself away from the crowd. Fast enough to make sure nobody can follow me and threw away the roses blocking the way of whoever planning to come after me.