Stars

00:02

[dedicated to miksha, who is more beautiful than words will allow me to express]

.*.*.

Arlando's heart beat rapidly within his chest. Kathleen Ryburg, the girl he met at the ball that his best friend's parents had hosted. It was a ball and it was for Landon's twenty-first birthday. His parents were always so controlling and they wanted him to have an elegant and beautiful twenty-first birthday. Except Landon didn't want the ball. He wanted to go to a bar, drink away into the night and he also wished to do something stupid and get arrested. Arlando didn't understand what sort of dream that was - who wants to get arrested? - but he couldn't argue with his best friends motives no matter how crazily ridiculous they sounded.

But Landon also loved meeting new people. Strangers, Arlando liked to called to call them. So Landon took a hold of this unsettling proposal and turned it into something he wanted it to be; a chance to meet new people and maybe a girlfriend. Landon, unlike Arlando, was not a flirt. He believed in love and wanted to have a future with someone. Someone, not just anyone. And the ball seemed like the perfect fit, to seek out the someone he believed would make an appearance in his life.

Arlando, being his best friend, was obviously invited. He remembered whining to Landon how stupid he was for taking his parents up on this offer, and how utterly out of his mind he was. Arlando nevertheless attended the ball and met many potential girls that night which he pointed out to Landon. Landon all but kindly declined Arlando's suggestions. "Ar, are you shitting me? Sex is the only thing written all across them."

Arlando was once the player, turned on by many woman at the same time. He was surely not the same man anymore that he was a few years ago. He was a changed man and right now, his life a mess, he wasn't so sure that his change was for the better or the worse.

"How about that girl, Land," he remembered suggesting as he pointed to a blonde haired girl who had part of her hair tied up, the rest falling over her shoulder and onto her neck. Her bangs weren't pinned aside like many of the girls in the ballroom. They fell over her blue eyes. She wore a Caribbean blue dress, the dress hugging her upper torso and the rest of it flowing down her body very elegantly. She was definitely an eye catcher.

Landon noticed how Arlando was eyeing the girl and even he couldn't deny that his best friend was right. She looked utterly breathtaking under the dimmed light and the way she twirled her wine glass in her hand was a particular motion that any man who came across her would find seductive and appealing.

"Can't believe I'm saying this but for once I agree with your girl choice," Arlando remembered Landon saying. "And I think you should dance with her."

"I'm tired of dancing."

"Don't you want to meet her?"

"She's a stranger."

"She's someone new," Landon corrected him. "And how has that stopped you from dancing with the many other girls here?"

Arlando lifted his wine glass and tipped his head, a smile forming on his lips. "Touché, brother," he toasted.

"Then what's stopping you?"

"Maybe you should dance with her. You haven't met anyone tonight-"

"You definitely seem more interested in her than I do."