James noticed the fake things on Sophia, the wig, the nails, the makeup, the contact lenses, eyelashes, basically everything on her was fake, which just didn't make sense for him, like why she was doing all of that when they were in the Circle, when they had just met up… he noticed it every time too.
She always came in different, like personas and looks.
So while they were arguing, James took the chance to at least talk with her and said this to Sophia: "Why are you hiding beneath a mask?
He knew that Sophia was actually a gorgeous woman. It wasn't worth all of this bullshit on her, but for Sophia, it was something that hit her deep in the heart.
First, she just stared at James and asked back, "What do you mean?" But she knew what he meant by it.
It was not a critique, more like a warm push. He said, "You look beautiful, like one of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen. You have beautiful natural long hair, crystal clear skin, and beautiful lips, not even to mention your eye color it's just stunning… You are a gorgeous woman. Why do you hide behind the wig, the makeup, and everything when we already know each other. You look perfect without those things, so just use them when needed, because I like how you look, Sophia. Gorgeous."
He said that to her, and then he dipped… yeah, after complimenting Sophia to the heavens, he just got up and dipped because he got bored of the arguing and didn't even think about what he said, like it came from his heart without any bullshit in it.
But for her it meant so much that she literally cried, like tears dropped from her eyes as she just looked at the spot where James just sat, she couldn't believe what he said, she couldn't believe it was real. She got up from her seat and sprinted out after James, but he was already gone.
She wanted to ask so many questions back then, like it was real what he said, like he really thinks she is gorgeous, like really?
But she couldn't ask them, and she just cried on the spot. She cried the whole night after that, throwing all of her things into the trash. That day, she decided to live how she is, and it worked more than she would've ever thought, but she only listened to James's compliments over the years.
Almost every time they were in the Circle, he said something like "You look good, you are gorgeous" and a couple of compliments even if James just glanced at her, she was blushing like hell, and it was because of her past traumas.
Sophia was like Rafael, she was bullied all her life, for a reason that was outrageous.
She was too gorgeous.
Yeah, Sophia even when she was younger already had her beautiful face and that body, but she wasn't the type of beautiful girl who became the spotlight of the school. No, she was the opposite of that, got extremely bullied by other girls and by jealousy… so much that she actually dropped out and never got her high school diploma… well, in a legal way, but that's another matter.
But she made a critical mistake, a mistake that can't be really called a mistake. It was more like her defense mechanism, and it was to hide herself… and when she did it, she became a completely different person. The wigs, her unimaginable skill of makeup and many other things, just gave a whole other persona, a different vibe.
She put on a mask that was the defense of her, but with that, she lost everything else.
Her own identity, her own feelings, she just played a character. Like she never let her real emotion out, she never truly showed who she really was, she never had love nor a boyfriend.
She was alone in an act that just ate herself from the inside.
She wanted to show herself, wanted to express her feelings, but the trauma and the countless bullying, the things on her wouldn't let her do it. She was lost, she was judged and controlled by others, by others' hatred, by others' jealousy.
But in the process, not just in what happened… no, she learned how to fight back, how to defend herself, not with emotion, but with her fists, or with a chair, with a bottle, or with her school bag and the reason she became a dropout was one of those incidents when she almost beat a girl to death.
Her God-given gorgeousness was the cause of the downfall in her life, the exact thing that was supposed to be a blessing turned into a curse that lived with her, and her mother and father didn't understand or want to help her at all.
Like what a joke is this that you get trauma because others bully you for being too beautiful?
Yeah, but they never saw what the bullying meant, and they didn't understand that it caused a crack in their daughter, a crack that seemed to never be healed again.
She ran away from home but more importantly, she left that little girl home, that bullied one, that beat up one, and she started the act.
Sophia began to use her skills, she robbed, killed, and did her thing in her way and slowly, she got a name for herself more and more in the underworld. After years and years, she was still playing that act, that character behind the mask.
She wasn't looking for love, for sex, she wasn't looking for anything but her own career and success. She had the ambition that she would show them who she really was, what she reached and she did, because all of her bullies died… somehow.
But the mask was still up, and when the whole Circle thing became an actual thing, she wasn't impressed. Like yeah, a gangster that killed one of the big names and that's it. She wasn't impressed by it at all. She had money, fame, but when she saw James the first time, she realized he wasn't just a gangster but a whole different level she never experienced.
It wasn't his looks but that nonchalant personality of him… that didn't give a fuck about anything but still dangerous, somebody who would kill her on a wrong move, but other than that, nothing more.
He was handsome, yeah, his smile was sweet, yeah but nothing more… until those words came out of his mouth and filled that crack in Sophia's heart.
He pulled down her mask… and finally she finished the act.