Free Illumine Her by Sieni A.M. Page A

forced me to communicate honestly. And you know about my bossy tendencies and mood swings.”
    Alana hummed her agreement. It was no secret that her sister could be a little on the dramatic side. She remembered numerous occasions growing up when Malia would become fiercely overprotective of her. She would transform into mother hen with a machete, brandishing any boy who paid even a little attention to Alana. At large family events, Malia was always the older cousin who stepped in and took charge of the food preparation and serving. She would scowl with her hands on her hips, directing the younger ones with what to do during a saofa’i , and then laugh and joke at the next. Alana could easily imagine her filling in Aunty Malae’s shoes in the future.
    “What does it feel like to finally know?” she asked.
    Malia looked at her and responded with a smile. “It was a feeling that hit me here...” she pointed to her chest “...it’s hard to explain, but the feeling definitely exists. It was as if all the light bulbs in my head went off.” Alana raised her eyebrows teasingly, but her sister ignored her and continued. “Everything clicked in place. It’s something akin to that inner voice in your head finding that connection to your heart and speaking to it directly. There’s absolutely no doubt. No doubt whatsoever. The feeling is… freeing, liberating, and the most intense happiness takes over every pore of your body.”
    Alana studied her sister. As inexperienced as she was with men, she admitted to herself that she had yet to feel anything as remotely close to what Malia just described. Besides a few kisses she snuck with a boyfriend in high school, she didn’t think it was anything as special as this. She never got the chance to explore further anyway because when her father found out, he put an end to it, lecturing her about the age-old notion that tamai’ta’i Samoa didn’t date or go around with boys and should instead focus all their attention on school, homework, and feaus .
    “There must always be a respectable amount of space between boys and girls,” he’d told her sternly.
    She remembered cringing on the inside as she took it all in with a bowed head.
    “Where you sit and stand, the way you talk and dress, there should be fa’aaloalo in all of these aspects of your life. When you graduate from university, then you can find someone and get married.”
    After her father passed away, she lost all interest in boys. The very foundation of her family had shaken and threatened to fall apart after his death, and she buried herself along with her pain in her course work.
    Her brother consequently became over-protective of her, taking seriously a role to firmly ground them. He would call and touch base with her in Fiji, and while the conversations initially felt forced and stilted, she knew he was looking out for her.
    Contemplating her father’s words now, she was reminded of the way Chase made her feel when he touched her innocently on the face. He had stood so close to her, staring down unashamedly into her eyes as if he could read into them. As a result, he awakened something in her, a feeling that had been dormant for so long. The feeling of wanting to be comforted. Yearned for. And while that was over a month ago, she couldn’t deny the connection that flowed between them. She felt serene and unafraid, a complete one-eighty degree turn from the first day she met him. She admitted he was an attractive man—a very mysteriously stubborn one at that—with a generous spirit and knack for foreign languages, but he harbored a secret she couldn’t pinpoint and identify. Now that he was gone, she had little hope of finding out what that was.
    Alana stood up, sweeping the dirt off her shorts. “Come on, Lia, let’s keep going before it gets too dark, and we end up falling over the edge.”
    Malia groaned as Alana took her hand to pull her up. “You’re killing me here.”
    Alana smiled down at her.