enigma | reus

9.

MARCO/ROMESSA | The Start of Something New

Marco and Romessa woke up next to one another in his bed, albeit with a few inches of space between them. Marco felt his heart flutter at the excitement of waking up to see her sleeping so softly, her lips parted and her hair messy as she breathed slowly. It wasn't rare for him to spend the night with a woman, but this was the first time since Scarlett had left him that the woman he'd spend the night with actually meant anything to him.

Marco drew in a breath. Woman. Should I call her that? She was 18; certainly a legal adult. But it was hard to be a man and to label someone a decade younger than you as your feminine counterpart.

He remembered the exact moment he decided that he was going to do this thing with Romessa, whatever it was they were doing. He was sitting at the dining table while Romessa helped to make dessert, scrolling through recent internet articles about himself on his phone. This was something equivalent to torture for the German—despite the fact that'd it'd been a month since the incident, the media still couldn't get enough of it. He'd been labeled everything from a rapist to a pedophile, and although those were on the sleaziest sites which no one credited anyways, it still hurt him to know that someone might be capable of believing that about him.

He thought about how his life for the past month had been a living hell; every day he felt as though he existed in a state of fear and loathing. But then into the dining room came Romessa, smiling as she announced that dessert was being served, her eyes lingering especially on Marco's as she sliced the cake into equal sections. She was someone who was capable of seeing the good in him; her judgment wasn't clouded by media articles and the knowledge of his social status. Her cluelessness meant that she derived no meaning from the rugged, hard-to-know demeanor that he'd exercised against her as a defense mechanism—and while that worried him before, he was beginning to see the good in this. He realized that he needed someone like her to get him through whatever it was he was experiencing. Not someone like her—her.

Now, as Romessa rolled closer to him, Marco felt his breath catch in his throat. He could get up and go make breakfast, as he'd done last time, but he didn't want to leave her side. He leaned down and kissed her forehead instead, watching as her eyes opened. She spent a few moments familiarizing herself with her surroundings before her eyes found Marco's. "Good morning," she whispered.

Marco kissed her lips, chastely. "Hey."

Romessa propped herself up on an elbow. She ran a hand through her hair, then sat up. She'd worn one of his shirts to bed, just like last time. She gazed out his window at the view of the park, then the skyscrapers and big buildings which lie beyond it. She checked the time. It was nine in the morning; she had to meet her class by twelve to make it on the bus to Munich, where they'd be until Monday night. "We have two hours," she finally spoke, turning to face him.

Marco smiled at her. "You look pretty when you wake up," he mumbled, his own voice gravelly from having just woken up himself.

Romessa's eyes widened in surprise. It was the first time he'd ever commented on her physical appearance, as far as she could think. She shouldn't have been surprised that he found her to be pretty, but given the fact that he always acted so uninterested and unfazed by everything, she was. "Well," she finally responded, placing her fingers on his arm, "You don't look terrible yourself." It was true, of course. Marco had slept in gym shorts and nothing else. Staring at his shirtless upper body, it wasn't hard for Romessa to believe that Marco was a professional athlete. A few strands of his blonde hair lingered in front of his green eyes, though he pushed them back into place the moment she seemed to notice. "You know," she finally continued, a little ashamedly, "I don't really know how to do this."