All the couples that Alaia Repond has gotten together have stayed happily together, and at this point, she really should consider matchmaking as a profession. So when her close friend Ollie asks her to set up a friend of his, she's more than happy t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Soph agrees to the date.
Alaia gives her Franco's number, and Soph later tells her that she'll be meeting him tomorrow, and that's that - but Alaia can't help but feel that ugly, jealous feeling in the pit of her stomach. She scrolls through her phone as the hairstylist does her hair for the shoot, absentmindedly liking all of the posts that she sees on her home page.
Then a notification rings from her phone, and she reads the message at the top of her screen - it's from Franco. Date set for tomorrow, he says, adding a smiley face emoji.
Have fun, she replies.
It's confusing. She knows that it's far too soon to even decide if she likes him that way. She obviously finds him to be good looking, and kind, and he's got that kind of charm that makes her cheeks flush.
If she ever said that out loud to any of her friends, they'd all say that she was developing feelings.
But feelings come difficult for her. Alaia knows how complicated love is, how difficult it is, and how utterly heartbreaking loving someone can be.
She'd seen it with her parents.
It all seemed so perfect to her, and then one night in October it just came crashing down. Yelling, shouting, curse words - she might have been seven, but she understood it all. Her family would've never been the same again.
She remembers crying, unable to even look at her own mother. She'd lied to them, over and over again. What are you even supposed to do when you find out that your mother had been cheating on your father, and was carrying another man's baby?
Her dad had forgiven her, too. For the sake of Laia, she remembers overhearing them say, late at night. He'd taken care of her, even though Alaia could tell that his own heart was breaking knowing that the child she was carrying wasn't his.
