Malview park was cold, damp and cloaked in a heavy layer of fog that clung and seeped and writhed about the air. Riley was leading the way, steering his brother with a forcible hand at his back. You could tell by the way his hand gripped the leather at the boy's shoulder that he was just about as happy for him to be there as I was to have him yapping and snapping at my heels all day.
What can I say? Me and this new 'friend' - or rather Greek god - seem to have at least some things in common.
"So - Perri is it?" I gave a imperceptible nod of the head that he wasn't supposed to catch. Despite this guy's good looks I wasn't exactly keen on the idea of his little shit of a brother knowing my name; let alone my address. "Which side do you live? If your exit is via the north gate then you might just have company." He gave me a cheeky wink and a half smile that only tilted up on the left side of his face.
He was flirting. With me. If only Mr Oh-So-Perfect didn't have such a pug-nosed, hedge-hog haired tag-a-long.
I sucked in a mouthful of air, keeping it in my cheeks before allowing it to whistle out in a sort of condescending hiss. The air was really quite cold; our P.E torturers - sorry, teachers - had always made us sprint around the football Field in this weather, that's how I knew that this kind of air always made your throat burn and your lungs almost shudder with cold.
"I don't give my address to strangers" I let the words mull on my tongue and sit in the air between us, like a fat, ugly spider. The kid snickered, I pierced him with a glare. Somehow, Riley got the message. So he wasn't just a pretty face.
"Bugger off Alex - you repugnant and Perdita here knows it."
"Perri." I corrected. Perdita was a stupid name. It's probably not even an actual name - just a few sounds and syllables thrown together. Once in religion class, we were supposed to look up the meaning of our names, and mine - being so obscure - didn't even seem to have a meaning, so I just made it up. My mother was a master of all things ridiculous.
"We're not exactly strangers." Riley stated, not quite blunt, but not far from it. Typical male, couldn't bear the smallest chink in his ego. Well I was Perri, and the idea of bringing the hottest boy since Pete Wentz and his little-shit brother home to a mother in a drunken stupor with the T.V blaring at full volume wasn't exactly appealing.
"We don't exactly know each other though." I muttered, "Not that I have an aversion to getting to know people - my house is just..."
"Too close, to quickly?" Riley snorted, obviously thinking I was blowing him off completely. He tugged his leather jacket over his abs and flipped his hair from directly over his eyes. He obviously wasn't used to rejection, he was obviously so unfamiliar with the concept that he couldn't even recognize when a girl was simply playing a little hard-to-get and keeping a little of the truth from him. I suppose other girls instantaneously dropped their pants and fell into bed the moment he winked and said: "Where do you live?". To be completely fair, she wasn't exactly foreign to the concept either.
"No," I hissed, I felt like my metaphorical heckles were rising, I was becoming more and more feral, his narrowed green eyes were judgmental, and suddenly, he didn't seem so attractive. "It's private."
This was my issue with guys. I didn't have a problem picking them up, why would I? I had blonde hair, brown eyes and a few freckles spattered over the bridge of my nose, I was hardly exotic, but my boob-to-belly-to-butt ratio ensured that I snagged the eyes of plenty of males. They liked my tits, nothing new there; my guarded personality and tendency to flip over the slightest things however - that wasn't in the slightest attractive. The moment they realized I had baggage, they would skip on out of there faster than you could say 'my mother's a drunken slut'.
"Private?" He chuckled. "Right, good to hear, I let you get on and keep your 'privacy'" He tugged on his brother's hood and sent him down the right fork on the pathway, sending him straight for the North gate. The moment you damaged a guy's ego, even remotely, they suddenly started to act like utter jerks with nothing but their dicks to consider. Riley, all too quickly, turned his back on me and followed his brother. He hunched his back, his brother slowed to walk in time with him. On the wind I heard his laugh, it was high pitched - his balls hadn't dropped yet then. "You always pick the crazies." and with that, they both became idiotic pig-headed dots ahead of me.
I turned on my heel and looked out across the lake beside me. There was so much gloom that the sun wasn't even reflecting upon it anymore. So the fit guys weren't the nice ones, I already knew that. But the pace at which he became hostile was astounding, even in comparison to me. I couldn't help blinking back a few treacherous tears as I moved down the left fork on the pathway, walking the longer route towards the north gate.
