We Are Tidal

Chapter One - Perfect Poison

Hi All,

My name is Jennifer Poyntz and this is my first straight-up romance contemporary novel - I hope you enjoy and are excited to meet Dylan and Arthur!

Let me know what you think, leave comments, I'm always excited for feedback!

Copyright:

This novel is protected in its content and anyone found to be reproducing, copying or stealing my content will be prosecuted as such.

Thank you so much lovelies,

Jen x

Twitter: @jenniferpoyntz

Instagram: Jenniferpoyntz_

**I DO NOT own any of the images used as chapter cover images**

Chapter One

Perfect Poison

I watch my best friend of over ten years take a deep drag from her cigarette, exhaling a cloud of smoke, with her asthma inhaler in her other hand.

"You realise that I'm not going to keep paying for your cigarettes, right?" I say somewhat endearingly, a shadow of a smile playing on my lips as I take the cigarette back from Willow who coughs into her sleeve.

Inhaling deeply around the cigarette, I clap Willow on the back.

The September night was cool, with temperatures dropping fast. Last week, I had gone to the party without a jacket, but this Saturday felt as if I should have stayed where I'd been until an hour ago - in bed, under an electric blanket. My safe space.

Willow straightens herself, her cheeks flushed.

"And you realise, Dylan, that as your designated driver tonight that I have the power to leave you stranded with all these vagrants and miscreants?" Willow answers, with the briefest of gestures to the room full of people through the closed sliding patio doors into the kitchen.

Willow's withering expression at the throng of dancing, mingling bodies causes my grin to grow. Though only twenty-one years old, Willow was hideously sensible and the college house parties they attended gave her plenty of material to lecture me and our other friends with later.

There was a time, I remind myself, that it would have been the other way around.

A whole lifetime has gone by since those days.

"Come on, it's the first party of the new semester with everyone here, can't you just smile once?" I  tease, flicking my long silver hair out of my face and picking up my glass from the wood varnished table.

A vodka, diet coke. The perfect poison for the beginning of every good night.

My matte burgundy lipstick left an even stain on the rim of the glass.

When Willow didn't immediately respond, I look at her with narrowed eyes. Willow's mother was from the Philippines whereas her father was from England, giving Willow flawless sallow skin and eyes dark enough to get lost in. Added to her waist-length chestnut hair, I was regularly envious of her natural beauty.

But now, Willow looked concerned - worried even. As though she was considering saying something and was fighting a fierce internal battle. She bit her lip and opened her mouth.

Before I could ask her to spit it out, the door from the kitchen to the patio slide open and a throng of people burst out the door, presumably having been sent outside to smoke by Mark, a commercial law student who always hosted the parties. His parents owned the house in their university city but lived three towns away. It was perfect.