SONDER

𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯

SEASON ONE, EPISODE EIGHTEEN:
SHE WILL BE LOVED

SALOME

"You can't sing." I tell Mecca. She rolls her eyes and sets the remote down at the edge of my bed, Teenage Dream was her song of choice and it had just gone off.

"I can definitely sing. You can't sing, that's why you didn't want to do karaoke." She climbs on the bed and gets beside me.

I look over at her and peck her lips, a smile appearing on her face. "You are such a softie." She laughs.

Mecca was someone who moved in a few houses down in about late January. My parents took me over there to meet her and we hit it off, but we never talked much after that due to the fact that I was still in school and she was doing her work online since it was so late in the year, and because of Venus and Hadiya.

Once I cut them off, I began hanging with Mecca more and getting closer to her. We started off as friends but when she spent the night last month, it turned into a little more than friendship. Now, it was a relationship.

I had a girlfriend.

I've had one before, of course—Hadiya. But this isn't the same. Mecca doesn't come with drama and she isn't jealous of the people around me. She knows about Venus and Hadiya and the whole cheating thing, but she doesn't care.

She believes I've changed, which I have.

My dad knew, he would make little sly remarks about me closing the door but I knew he wasn't serious. My mom didn't know, though. I don't plan on ever coming out to her, she'll just find out once she gets the wedding invite and sees that I'm not marrying a Davon or Jermaine, but instead I'm marrying like..a Kiana, or something. I don't know.

"I'm not even a softie, you know that."

"You are the biggest softie!" She slaps my thigh playfully. "Remember that one time I ignored you for like one or two days and you sent me an Edible Arrangement so I could speak to you again?"

"That's not being a softie. I just wanted to speak to my girlfriend. Normal human emotion right there."

"You spent like, one hundred dollars on some fruit to get me to talk to you. You didn't have to spend anything, honestly."

The thing about Mecca that made her stand out from Venus and Hadiya was that she wasn't wrapped up in drama. She didn't care what other people thought. She was unapologetically herself.

"Does it matter? I spent the money already and you ate the fruit within two hours so get over it." I reply. She rolls her eyes playfully and leans back in to kiss me.

I reached my hand to the back of her head, grabbing ahold of some of the knotless braids in her hair, deepening the kiss.

She climbed onto my lap, straddling me as she began to add tongue into the kiss.

The door to my bedroom opened, making us quickly break the kiss. I turned my head to my door, seeing my mother standing there with a shocked look on her face.

"Mom, I—"

"Mecca, I think you should go." My mom looks over at Mecca, who was clearly embarrassed. "Salome, I need to see you downstairs. Now."