KNOWN BY MY HEART

KNOWN BY MY HEART

By

Michelle Bennett

Copyright © by Michelle Bennett 2013

All Rights Reserved.   No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

São Paulo, Brazil

The words, "Feliz aniversári!" and "Happy birthday!" resounded in the faculty room for almost the whole day. Indeed, Marco is well loved, not just by his fellow professors, but by the entire student body of the prestigious university where he teaches in the College of Computer Science. At 27, Professor Marco Rubio is the faculty’s pride and the campus heartthrob. Standing at six feet four inches with a body builder’s physique and black beauty appeal, he is the envy of all men and the dream of every woman in nearly the whole city.

Marco was used to being successful except in love. With his brains, beauty, and wealth, any woman could easily fall in love with Marco. True enough, Marco has had several relationships in the past, but none seems to be truly deserving of being accompanied by him down the church aisle. Through the years, Marco learned that the woman who deserves his heart is she who would be able to make it beat in a special way for all time. This search for the right woman turned Marco into the loner that he is, spending most of his time in front of the computer for academics or computer game purposes.

North Carolina, USA

The two best friends, Jasmine Shepherd and Monica Carpenter, are regular visitors of the North Carolina beach, as both almost always do their workout trainings beside the ocean. These 26 year-old friends have come along way in their friendship since their  childhoods spent in the countryside.

While Monica is a karate athlete with a thick physique, Jasmine is more ladylike, relying on swimming as her exercise since it did not require much money for  training. Away from the beach, Monica is an Internet buff, while Jasmine is content working in her garden when not on duty as a lifeguard.

With her usual mischief, Monica hides behind an oak tree, once again having stolen her brother’s laptop to log in to her favourite networking sites. Her eyes almost popped out upon seeing that someone has replied to her friend request despite using a cartoon character as her profile picture.

The delight in Monica’s eyes faded when she noticed a message in her Inbox. It was a note from her new friend named Sunset. "Sunset," like Monica, doesn’t show his face in the networking site. Instead he uses the picture of a pristine ocean with the setting sun in the background. Sunset’s message was short but quite alarming in Monica’s viewpoint. "Hi there, my new friend! I am quite interested about you, but will you please show me first your real picture?"

Monica was dumbfounded as the glow from her eyes turned into restlessness and fear. Knowing that hers is a body that is considered heavy and a face that is quite unattractive, Monica felt sad that she might once again lose a potential boyfriend. Sadness is reflected in her eyes when suddenly…

"Hi Monica! Are you okay?" asked a gentle and feminine voice. Monica was certain whose voice it belongs to. True enough, it was from Jasmine, her best friend since childhood. Monica’s face glowed again in Jasmine’s presence. "Jasmine! Right! Jasmine!" was all she thought as Monica returned to her usual self.

Jasmine is Monica’s neighbour, classmate, and childhood friend, but with a different personality like that of her stout best friend. Unlike Monica, Jasmine has a noticeable slender body frame, long black straight hair, and a face depicting her tame personality. She was the typical country girl type, but is nevertheless a consistent honour student running for valedictorian in downtown’s College of Computer Science.

The next time Monica met Jasmine was  in Jasmine’s favourite sanctuary, the seashore. It was quite a giggly and playful get-together, as Monica brought her father’s digital camera to take pictures of Jasmine. Monica’s mischief enabled her to steal pictures of Jasmine, despite her svelte buddy’s struggle to hide from the stolen shots. The two girls parted ways, with Monica having her fun and Jasmine submitting to her best friend’s whims.

At home, Monica was more than satisfied after having seen the images of Jasmine captured by the camera. With Jasmine’s naturally beautiful smiling face and her hair being blown by the wind, the image was perfect for her profile picture. Although it was not Monica’s intention to mean harm to her best friend, she just decided to use Jasmine’s picture, at least only to "Sunset."

True enough, Sunset was more than impressed by what he saw in the photo, and for some reason, he felt his heart beating loud for the first time. He stared at the picture used by Monica for a long time. He felt it was odd for a man like him to react to a picture that way. There seems to be no end to Marco duplicating Jasmine’s picture, pasting the hard print on his wall while uploading the digital copy to all his gadgets as his wallpaper. The image of Jasmine smiling and staring at him, coupled with the peach sunset and ocean in the background made his dream girl real whenever he closes his eyes.

In a couple of days, Marco was already decided to have a more committed and constant communication with Monica. The relationship grew stronger each day as both Monica and Sunset never missed to be present at their committed online date. On the sixth month of their friendship, Sunset attempted to ask Monica if she could show herself on her PC's camera. Fortunately for Monica, she has a valid reason to tell Sunset that her brother’s outdated laptop could not support a camera connection.

Perhaps it was Monica’s background and experience that kept Sunset interested on her. The similar fondness for nature and country living attracted him to Monica all the more that their constant communication is almost reaching their first year anniversary of friendship. Sunset seems to like Monica, but still it wasn’t enough to make his heart beat the way he expected a true love would do. Nevertheless, in his heart he would still want to keep a relationship with Monica, invest some more time and see from there where it would take him in the future. Believing Monica’s excuses for not showing up through the webcam, Marco contented himself with his friendship with Monica even though it would entail communicating with her without the use of a camera.

