The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 4/Bad boy stole my sense of balance

A/N Photo - Tom Mison who looks mysteriously like Dante Tyrell.  Video: Kevin Surace the coming end of human work notice the book is set 50 years after his prediction for the jobs humans can do. 

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Scarlett's Apartment/Atlanta

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After getting ready, and with the low down on the party guests, I slipped my pumps on and walked out. You're thinking, "Tall Mars girl with pumps in high gravity, smart move sister," but I wanted to look my best for my first Earth party. I looked around the room and felt instantly awkward. I was under a pact with my friends back on Mars to fully detail everything which was 'in' on Earth. Let's face it, everything on Earth is chic. You could send a G-string from Earth and it would be super cool by the time it arrived on mars. Firstly, every girl except tom-boy George was wearing mini-skirt dresses and thick tights, big round clip-on earrings in positive colours, and bangles, bright red lipstick and pale faces. This look was practically mandatory, I see. The second thing you noticed about the dresses had the small, flexible screens running adverts on them.

"What's with the animated videos on clothes?" I said to Aunt Catherine. 

"Come dear, they don't have branded clothing on Mars? How tasteless", said aunt Catherine.

Standing there in my leggings and non-animated top made me feel instantly lame. My parents had said they were willing to stump up for some new Earth clothes. I felt some shopping was in order but I needed earth girl advice and got the feeling George wasn't going to be my first BFF of choice fashionwise.

I looked at the girls, preparing my fashion report for the buds back home. Most of the boys were ignoring each other, playing games on their phones while most of the girls were all talking, just not to each other.

"Why are they all talking at the same time?" I asked.

"Dear, Aunt Catherine said, "don't they have phones on mars?"

So everyone came to the party and was spending most of their time talking to someone, not at the party. Clearly, Earth was going to be an acquired taste.

I was still thirsty and walked to the kitchen. Standing there was a man in a detailed suit, tie and a large beard. I think Aunt Catherine called him Blinks or Binks or something. I had the feeling I should have been taking notes. He was speaking to the beach blonde with the bob haircut, Uriel. She wore some long bead necklace, large round button earrings and bright red lipstick so vivid you could light the room with it. I noticed she had massively over manicured eye brows. Her dress top kept running an animated advert for Gucci in a loop. I wanted to touch her chest to 'skip advert'. Standing closely to Binks, or Blinks, was an Indian woman elegantly dressed. I wondered if they were all going to a wedding later.

Drifting around I heard fragments of conversation. "Have you heard about this girl who was born in space and raised by robots who? Apparently, she can speak binary fluently..", "Ronald Bentham is promising to balance the budget by tripling spending on defence...","what's my secret to getting followers on UN-facebook simple style..."

I noticed the man who had complemented my pajamas was standing and talking to two men and a low-end emo girl. I inched a bit closer and listened in on the conversation while they didn't notice me.

"...another Martian princess who's too flakey, too rich and too far from home for comfort." said the man. 

"Hmm," I thought, avoiding them. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps everyone on earth felt like this about Mars people. I went back to aunt Catherine, who was now standing by the hipster bearded guy with the two girls.