Condolences (on hold)

Chapter 3

~unedited~

                Something was wrong. He had never even spoken to her before. Had barely acknowledged her existence.  And yet here they were. Alice’s legs were straddling his waist and he seemed totally comfortable while they sped down the streets.  Alice suddenly became very nervous. Though oddly enough, not about the fact that every time they turned, the asphalt rushed up to greet her. No, she actually enjoyed the rush that came with that. She was nervous about how she was going to do this.

                Then she had an idea.

                It was simple. And quite frankly, she had no idea how effective it would be. All she was going to do, was simply be herself. She would forget about the fact that he killed her brother. Well, try. It would be hard with the bastard’s cold, prominent looks. She’d manage it, though.

                She had to.

                Her hands tightened around his extremely well-built abdomen. The muscles were well defined, yet lean. And somehow she knew that just by holding him. Weird.

                When they got to the restaurant, she noted it was nowhere special. Just a hole-in-the-wall called Abby’s place. Nathaniel gave her a secret smile and took her hand. They walked in together.

                “So you’re familiar with this place?” She asked, her eyes wandering over toward the extremely worn and even partially torn up red booths. The tables were stained and engraved and even written on. But they looked clean. It was odd, but you could somehow tell that the owner and/or manager really cared about the place, engravings and all.

                “mhmm,” he said, his eyes distractedly moving around the place. He took Alice’s hand and led her to the booth in the far back of the place. They slid in, him looking at her curiously while she looked down, her cheeks suddenly heating up.

She had just realized, that this must have been his usual table to bring girls to. Well, for one thing, it had his name carved into it multiple times, all saying something along the lines of “Nate+Stacy= Love forever” to even “NM+RJ”. But there were dozens of them. All with different names.

So he was a player.

Odd, he never came off that way to her. But then again, she had always spent her time looking away from him, embarrassed by his good looks. He was, no doubt about it, the badass of the school. The idiot who handed out drugs to anyone with a wad of cash, and had a couple of knifes and even a gun in his bag. Or so the rumors were. She didn’t necessarily believe them. But there was a reason the rumors floated around about him. Because of what he did. What he was caught doing. And Alice knew every gory detail. Right from one of them most sought after sources.

And all because of her brother. Who had been Nathaniel’s best friend.

 He cleared his throat, which snapped her out of her reverie.

“Most girls don’t notice.” He looked down at the table.

It took her a second to work out what he was talking about.

Oh, right. The whole him being a player thing. “You really get around, don’t you?” she tried to come off as nonchalant, but there was a sort of undercurrent of uncertainty that she cursed herself for letting in.

He blew his cheeks out. “Uh, yeah.”

She looked down again. But then, loud, obnoxious laughter distracted her, and while she looked up, two people slid into her side of the booth, which caused her be shoved up against the wall. Across from her, Nathaniel was also squished up as a huge, burly guy scootched him over. The guy swung his arm over Nathaniel’s shoulder, and gave him a cheeky grin.