While Monica was toying with the digital camera and her brother’s laptop, Jasmine was tending her garden at the other simpler country house for a biology class assignment. With calloused hands, she knows just how to handle both heavy and light tasks. The only tasks that inhibit her are those done with modern technology. Jasmine knew that being a lifeguard, she should be more interested in living creatures, especially those like the plants she could use for her life-saving assignments. Also, she has to study for the next day’s biology exams to stay at the top of her class. Moreover, she could foresee Monica her buddy will again be copying from her.

True enough, Jasmine’s and Monica’s exam went well, and it gave Monica a reason to invite Jasmine to go unwind, this time in the town’s Internet café where she could go surf online while Jasmine did research and studied.

Monica couldn’t help but smile at her full Inbox and social networking profile page filled with virtual gifts sent by Sunset. Being a computer geek, Sunset flooded Monica’s Inbox with love messages, including a virtual album where all the pictures she used were compiled artistically and accompanied by their favourite old country theme song, "Miles Away." To Monica’s surprise, the very last picture she saw from the virtual album is the picture of a tall, well-built, dark, handsome young man smiling at her. Below the picture is a caption that read, "Yes, this is me, Sunset!"

Immediately, Monica sent a thank you via instant messaging and almost instantly received a "You’re welcome, love - happy anniversary!" message. As expected, Sunset has been online waiting for Monica to greet him.

Georgia, USA

Venus Martin, a big-bodied Latina computer science student in Atlanta, Georgia, is staying way past dismissal time in the computer lab. Both eyes on her computer screen, she is concentrating hard. "Venus, stop it!" her friend, Karen, pleaded. Being the smartest computer student in her class, Venus is now also a genius when it comes to Internet bugs, and seems to have created one that enables her to invade and open private messages. In her desire to find a message that could be a funny enough to brag about, she hacked her way into one of Sunset’s virtual messages for Monica. It happened to be his virtual album where she discovered the picture of a handsome young man in his swimwear. Venus got interested with the sender and wanted to find out more about him.

Back in Monica’s home, she was fighting tooth and nail to stay awake while chatting with Sunset who was on his bed with his laptop. it being nearly three in the morning, Monica had almost fallen asleep during their chat had it not been for shocking news from Sunset. Monica’s adrenalines awakened as she read the message, "Sweetheart, I guess it's about time that we meet. I will fly there to meet you... Just say yes."

Caught off guard, Monica struggled to think of a way to make herself attractive to Sunset. Even so, she was more than eager to finally meet him in person. Monica was about to send her sweetest "yes" when suddenly there occurred an electricity failure in their area which interrupted their chat.

In Venus' online sleuthing, she discovered that Sunset is a 20-something Brazilian computer geek/bachelor who is financially stable and searching for love. These qualities impressed Venus and persuaded her to have him no matter what.

Immediately, Venus adjusted her profile page to look more attractive, and then requested to be his online friend. Because it was natural for Sunset to be friendly and gentle with women, he immediately accepted Venus’ friend request, paving the way for Venus to make moves on him. Soon enough, Sunset was entertaining Venus as a friend while maintaining Monica as his potential date too.

The communication between Venus and Sunset became more frequent than that of Sunset and Monica. Nevertheless, Sunset still kept his commitment to Monica to come to meet her in person. Soon enough, Venus detected this plan and offered herself as a part of the date.

The school year was about to end, and Jasmine had no choice but to visit an Internet café in town so she could finish her project alone. After all, Monica was busy at the beauty parlour in preparation of Marco’s visit. finishing her assignments in record time, Jasmine spent the remaining minutes browsing the Internet. Her  beautiful face smiled as she stumbled upon a page featuring a handsome Brazilian man for his published achievements in the field of computer science. "Wow! Marco Rubio... Beauty and brains indeed…" she thought. That was almost one of the very rare if not the first time Jasmine was impressed with a man. But as ladylike and demure as she is, the best she could do is to secretly admire him and dream of meeting him some day.

After being proclaimed the best computer science professor at his university, Marco thought that it would be a perfect time to use his vacation leave to travel to the US' east coast. A month’s preparation transpired before he could finalize his flight.

Marco has advised only Monica that he would be coming on the 15
th
of November, but because of Venus’ skills in investigation and interrogation on Marco’s errands, she already knew this, and insisted that she too should meet him during that vacation period, even emphasizing that she should be his first date.

It was two weeks before Marco’s arrival, and both Monica and Venus are busy hitting the gym and the beauty parlour. Jasmine, on the other hand, has also started frequenting the Internet café, not for networking sites or games, but to read more and more about Professor Marco Rubio’s publications on computer science, still she has having no idea that Marco would be coming to the US.

Marco is expected to arrive within 24 hours, and both Monica and Venus were busy preparing to look their best for Marco’s arrival. finally, the hour of Marco’s arrival came and the two women, Monica and Venus, were both in a hurry to meet him at his arrival time of 11:00 am. With Marco arriving at the JFK Airport in New York, Monica had to travel quite long miles, while Venus, confident she is closer, planned to hit the beauty parlour one last time.

Coming from North Carolina, Monica had to wake up early and prepare herself to meet Marco at the designated time. Only packing food and make up gear, Monica is  waiting for public transportation to take her to JFK airport. Venus, coming from New Jersey, didn’t worry about the time, believing that she will still get there ahead of Monica. As such, she decides to have her curls done by her city's most sophisticated beauty parlour before heading to JFK. Venus being well off, has a car and brings her computer gadgets.