Sweet Obsession (In Progress)

Chapter Three: Part One

A/N:

Zeus as a kitten on the side.

 ______________________________________
Fever 

I shot up in bed, clutching my hands over my still racing heart, and gasping for air.

"Sugartits!” came the unmistakable voice of my best friend and neighbor, Paisley Abegnale. The whole yelling-weird-words thing, was due to her vow to give up cussing. Since she had almost no filter, it came easy to replace the words with whatever she was currently thinking. Apparently we needed to have a talk since sugartits were on her mind.

I turned towards the noise, my tired eyes searching over the mess in my room, to land on Paisley near my windows. “No! Don’t open the-“ I started in scratchy voice, only to stop when she threw open the curtains anyways. I cringed, throwing up my hands in a defensive gesture, and turning my face into the protection of my mattress as the room was instantly flooded with harsh, bright light. My sensitive eyes ached from the brief exposure, and I made it known by grabbing the pillow above me and blindly throwing it in the general direction of my window.

I felt no satisfaction when I heard Paisley let out a quiet, little chuckle. “Really, Rosaline, if you’re going to throw something at me and miss, at least choose something more… intimidating,” she teased.

“I have a knife block in the kitchen that I’d be glad to try on you,” I retorted in good humor, to which, Paisley laughed again. I may not be a morning person, but that didn’t mean that I couldn't play along. I wasn't that rude. At least, not to Paisley, who had been the only person to befriend me when I moved in to this apartment building.

As it turned out, we were going to the same private college; Paisley was just a year behind me. It wasn’t surprising that we were so close as we both weren’t very likable by other peoples standards, but if I am being honest Paisley has been the greatest thing for me.

Due to the circumstances of my adoption, what with it being closed and all, I know absolutely nothing about my birth parents. My adoptive parents are middle class, but worked hard to put me in a private, all girls, school. The other girls made fun of me constantly for reasons that, being the oblivious child I was, I couldn’t discern. I now know that it was because of my lower status in comparison to theirs, but that doesn’t mean that it made what they did okay. I never told my parents that I didn’t have friends, or that I was picked on, I just always made up an excuse as to why I never had play dates or birthday party invites. I don’t think they bought it, but they never pushed me to open up, and would always find ways to spoil me more themselves, which only made me love them more.

Paisley can relate to me on a certain level, in that she never knew her mom, and her dad is always away. Because of that, she was practically raised by a nanny, and homeschooled up until college. Isolation from other children her age came with that territory, but it didn’t help that the second she got out into the world, she dressed in mostly black, hardly spoke to anyone, and gave every guy that glanced her way the death stare.

Of course, because I knew her, I could attest to the fact that she wasn’t at all what she came across as. She was the shy, timid type who found male attention frightening because she had never had the chance to experience it before. So, Paisley, being herself, channeled that fear into a false bravado made up of disinterest and disgust for the opposite sex. As to why she hated girls, well, she didn’t like anyone that thought that they were above everyone else - which was pretty much the entire female population at our college.

“Rosaline,” Paisley sang in an overly chipper voice as she waved a fresh cup of coffee next to my face. Damn. And here I thought that she might have decided to leave me in peace.