One With My Rival

chapter seventeen

Sunday evening comes rolling in and I find myself invited to a pool party. That alone is surprising enough since I don't have that many people I'm associated enough with to be invited to one. But money and my mothers' connection has its ways.

Frankly speaking, I feel like coming here is a bad decision. 

Pool parties are often pictured as loud, graceless and nasty events. Riots. Like what you see in typical college pool parties where barely coherent human beings that are thrown into the adult world make stupid mistakes that will either haunt them forever or ruin their lives.

The pool party I'm currently at is anything but that though. Actually- I feel like it's the exact opposite of all that. It's the epitome of class. Which, shouldn't be surprising considering the reason of invite.

It wasn't even a verbal invitation from my mother- whom I still haven't talked to and it's been a couple of days. It was just an overly scented and quite possibly overpriced piece of paper left on my table.

Why I actually came to the party is still a mystery, even to me. But the food is great, music is great, and they have a shit ton of expensive yet deadly variation of alcoholic drinks so I'm not complaining.

Plus I haven't bumped into Nala or my mother or any rich nosy people yet so that's something to consider.

I tugged at my one piece as I made my way from the bar to the outdoor pool on the first floor. This place is fucking enormous and I'm pretty sure this is like, the fourth pool I've seen and it's only been 15 minutes. Thankfully most of them are occupying the pool upstairs, at the balcony. 

The sound of water splashing stops me from eyeing the weirdly colored drink the bartender offered. I look up and my eyes falls on a man in the middle of the pool. I squint my eyes to get a better look at who he is and whether I should still go to the pool with him in it or just look for another one here.

He moves to the corner of the pool and something clicks. 

It's Lucas.

I slowly released the breath I didn't know I was holding and carefully took a step back. 

We haven't really talked and I'm only now realising how much fucking pride I have in me at this instance. Then again I don't necessarily have an obscene amount of friends to test this theory out. 

From this distance he can't really see or feel my presence and I'm currently debating whether or not I should leave it like that. The events from that night is still fresh (thanks to countless nightmares) and I don't really know how to approach him since he basically just vanished after that day. I think I have established at this point that communication isn't my strongest suit.

I stared at my drink again, the neon green substance burning its way into my brain as I sighed, moving to go back to the bartender to ask for another drink.

Nala has been persistent, more so the past few days and she's been anything but discreet in whatever she wants. And I'm guessing from how she basically eliminated all possible privacy in the house, she wants to see something happen between us.

Which is fucking absurd but I can't voice that out to her.

Besides, I'm growing tired of this unsaid but very apparent tension between us. It's the first time anything like this happened and that says a lot considering the number of times I've had him at gunpoint.

I quietly made my way outside, careful to not scare him since, despite being half naked, I'm not sure if he has a gun with him and I would prefer to make it out alive tonight. The last thing I want is to have a bullet in my head because of forgetting the spy rule number one.