No Love Greater

CHAPTER ONE

My earliest memories as a teenager had me stuck neck deep into watching races on television, a side attraction that became a part of me over time. I never really memorized the names of who was racing those years but the thrill was a way to get distracted from my realities. As much as it seemed like I developed a passion for watching the sport on my own, this culture was certainly gotten from my late mother. She was a fan, a complete fan, with a lot of merchandise relating to the sport amongst her possession. Ana Casabella Cuenca, was of Spanish origin, a native of Barcelona and an only child to Paul and Isabel Cuenca, a middle class couple. She met my father Fabian Reiss, a black American while schooling at 23 in the United States, fell in love, got pregnant, only to discover he already had a family. She was shattered but refused to terminate the pregnancy even after repeated calls and threats from her parents not to have a child out of wedlock. The deception stung and the pregnancy was a constant reminder, but even with that, she gave me, her daughter his last name, Reiss. I was named Selena Harper Reiss. Though I was mixed race, I took my mom's silky hair and her beauty.

My grandparents who were not thrilled with their only offspring's pregnancy instantly fell in love with me the moment they set eyes on their granddaughter. Ana eventually graduated and moved back to Spain with me. She got a job with a telecommunications company and worked extra shifts just to make ends meet. This made me bond more with my grandparents because most of the time I was with them when not in school but she returned only when I was asleep. My mother tried as much as possible to make sure she spent her weekends and leave periods with me. My fondest memories of her are embedded in pictures of both of us, with me as a little kid attending some races. As a matter of fact, there was one time she won a lucky draw at a race and was selected as the lucky fan who was going to meet and be able to take pictures with the winner of the race in the and explore some parts of the paddock. Michael Schumacher won the race that year. She was practically glowing in all those pictures and each time I look at them, they brought tears to my eyes because I realized that was the only period when she was the happiest, I guess she probably never got over the fact that my father deceived her. Eventually, she was involved in a car crash a month after I turned eight which caused great grief to our family and was buried in her hometown of Barcelona.

In a bid to get out of my abode upon graduation from high school, I applied to three Universities in the United Kingdom, received admissions from all but chose to study Data Science and Analytics at Imperial College London because of the full scholarship attached to it. As much as possible, I tried to focus on my studies and luckily, I got paired with a roommate Kayla Zanip, a Greek fun but studious undergraduate. Her parents got us tickets to attend Formula 1 races each year at the British grand prix. The love we had for the Ferrari team was huge. She had a big crush on their driver Charles LeClerc. We would go out to let loose a bit but we never took our minds away from finishing with good grades. After my first year the students dubbed me "Beauty & Brains", an accolade that caused me to get a couple of jobs where I earned extra money for my upkeep. It was definitely a thing of pride to be the face of many of the school's social magazines and this contributed a lot to my confidence.

The boyfriend, yes, the boyfriend, Daniel Woods was a handsome and also a popular student in school. Kayla told me countless times of how he was seeing other girls without my knowledge but I never believed. We would occasionally kiss but that was the farthest we reached. We were never intimate. He eventually shocked me and ended our relationship a week to our graduation. Daniel was selected by one of the top Oil and Gas exploration companies in the UK, probably as a dividend of him being the best graduating student in his Petroleum Engineering class. There was nothing I could do, it was me or the job according to him and I honestly didn't blame him but it saddened me. I never confronted him about what my roommate told me.

In the last week of preparations, uncertainty hit me, there was no offer to me yet even though I was amongst the top three in my class. There was hope, but it seemed each and every passing day it kept dwindling. And gradually, my belongings were packed in different boxes in preparation for life after grad and into the "real world". I had rented a one-bedroom apartment in North Greenwich area of London, with the relocation company to pick my items a day to the ceremony. My grandparents and her family members were arriving the day before too. While Kayla went to pick her relatives from the airport, I was sat in our school hostel waiting for my folks to depart Barcelona. They were to arrive in about two hours so I left thirty minutes earlier to meet them. We were all back in their hotel after a while and caught up on the times we missed. Both our families had dinner together. There was a lot of food, advice, bonding and pictures taken. After that, hugs and goodbye's filled the night in anticipation for our special day. I slept off minutes after my body touched my bed and by 8am the next day, my alarm woke me up.