STILL

Chapter three

Emma and Tom walked through the woods, they talked about their lives, how much changed and how much stayed the exact same.  After several floods of nostalgia, Tom did an impression of one of his professors. 

"What's your name, young lady?" Tom hunched his back and said in a gravelly voice.

"Emma, professor," she said innocently.

"Your answer is unsatisfactory," Tom said in the same voice.

"Is he always so fancy with his words? Who even talks like that anymore." She laughed.

"Probably his wife on their wedding night" Tom blurted out. Emma laughed so hard her stomach hurt, Not too far after Tom broke out of character and joined her. 

"Nice touch with the hunched back by the way," She complimented him, he tipped his invisible hat.

Many impressions later, they reached their beloved spot. Long logs of wood around an old hole in the ground where a small fireplace was; it all rushed back to them, all the memories.  Everything was left untouched.

"Remember the cursed smores incident of 2015?" Emma said as she approached the place where the fire used to be.

"Remember it? I have night mares about it," Tom paused, "I think my burned jumper remembers it better than I do," Tom joked.

"Oh my god the sweater!" Emma recalled. "Lena puked all over that thing," She added.

"First of all, it's a jumper not a sweater," Tom said smugly. "Those marshmallows were horrible, I'm never forgiving Andrew for them," He continued.

"You're in the US, here it's a sweater," Emma said.

"Yeah well-" before he could continue, they heard a voice approach them from afar.

"What was that?" Emma asked. In a moment of panic Tom bent down and grabbed a branch that was on the ground.  "Get behind me." Tom said as he stood infront of Emma.

"Relax, kids." A man approached them, he was very tall, dark hair, blue eyes that flared through the dark woods. With a smile, so welcoming yet terrifying he said "You're here early." he zipped up his black leather jacket.

"It's actually a little chilly tonight." He scanned the area as if he'd never seen it before.

"Who the hell are you!" Tom exclaimed.

"We got a wild one here." The guy pointed at Tom while looking directly at Emma, she grabbed her pepper spray and hid it behind Tom's back, just in case.

"I am going to ask you this one last time, who are you?" Tom threatened.

The strange man completely ignored Tom; he started dusting off his jacket instead.

"Answer me or else!" Tom raised his voice.

"Or what? You'll poke me to death?" The guy said with half a smirk on his face. 
"Don't you dare test me!" Tom took a few steps further towards the man.

"Relax, I'm the guy who made the group," he said. "I thought you guys could put one and one together, then again you were naive enough to come here and meet a stranger." his smirk turned into a scoff.

"Let's redo this." The guy approached them. "Hello, my name is Connor, and I'm here to give you a new thrill." he reached out to shake Tom's hand.

"I'm Tom, this is Emma." Tom, still uneasy, shook Connor’s hand. "I guess you already knew that," He broke the handshake.

"How do you even know who we are," Emma asked the question they were all dying to know. 
"Oh, interesting question." Connor walked around their spot, scanned it with his eyes, examined every inch.
"I know a lot of things," Connor said. Before he could explain, the rest of their group announced their arrival.