Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

3. 'One hundred thousand percent sure'

Natalia

My thighs burn, my slippery dress slides out of my sweaty hands, threatening to topple me over, and my chest collapses with every dig of the under-wire of my fancy push-up bra, impeding my struggling lungs from getting enough air. Ten years ago, I knew what I was doing, but today I climb the stairs to the rooftop of my old International House dorm building as my plans land with a giant splat in the pit of my stomach.

Where do I go from here? Not down and back to the apartment Samson and I share that's full of the reminders of lost years. Up. I pretend I actually joined the cycling club my BFF Kate begged me to enroll in with her, squeeze my buns, and take the next step. My failures have always led me to new heights, and I'm not changing my attitude toward making mistakes today. Even giant long-term mistakes like Samson.

The metal door that leads to the roof has been repainted into a fire-engine red from the dull gray of my university years. I stumble on the last flight of stairs but push on. I always push on. I've been the most resilient member of my family through seven moves from country to country; the hardest working student in every class I took; the research assistant who put the most hours into my work; the girlfriend who did everything for her boyfriend.

After ten years invested in Samson, I'm back to square. . . not one, but I'm no longer in the home stretch of my plan.

I let go of the railing and take the final step to the door. Sometimes the first step is the hardest, but today, it's the last one.

As if I can hear Samson running after me with apologies or promises, I dither on the landing and look down the stairwell. But Samson doesn't do things like that. Samson doesn't run after what he wants. It gets delivered to him on a silver platter. I know because I became his delivery system. No more. I ram my arm into the door and remember why I'm here: to be alone. To think. To come up with a new plan, starting with where I'll be staying until I get a place of my own.

Early August in Chicago still offers more heat during the day than April in Nicaragua, but I spend close to a hundred percent of my day between the air-conditioned rooms of the apartment and the even more air-conditioned offices and labs of NanoTech. The cooling night air ripples through the skirt of my dress, and blows my long straight hair into my face, covering my eyes with a black net that disorients me.

I let go of my dress, raise my hand to wipe the strands away, and a gust slaps the thin material against my thighs. My feet in the five-inch heels catch on something I can't identify because of the shield of hair over my face and the yards of my skirt billowing around me.

Should I lean sideways? I'm so close to the final stage of my animal trials, I can't have any delays right now. If I damage my legs, I won't run for a while, but I'll still be able to continue my experiments. If I fall forward and injure my hands, it'll delay everything by several days. At least. I flap my arms as if I can oscillate them fast enough to maintain my equilibrium when my knees buckle.

The contact with the floor never happens, as arms close around me, and I lie in them suspended between the dark sky and the hot roof, my dress continuing its angry thrashing.

"Good thing I was here," a male voice says inches from my ear.

I succeed in brushing my hair out of my eyes. By now my expensive blowout Kate insisted on treating me to must look like a Guns-n-Roses hairdos from the eighties. Minus the perm. I carry their image engraved in my brain.

Instead of a quinceañera local girls got, my gift for my fifteenth birthday was a signed Guns-n-Roses vinyl Mom bought at the concert on December 7th 1988 at Nakano Sun Plaza Hall, the when and where of my conception. My eyes adjust to the almost darkness of the roof enough for me to not only see but recognize the face hovering above mine.