Mackenzie Ziegler. Brown haired, Brown eyed. Short, smart, and curvy.
Johnny Orlando. Tall, dark, handsome. A green eyed, brown haired hunk.
Fights. Makeouts. Deep, meaningful songs. Failed dates. Romantic kisses. Confessions; any of them. Giggles...
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The first time I questioned who Meila's father really was, was the first time I held her at birth.
I had been in labour for an excruciating ten hours; I was cold, tired, in pain, and I just wanted to curl up and sleep. Once my umbilical cord was cut, and my baby girl Meila had been cleaned up and handed to me, she nestled herself in my arms, crying softly.
Johnny squeezed my hand, and looking up at him I saw that there was a tear running down his cheek. "Look. She has green eyes." He had said.
At the time I figured it was a coincidence that Meila's father and Johnny had the same coloured eyes. But on her first birthday as she sat on Johnny's knee, ready to blow out her candles in front of all her friends, I snapped a picture. And later when I viewed it in private, I realised that the expression and features on both of their faces were almost identical.
Johnny had noticed it too, as as she had grown up her body was like mine; slender and short, but the way she moved and the way she laughed was akin to Johnny. He no longer corrected the other Mums and Dads at Meila's kindergarten when they assumed she was his daughter. Meila was a Dad's girl, through and through, the bond they had overwhelmingly special.
I couldn't get my head around it.
It was impossible. We'd never slept together in the month that Meila was conceived, not even in the months before. It made absolutely no sense.
Although Johnny and I never voiced our concerns, we communicated through knowing looks.
When she began to talk, she sounded Canadian almost, and when she sang she definitely didn't have my vocal range. As she got older, her hair grew blonde streaks like his– and her eyebrows needed tidying just as often as his did. Her skin was naturally paler, not tan like my own. When Meila's sister Analese was born, they were almost identical (and Johnny was actually Analese's biological father.)
Meila had known ever since she was born that John wasn't her biological Dad. And I think that's what made her so close to him. She loved him so much, she just wanted him to stay. She wanted him to love her like his own.
At eleven years old, when she giggled as I plucked hers and Johnny's eyebrows, there was a questioning look in her eye. At the talent show in which she sang with her Dad, she was complimented on how much alike she looked to her father, and a frown formed on her face. When she was told time and time again her and her little sister could have been twins, I could almost see the gears turning in her brain.
Meila was confused like us, she just didn't know how to put it into words. She didn't understand about the birds and the bees. She didn't understand how all of those things intertwined.
