The Urban Princesses: Pocahontas

Chapter 7

The stream was one of the best parts of this place.

I always used to play here as I child, galloping through the slow moving water over the smooth stones lining the bottom.

My feet were careful to avoid crawfish and guppies swimming around in the shallow waters, cupping a few in my hands and bringing them close to my eye before gently laying them back in the water again before they suffocated.

Those days are past and I'm much too old to do that now, so I just sit and watch the water trickle down the stream, thinking.

It was mesmerizing. Watching it, the sound of it, the smell of it, the feeling of the water rushing over my feet. I could sit here for days and never get tired of it. If I could just sit here long enough, maybe all of my problems would go away.

Sadly, that wasn't true.

I heard rustling in the trees behind me and whipped around, my heart hammering in my chest.

I was shocked to find John stumble into the clearing, a bored look on his face that was soon replaced by an expression of fear.

"I double checked I'm not on your land-"

"No," I laughed. "this isn't my land." I sighed, looking back into the water. This was the land behind my land, and my land doesn't have a stream like this. Technically, I was trespassing on private property so I was hoping someone other than the land's owner came through the clearing.

He sat down next to me, crossing his legs. "What are you thinking about?"

I sighed, shrugging.

"So you said no to the offer?"

I glared at him. "Is that why you're here? To try and persuade me to sell you the resort? Because it's not happening-"

"No," He put his hands up in surrender. "I swear. I was just taking a walk, but I heard about the other day."

"Yeah," I grumbled, poking my toe into a crevice between two rocks. "who hasn't."

"I'm sorry, Thomas can be a bit of a instigator."

"And Kobe can be a hothead." I sighed. "Looks like we both have stubborn friends on our hands."

He nodded. "For the record, I'm not a stubborn person, at least I don't like to think of myself that way."

"I don't think you are either," I smiled at him. "I mean, for the week and a half I've known you."

He laughed. "Same to you."

We spent the next twenty minutes just talking about our lives. He has been in the construction business since he was sixteen and was an aspiring entrepreneur. The foster system was where he called home until he turned eighteen and started working with the construction agency. Despite his unfortunate past, his life was somewhat intriguing. He lived across the street from the White House with one of his foster parents. Another one of his parents when he was sixteen was an employee of Google, which meant that he got to go to one of their extravagant parties. He was a surprisingly well educated kid despite his past, although it was most likely because of his past that he was this well educated.

"..... Mrs. Gibbs was determined that mermaids were real."

I laughed as he told me the story about his foster mom who devoted her life to researching the probability of a marine-human specimen.

"What about you? What's your story?" He asked.

"Definitely not as cool as yours. I've lived here since I was a newborn, mom died when I was young, my life is pretty boring."