Bold Bella (Book 4)

Chapter 21:

Six Months Later, December:

UTS (University of Technology Sydney) was basically a big, ugly, brown building but my life revolved around it. I attended classes there three times a week and most of my friends came from the course I was studying. It was great how easily things fell into place here. I already had a group at university to hang out with and then I had Helena and Andrew who I was still living with and then I had a few friends from the Coles I worked at. Things were going great and smoothly.

Tonight Andrew was throwing some massive surprise party at our apartment, something about his brother going to go play football – they call it soccer – in England. Apparently he was leaving in like a month or something but they found out the news like a week ago, which meant celebrations. I watched some videos and he was quite the player but I didn’t really know much about football. I’d only met Andrew’s brother twice. His name was Perry and whilst he was smoking hot, he looked nothing like Andrew. Andrew had darker features and blue eyes whereas Perry had blonde-brown hair with brown eyes and lighter skin. He seemed the broody type and we didn’t really speak much but I gathered the feeling that he only talked with people he knew for a while.

As I was walking back to my apartment in Broadway, I stopped by Coles to check my shifts for the following week and to pick up some things that Andrew texted me to pick up. Chips, soft drinks, a few fruits. Just stuff like that. Then carrying the bags I started to make my way back to the apartment. I underestimated the weight of the bags. After a few minutes the bags felt like they weighed a tonne and I was struggling with them. It felt like the bags were going to break. Dreading that thought I got a firmer grip on the bags and kept my head down and walked as fast as possible. Then I ran into someone. Literally. My head smashed into their chest and their toes stomped on mine. The bags fell as my toes shot pain through my body like soundwaves and the bottles of coke and lemonade and other soft drinks I had bought went rolling about the footpath and if you’d ever been to Broadway you’d see why that was a problem.

Broadway was always bustling with people. People on feet, people in cars just people everywhere. So people were starting to give me dirty looks. Looking up I found out who bumped into me.

            “Oh, Perry!” I said flustered and surprised. His face didn’t smile and it was brooding as usual. I was a little freaked out about the coincidence of the situation. Out of every person in Broadway and Sydney and Australia I bumped into Perry.

            “Do I know you?” he asked and a bitter smile covered my face as I tried to keep it under the wraps.

            “I’m Bella, we’ve met twice,” I said offended, when he still didn’t remember I rolled my eyes, “I live with your brother and his girlfriend.”

            “Yeah, I know. I was just messing with you,” he said and look at that, he cracked a smile and he laughed. He looked gorgeous when he smiled. His eyes had a kindness to them that you don’t generally expect from broody people and his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

            “Oh, right,” I said trying to lighten up a little. I started grabbing the bags off of the floor and Perry helped to grab some of the stray bottles of soft drink.

            “Your accent is so weird,” Perry stated to me.

            “So is yours,” I told him, “And you’ll have to get used to it if you’re gonna live in England.”

            “Touché,” he said, “Are these for the party tonight?”

            “How’d you know about that? It was meant to be a surprise,” I told him and he clapped once and loudly.