The October Malice ༄ (gxg)

thirteen, walk in the park

She couldn't stop thinking about her.

Her hand slipping up her thigh, sweet lips devouring hers, the hungry bites on her neck that thankfully didn't leave any marks. Opal had thought that Claire was going to ravish her right then and there in her car on Teardrop Bridge, but the professor apparently had much more self-control than she did; because as Claire pulled away with a smirk and told her she needed to get her home, Opal would have let her do anything with her right in that moment.

She felt completely and entirely owned by the woman with whom she had done nothing more than kissed. A part of her was worried that the woman who was much older and wiser was using her naivety to her advantage and only wanted her for sex, but the other part of her was too infatuated to even care.

Even then, the next day as she sat on a bench in the small park during the break she had between her classes, she couldn't stop thinking about her. She had one of her textbooks out and was trying to study, but it was pretty much useless.

It was beautiful that day—cloudy but not dreary, windy but not excessively, cold but not freezing. The blonde had always preferred colder weather, but recently she had found herself completely loving the way it numbed her skin and eased the blush always in her cheeks because of that blasted redhead.

As if she had not already been distracted enough by a certain someone, the sudden presence of a person on the other end of the seat on the bench not only distracted her but frightened her. She jumped and gasped harshly, whipping her head around to the person who was sitting only a foot away from her. Not only had he rudely sat at the same bench as she, but even on the same side of that bench, on the same long strip of wooden seat.

"Excuse me?" The question tumbled out of her lips before she noticed the grey hoodie that the person was wearing with the hood hiding his face. He was sitting backwards on the seat, leaning his back and elbows on the table of the bench as he looked downward, making his face completely obscure.

"Why're you out here alone at the park?" that whispering yet gruff voice asked her bluntly, his knee shaking from the tapping of his foot on the grass.

Her face was still contorted in a mixed look of confusion and disbelief. How had this Alex Cypress character showed up at the park and had the audacity to just come up and start talking to her as if they were friends?

"What do you mean?" she hesitantly asked, glancing around the otherwise empty park as if he'd have some friends hiding behind a tree and laughing at her; but Alex didn't seem like the type to have friends.

"Haven't you heard about the serial killer in town?" he halfway laughed, now both of his legs shaking impatiently. He spoke in such a rushed manner that Opal found herself immediately trying to conjure responses.

But she couldn't conjure up one for that comment, because it confused her. Why would he say such a thing?

"You shouldn't be sitting alone in the park when there's a killer on the loose." His hood-covered head nodded down once as if firmly pressing the truth of his words into the air. "Mrs. Wilkes is gonna post the midterm grades tonight," he continued on as if he had not just spoken unsettling words.

Opal found herself growing nervous as she realized that she was, in fact, alone in the park besides Alex Cypress sitting right next to her. Why had he been alone in the park, anyways? She had come to study, which was a reasonable explanation, but what was his? "Why are you here?" she asked in a strict manner, her hand gripping the pencil in her hand that she had been using to take notes. It was the only weapon she could use to defend herself if the need arose, and the mention of the redhead's more formal name made her crave her presence and the protection it naturally made her feel.