Chapter 4
1842 Words
The explosivegaze he gave her made her want to crawl into a hole and never peek out of thedarkness.
In that moment, he knew all her secrets.
Her feelings.
Herscars.
The moment seemed identical to one she hadread in a book not too long ago, but the vehement feeling was something shecould never have guessed or felt. He was forceful. Rapacious. It was as thoughhe had taken off everything from her body and let her roam naked under hisstare. Her breath had gone short. For a moment, she wasn’t even breathing. Shefelt faint.
Gone from reality.
But the land she visited with him wasdifferent.
Dark and consuming.
The sounds around her were muffled. She couldbarely hear the loudness of the girls that sat three rows bellow them. She didn’tfeel the hot air anymore. She felt the coldness and the sweat on her skin madeher shiver. He wasn’t giving in, but neither was she. She could see, by theperipheral view, how his whole form froze and the phone he was holding with hisboth hands was long forgotten. He was set on devouring her.
Then she felt a hard push on her shoulder.
Her vision blurred and she was pulled from thewater she had fallen into, back into the heat and humidity. Back to reality.
“Maia are you okay?”
Sky’s worried voice filled her ears. Themuffled sounds were gone and she flinched at the sudden tones.
“Yeah…sorry, I spaced out.”
“Are you sure?”
Lina jumped in, already taking out the bottleof water she always brought for Maia. The girl would sometimes forget to hydrate,which worried the two even more, so Lina had taken upon herself to make surethat Maia would not pass out from not drinking any liquid. She handed her thebottle.
The coldness of the water washed away a partof the intensity she had felt. But her body was still shaking. Her insides werestill trembling. She was still shook.
Intense.
That was the most intensity she had felt inher life in this form.
Sky took her hand when she had noticed thatMaia’s eyes were drooping. And indeed, the girl was feeling lightheaded.Slightly unwell. The hotness in the air was suffocating her and the aftermathof the staring battle was rattling up her nerves.
Standing up and raising her hand, Sky spokeloud and clear to the bald professor who was praising the godlike man.
“Sir, my friend is unwell and she’s about tofaint, she needs air.”
Their heads snapped in the direction of thetwo girls. She felt her skin prickle and her breath shudder when his gaze foundher form. Sky pulled her up and only then had she felt the sluggish feeling inher legs and the heaviness that made the gravity feel even worse on her body.She rested an arm around Sky’s waist as she wasn’t as tall to rest it on hershoulders, and leaned her weight onto the girl.
They came down the stairs and all the while,Maia had her gaze glued to the floor, refusing to go into the cold vortex ofsavageness the man made her feel. When the two stepped out of the auditorium,her lungs stretched as she breathed in the coolness. They walked to thebathroom and Maia washed her face with cold water, not caring for the mascarashe had put on. She wiped herself and leaned her arms onto the sink.
What thefuck.
She pondered. She thought. She contemplated.
No idea.
Maia exited the women’s toilet minutes after.Sky had let her collect her thoughts on her own, for which she would be forevergrateful.
“Thanks.”
“What happened?”
“Just the heat. It was very hard to breathe.”
“Gosh. They really need to open a goddamnwindow. It’s getting ridiculous.”
“Yeah. Let’s go back.”
Maia encouraged and the two made their wayback to class. On their way back, the duo was just exiting the room. She inchedcloser to Sky instinctively and tensed up when they turned in the oppositedirection of them.
He was walking straight towards her.
Her palms began to sweat and the lightheaded,fuzzy feeling returned. But her eyes stayed glued to his burly and admirableform. He walked with confidence, exploiting strong self-esteem and defiance. Hewas strong, she could tell just by the way his big hands would twist in a fistwhile he was talking. Although his lips were curled in a pleasant smile, hiseyes remained dead, stoic and the steel silver color shone with something shecouldn’t completely decipher.
She glanced at Sky.
The girl was oblivious while typing away onher phone, replying to unread messages.
Her attention turned back to the god.
To her utter shame, he was already staring ather. The gentle glimmer in his orbs grew bigger and his nicely shaped lipstwitched in a knowing smile. Her steps almost faltered and she covered awayfrom his figure even further. He gave her a slight nod, in greeting and purerespect. They had been gawking at each other and neither had made a movebefore.
But Maia was too embarrassed.
Instead of returning the ‘kind’ gesture, herhead darted down as her eyes glued themselves to the floor once more. Shecouldn’t express the feeling of guilt and pain that stabbed at her heart forbeing so uncharacteristically rude to the man. No doubt, he was ticked off orturned off by her behavior.
