FALLEN (NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON)

19.

"I can't believe you made me do this." I let out as we are leaving the hair salon.

I keep on playing with my hair, twirling a ginger lock around my finger. This feels so weird. It has been five years since I had my hair its natural colour.  I feel so giggly.  I feel young and excited.  I feel like I haven't felt in years.

"You look..." I hear him say, so I stop walking ahead from him and turn to look at him.

He has a spark in his eyes that inhabits his smile every time he looks at me. I don't know what has changed, but, for the first time in my life, I seem to embrace my natural colour of hair.

"...so..." He breathes out as he keeps on eyeing me, exciting me with his growth of lust in his eyes. "...hot." He smirks and snakes his way to me seductively.

He takes me by the waist to hold me steady in front of him. He leans forward to caress gently his nose on the skin of my cheek to my hair. He breathes me in and it's an erotic dance I would have participated in if we weren't in the middle of the sidewalk.

"I want you so bad right now..." He murmurs to my ear as he caresses his face on the side of mine to look back at me.

"I'm a lady, M. Wright. I don't have sex on the first date. You should consider yourself lucky if you get a kiss tonight." I tease him and rip myself out of his hold on my waist and walk away from him to taunt him a little more.

"I don't think you even realise how it changes you." He lets out and I turn around again, frowning. I stop walking and let him join my side as we walk to the car.

"How so?"

"The second you saw yourself, you had trouble looking at yourself in the mirror, but you fought through it and you indeed did. You seem happier, liberated, almost younger. You skipped down the stairs, you smile and toy with your hair--"

"Maybe it's because of you... If you didn't find it so appealing, maybe I wouldn't have all that confidence."

"I think you shouldn't put yourself down. That confidence resides in you. I did nothing, but to force that change you needed to break from who you were forcing yourself to be. Now, you can say that you truly found yourself in London."

I look at him with a clear set of eyes.  I can't help but to frown as I think through what he has just said to me.  He is right.  I just can't believe he realises and knows the real me.  He really pays attention to me.  It warms my heart, but I decide to play it off like a joke.

"Why do you understand me better than myself?"

"Maybe if you stopped trying to please everybody, you wouldn't always be confronting yourself with sides that isn't truly you."  He lets out very seriously, which makes me take him very seriously.  How does he figure me out so easily?!

"Why do you know so much?"

"I stopped caring about what was expected of me and I have found who I truly was, because I was selfish, basing my every actions on what I wanted. I know what I like."  He explains and I agree completely with him.  If I don't care what people think, I will never be hurt by their judgments like I have been in the past...  The real opinion that should matter is mine and those of the ones that I love.

"More people should be like you."

"It's not the first time you say that."  He turns his head to look at me while we still walk to his car.  He seems doubtful or maybe he doesn't understand why I think so.  His sight is very insistent on me.

"Because I firmly believe it. You never lie. Everything you do is genuine or you wouldn't engage yourself. You are passionate and driven. And I truly think you are a very loving person... That might be why you hold onto your father's death so dearly. I think you love deeply the ones close to you, that might be why you are so angry that your mother doesn't give you a fair chance at work. You feel betrayed that your 'best friend' would do something like that. I think that's why you felt the same way when you thought I was carrying on my work with your Mum... because you care." I risk myself the last words, thinking he cares about me enough to be compared to the relationship he has with his family, being the only ones I know about.