gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 6

Day Three

Hunter lay in the sand, motionless as she half-listened to Fatin and Martha go through Leah's book and the hand-written annotations from the guy she had obviously been seeing that had also wrote it. She didn't want to really weigh in on something she knew nothing about, but her warped opinion of love was truly not lining up with what the book was saying.

"God, there is nothing grosser than couples and their inside jokes," Fatin said, flipping through the pages in boredom as Martha watched on with slight envy.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Martha admitted, never having been in a relationship with a boy. Hunter hummed from her spot on the ground, the other two looking at her and waiting for her to speak but moving on once it became apparent her hum seemingly had no words attached to it.

"Do you want some solid relationship advice?" Fatin asked suddenly, looking at Martha with a little more seriousness as she noticed the hope and look of naivety in her eyes when it came to relationships. "Okay, there's only three things that you have to remember; skip the handy, dry humping is underrated and always carry a stash of Uqora."

"What's Uqora?"

"It's for UTIs," Fatin and Hunter said at the same time, the other two looking down as they remembered the blonde was actually aware of their conversation and seemingly was ready to begin to join in with Fatin's advice giving for Martha.

"Its for like, after you have a lot of sex," Fatin explained simply, while Hunter shrugged a little knowing that it was for more situations that just that but not wanting to go into it all when she barely knew much herself.

"Um, what about something more basic?" Martha asked, uncomfortable with Fatin throwing her directly into the deep end. She didn't know anything about even having someone fancy her, let alone how to have someone have sex with her. "You know, like, how do I even get a guy to like me?"

"Oh that's easy! You just stop paying attention to them, and then they just like appear out of nowhere."

Almost like there was some weird sense of irony in how the world worked, as soon as those words left Fatin's lips Toni had arrived back from her sulk and was slamming the upper torso of a male mannequin into the ground in front of them. 

"So this guy washed up, is he good for anything?" Toni asked, a small smile playing on her lips as she looked at the trio who were staring at her in utter disbelief.

There was a moment of silence before Hunter eventually scoffed, leaning back down on to her back again and shutting her eyes. Martha, Toni and Fatin all shared looks of confusion at her behaviour before holding their breath as she opened her mouth without opening her eyes.

"The one bit of advice I'll give you is this Martha: men aren't good for anything but ruining things, lying and destroying any happiness us women have created for ourselves."

The three all stared at her with open mouths, not expecting her to sudden have gotten all bitter about the male species, but Fatin and Toni couldn't say they blamed her. They'd had their fair share of dickheads in their life and knew that men were often disrespectful to women.

Toni could't help but wonder if Hunter was explicitly meaning her ex.

_____

"Do you think he has a hot, cheerleader girlfriend back home?" Fatin joked as they studied the mannequin, now wearing a pilot shirt that that had found in the pilot's supply kit that had washed up the day prior. "Dumb, blonde, annoying... no offence Hunter."

Hunter rolled her eyes slightly, a laugh leaving her lips to show the others that she was offended by the stereotype - she had been receiving it all her life and it didn't help that she tried to typically hide that she had a 4.0 GPA cause she didn't want Riley to get jealous since he struggled with school. Not that she cared how he felt after what he had done to her, but it was subconsciously wired into her now anyway.