Yet, when they passed each other and the girlsreached the room, she could feel the sense of relief wash over her. The tensionleft her body and even though she was back into the suffocating room, shecouldn’t help but feel better than before. The source of her distress was goneand she was feeling good. Now, she could entirely focus on the lesson and bemore creative.
She was, again, feeling rhapsodic.
Fumbling withthe keys to her apartment, Maia Adler hurried into the little kingdom. Shegreeted her roommate from the hallway who in return mumbled somethingincoherent once again. Letting her bag fall next to the table she alwaysstudied at, she flopped down onto her bed and sighed in exhaustion. The day washot and humid and even though the sweater wasn’t as suffocating as most of herclothes, she was still sweating uncontrollably.
After the little break on her bed, sheshowered and had dinner, then found herself sitting comfortably on her bed,typing away on her computer. She was chatting with Sky and Lina additionallyand listening to some relaxing piano music. She was preoccupied and working,writing an essay for one of the classes she was attending.
But she couldn’t keep the façade for long.
When she paused, her thoughts scrambled andwent back to the male that had obsessed her mind in the first class she hadtoday. That encounter was too by the book to be real. She had only read, sawand heard the cliché scenes of where the cute girl meets the hot guy and theyend up being together happily ever after. But she wasn’t the cute girl. He wasdefinitely more than a hot guy.
And this wasn’t the cliché story.
She tried to return to the essay, but she wasalready far too into her dreams to be focused on something so serious. Sheinstead focused onto the man she had seen in the auditorium.
He was smart, no doubt, and the way he workedon the computer seemed out of the ordinary. But the question that was buggingher throughout the whole day was why he was staring at her. Maia didn’tconsider herself ugly. She was thick and short, but she had a pretty face. Orso everyone told her. But she wasn’t the chick that godly man should concernhimself with.
She was broken.
For several reasons, she could never date.
She could never open up.
The chains that held her down were too strongfor her to slip past them. They bit into her skin, covered her body in wholeand kept her at the bottom of the stormy sea she was thrown into. She couldn’tbare the weight of someone else. She couldn’t worry about someone else.
Which is why she only had ‘acquaintances’.
She rolled onto her side and ignored thepinging phone. Her roommate was talking on the phone, filling her room withmuffled laughter. Maia felt sleepy from all the activities, but she didn’t wantto fall asleep. For the first time in a while, she wanted to continue ondaydreaming, plotting her own story in her head and living the fictional lifeshe had created for herself. It was worry-free, lovely and bright. Fresh.There, she was strong, a leader and the one who always held the victory flag.There, the battles she fought weren’t as vicious as the ones she had to face inreal world. She was free of the pain her past brought along, her thoughtsmaterialized and her actions doubled.
She was free.
Her wings would spread fully and she would flyinto the sky and never return down to the ground where the peasants lurked. Itwas bliss. But when she had to come down from the high, she would realize thather wings remain torn and broken, ripped apart by the savagery.
For a while, she remained in the fetalposition on the bed.
Thinking.
Dreaming.
Plotting how it would be if her encounter withthe Adonis-like man didn’t end with an embarrassing moment and her trip to thetoilet. How it would be if she wasn’t as rude to ignore his greeting and simplywalk away from the scene. That, had haunted her even after the lesson was over.She had been subconsciously replaying the encounter, trying to understand whyshe was so upset and on edge. There was just something in the man that shecouldn’t quite piece together, something that gave her the ere feeling thatthis wouldn’t be their last meeting. It was then that she realized Lina hadbeen right.
They had seen him again.
But as much as she wasn’t interested in thegirlish chatter about the apparent god, now she was frightened by his solebeauty and demeanor. He, who was working so efficiently and quickly on fixingthe projector, had a very strong personality. The man he had come with was atleast twenty years older than him and even he was respectively talking to him.
No matter the age difference, they were on thesame level.
And then she came back to the same questiononce more. Why was he staring at her? She had questioned the girls laterif she had something on her face even before she had went to freshen up. Theirreply was negative. At that point, she was feeling excited, scared and most ofall, delirious.
In the spur of the images and the overflowingemotions that came from her imagination her body relaxed and she drifted off tosleep.
Tomorrow, Maia would start the day over. Withjoy and a smile she hadn’t worn in a long time.
- Writer
