When the elevator doors opened, Mariah wasted no time in walking out and heading straight to the lobby and immediately out of the building to where her car was parked.
When she got there, she threw her coat into the passenger's seat then she fiddled out the jewelry she hid from Henry's view and put them on. After that, she applied some lipstick to her lips then she combed through her hair with her fingers.
"Where are you off to?"
Immediately Adonis sent his girlfriend away into the ride he had called prior, he found his way to where Mariah was standing dressed up.
"Out" she replied, her back facing him.
Adonis shifted to lean against her car, there he could see the side view of her face and watched her as she did things to try to make her hair appear appropriate.
Her long, full red hair.
"I like your hair," Adonis blurted out.
Mariah turned to face him, "thank you".
The horns from cars filled the air, screeching sounds of vehicles were all around them and the noise from people walking around. A cacophony of sounds. But all Mariah could hear was the silence between her and Adonis. Their conversation replaced itself with an incandescent eye contact.
His electricifying blue eyes came off as just the surface of a sea, hiding in itself the depth that no one had had the opportunity or were given the chance to explore.
Probably, she had never looked at him with empty eyes before; eyes that did not have the influence of all the memories of him acting like the stupidest person she had ever met, eyes filled with silent judging words, regarding Thelma, his ability of making Henry feel smaller than he actually was, the sexual appeal constant in his bearing. Yes, at every turn she judged him.
Until now. Until this moment where the sun had rested it's head and gave glory to the full moon. Now that the stars in the sky had never known a clearer night. Now that the discordant sounds all around them had evaporated into silence. Now all that was in her view was an electrifying blue color.
"Adonis"
Mariah heard someone say, someone that had a voice that resembled her own with little to no disparity.
"Mariah" he called.
He took her name sedulously, unlike how other people called her name, like they couldn't wait to rid it from their lips. He uttered every syllable and gave attention to the vowels within, bearing in his voice the convincing tone that she could trust him.
Ma-rye-ah.
That was how he called it. She felt so safe hearing it from him.
The distance between them had disappeared, there was but the space of two fingers keeping them apart.
Mariah lifted her eyes from their bodies, she found the domineering figure of Adonis hovering above her, keeping her locked in, trapped.
The smell of the gutters, or the street food became overshadowed by the smell of rain and sensual vanilla oozing off him. He was all she could see and smell and it was too much.
This moment was playing out longer than she would prefer. She immediately backed away from him, thereby hitting her back against her side mirror.
"Oow!" Mariah yelped in pain.
Adonis took a few steps back "are you okay?"
"Yea, I'm fine" she said, while rubbing her back.
"I forgot to mention, your girlfriend is very beautiful"
Adonis furrowed his eyebrows, the confusion palpable "girlfriend?"
"Wasn't blondie your girlfriend?"
"No she wasn't. I don't have a girlfriend. She and I just had casual sex, today was the first time and certainly the last"
Mariah chuckled. "Are you single because you're against the idea of a relationship?"
"Definitely not," he said. "I just haven't found someone I really like, unlike you and Henry"
"Henry and I are not in a relationship" Mariah stated with a short laugh.
"But you like him enough to consider being in a relationship with him?"
Without much thought, Mariah said "Yes, I like him enough to"
Adonis lifted an eyebrow knowingly.
Mariah suddenly stopped. The curtains of realization spread wide open before her eyes. The times she spent in her room thinking about him even though she tried not to, the fact she found Adonis annoying just because Henry felt small around him, that night they spent together that she had been wishing ever since to spend again. The feeling of Henry's hands on her own, and how her body grew hotter when she saw him. All these were proof of her feelings for him.
Mariah found it hard to believe she could like someone she met barely two weeks ago, but as it seemed, Henry was too good to just pass off, Henry stole her heart.
"I like him"
"But I don't want to like him. Liking someone comes with a number of annoying things, uncertainties, problems of whatever. Adonis, I hate liking people. Everyone that I had ever liked formed the path to my therapist, I don't want to like anyone anymore" Mariah ranted.
Adonis chuckled. "Did your therapist tell you to avoid having feelings for people?"
Mariah shook her head.
"Then what's the problem, liking someone is inevitable, it's something no one planned for and there's nothing you can do about it. Henry is a good person, I honestly think things will work out between the both of you"
A blanket of comfort spread over her raging heart, she almost lost all her cool from her ranting about having feelings. Who could blame her?
The first person she ever liked was a girl in her homeroom back at high school. It made her really confused why she would prefer to see the girl when she was happy, sad or in any sort of mood. She could not talk to that girl without fidgeting and so she eventually gave up.
Being a girl and liking another was terrifying for Mariah. She could not open up to anyone around her, not to Leslie and obviously not to her sisters. She was lost in the world of her own, watching sapphic movies, following openly gay people on social medias.
And after thinking she finally got her head around what it is she wanted, then there came the fear of being rejected and ridiculed by people.
At that stage, she already thought she was a lesbian, it was the befitting explanation for a woman liking another. However, accepting that reality also meant that she would have to face the world of homophobia and was she, a fifteen years old teenager ready for the hate she would receive from her friends, her family or the world at large?
Was she ready for her only narrative to metamorphose into her sexuality?