It's Too Late To Love Me Back

Chapter 7

So.. How was I rejected?

Two years ago.. I wasn't as bright and optimistic as I am now, I was wilting like a flower though I had just intered the spring of my life.

The 21 years old me.. who hasn't yet been definitely rejected at the time..  was on the verge of break already.

Loving Younes became excruciatingly painful at the time.

I remember sitting at a table in the Merabat villa's guest hall one afternoon, I was a guest at a tea time hosted by Selwa, who is over a decade older than me, and all the women sharing the elegantly organized table adorned with exquisite tea sets and gorgeous looking pasteries, they were all childhood friends of Salwa thus of her same age.

I could tell from the moment I occupied my seat, dressed up in a significantly different fashion from what all those women tacitly agreed on wearing, that I stood out like a sore thumb among them for a planned reason and I was to become their little plaything for the reminder of the tea party.

And I was really, seriously hurt already, becoming the laughing stock of a bunch of bored housewives was the last thing I needed..

I was never taught the proper manners how to behave in a nitpicking society that observed all my little gestures just to laugh at them, my mother who is pretty much the soulmate of my free-spirit father always taught us that it was important to eat and drink to survive, what is the importance of how to correctly hold a teacup when the act eating is marely a mean to survive?

So I'm sitting there, unable to eat or drink a thing because I don't want to be laughed at, unable to speak because I don't want to be laughed at, unable to leave because Salwa was the host and she's the sister of the man I'm desperately trying to impress, and those women were the wives of the business partners of the man I'm desperately.. in pain.. just to impress.

And I'm suffocating.. for a reason I'm failing to point out.. I was just suffocating as I hear the whispers and the muffled giggles of those women who still found something to laugh at in me despite my effort.

For the first time in my life I wonder: " what am I being so hurt for?"

_" Rima is really cute.." someone starts to say, then continue with a barely hidden mocking tone:

_" She's relentlessly chasing after a man who doesn't want her, her courage is really praiseworthy! if I were in her stead I wouldn't have had so much courage giving up my pride for a man."

Someone else adds:

_" It isn't good to give a man so much face though, later on if by luck the couple of you ended up getting married, you will always be taken for granted and he'll ignore you and cheat on you with other women who impress him more."

Salwa doesn't say a thing, in all my memories she never once was a proper ally nor a clear enemy, she was always indifferent.

I'd usually reply to them, in fact the bunch of them wouldn't have had so much fun humiliating me if I simply ignored them from the get go and didn't retaliate, for some reason.. it was totally different that day, something snaps in my head all at sudden, and it's impossible for me to stay in that room a moment longer.

I made a mess while standing up because I banged my hands on the table and accidentally flipped my teacup, I pushed my chair violently until it almost fell, then I ran out of there sweating profusely although I didn't even feel hot, trembling and feeling like I couldn't breathe.

I ran across the large villa ignoring everyone who tried to stop me in the way, I didn't stop until I reached a secluded place in the villa terrace that only I knew of.