Yours, Angel

II

Chapter II

Angelina had been running; she had been running all her life. Everything was crumbling one after another. Her rent had been due for the last three months, and the landlord wasn't heeding her pleas. She couldn't live on the street. This state was different from her father's country. In his country, she could easily find apartments anywhere.

She received a scholarship to attend State University for four years. She was thrilled. However, if she knew what awaited her, she would have stayed with her father in her home country. Well, this state was her mother's, which made her biracial.

Since she arrived in this country, her life has been a jumbled mess; people judged her based on her brown skin color.

She didn't have a real job aside from freelancing for clients. And that wasn't paying her much. They judged her skin color and her nationality, not her brain. Then, they were men who always had their lustful gaze on her body, which she hated, yet she couldn't do anything.

Angelina was tired, and she was running out of money. She could not call her father because her father was the same as her.

A working-class person who was striving to make ends meet. And her mother was a sour topic for her father. Whenever she asked her father, he always ended up in tears, which always broke her heart. Yet she did not know who her mother was or where she lived.

She hated her mother because she was absent from her life.

She wasn't there when she needed her the most.

She wasn't there to talk to her about it.

She wasn't there to talk to her about boys.

It was only her father she knew; her father covered both roles, but there was still a part of her that yearned for maternal love.

As she walked around with a towel wrapped tightly around her body, she hummed a tune that her father used to sing to her whenever she was depressed. She walked towards her Ghanaian must-go to pick up an old faded jean skirt and blue polo as her only friend, Bella, barged in.

Her eyes searched for Angelina until her green eyes landed on Angelina's gray ones as she squealed happily at her and crushed her in a bear hug.

Isabella, or for short, Bella, was a half-Japanese friend with short blond hair, and they met at the school functions on the first day of resumption in university. When Angelina was trying to find the hall, she collided with Bella's petite body, which made them fall to the ground.

They both groaned before staring at one another and laughing out loud. They exchanged numbers, and since then, they have become tight buddies.

"Babe, I've got you a job," Bella chirped, stealing one of the fries Angelina left on the nightstand beside her messy bed as she slumped on the bed.

Angelina swatted Belle's hand away when she tried to take another fry.

When Angelina's brain processed what her friend had said, she screeched in shock. "You got me a job?" she asked.

"Yeah, babe," Bella winked at her. "I told you," she smirked with a sly grin, having the 'I-told-you-so' on her face.

"What does the work pertain to?" Angelina asked enthusiastically before feeling down and sighing dejectedly.

"What happened, sugar? Aren't you happy? But—" Bella frantically asked, and she interrupted her.

"Nothing," she replied dismissively. "The dressing code?"

"Just put on pants and a shirt," Bella answered, crawling towards Angelina's bag and unzipping it as she started to rummage through it. She was taking out a dress, looking at it before throwing it away to pick another one.