ᴄᴀʟʟᴀᴡᴀʏ (theworldwithin) wrote in darker_london, @ 2015-03-18 21:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | andy greenway, hector jaffrey |
You say this is a game so take your place - Andy, Hector
It turned out skipping school was easier than Andy had thought it would be. The day after she handed in a note forged in her dad's handwriting and that was the end of it. No one suspected, no one asked anything. It was almost too easy and it gave Andy a little thrill. (Andy wasn't a bad girl. Andy liked the idea of being the sexy rebel but she was always just a little wary of straying outside the lines.)
She thought about taking another day off and doing the same she'd done before - which was walking around the city, trying on outfits and browsing shops - but she knew that she had to be careful. Too often would get her caught out. Although if anyone even noticed her being not there, Andy was pretty sure it would be a miracle.
But she didn't skip out of school again for another week, deciding when she got up that morning she'd rather be anywhere but stuck in class. It was a surprisingly nice day. Seemed like a waste.
So she took the tube to Covent Garden and found a Starbucks to sit down in and have her morning maple macchiato, the only beverage she could easily see herself crippling a man to get a hold of. She did, however, have a weakness for all things maple. Sometimes she thought she should just move to Canada and be done with it.
By midday she was trailing around the department stores, trying on shoes and admiring in the mirrors how she looked in different hats. She didn't really have a whole lot of money to spare, but window shopping was okay. Andy liked trying things on just as much as buying them as well.
She was looking at makeup when she noticed that someone was watching her. She lifted her gaze properly and realised that it wasn't a creepy stranger, but a slightly creepy dude she knew. Well, maybe not creepy but... something. Hector Jaffrey. He was in the same grade as her at London College but she didn't exactly talk. As far as she could tell, Hector didn't talk to many people at all. But everyone knew his deal - his mum had won a fortune and they'd moved from somewhere crappy and into a great big house. Also he was seventeen, a year older than Andy, but held back a year. He didn't seem all that academic.
"Shouldn't you be in class?" was what he asked, leaning over the top of the wooden rack nail polishes were being displayed on.
"Shouldn't you?" Andy retorted.
His smile was slow and she didn't think it was really meant for her. "Taking a mental health day," he told her.
"What does that even mean?" Andy asked, fighting the urge to put a hand on her hip, to try and look cooler than she was.
Hector may have been some sort of drop-out troublemaker, but it couldn't be denied that his looks had caught the eye of a lot of girls at school. He was tall and muscular and dark with long hair that was always trying to escape around his face. He wasn't a popular crush, but his bad boy appeal seemed to work for him. Not that he'd showed any interest in girls. Briana said he was probably just gay, but Andy didn't think that was true. He was part Indian (or something) for a start, and she didn't think they did gay so much. Andy's own running opinion was that he was just kinda rude.
(His sister was cool though. Brooklyn. She was super pretty as well and since joining the netball team had a whole herd of boys after her. Andy wished she was like that.)
"Means I couldn't be fucked going," he said. "You know, like you."
"Whatever," Andy said, but she dropped her gaze because his own was kinda intense. (She had a sexy fantasy about Hector almost six months ago. It was ringing pretty clear in her mind right now and she was remembering the cheesy things he'd said to her in her imagination and, Jesus, this was awful!) "It's not like I'm going to uni anyway."
"Yeah?" Hector asked. "What you gonna do instead?"
Andy shrugged, putting one lipstick back and pulling out another. "Dunno. Get a job somewhere. Don't care, as long as I can get my own place."
Hector came around the nail polishes to stand next to her, looking at the pricetag on the lipsticks. "You spend all your cash on these you'll never afford rent.
"Nah, I don't buy this stuff," Andy shrugged. "It's stupid expensive."
Hector turned his face to her a little and there was a smile. "You steal it?"
Andy looked shocked and shook her head. "What? No- I just- I mean, I just buy cheap stuff and-"
"Steal it," Hector said, casting a casual glance around the busy shop. "No one's looking. Just take it."
Then he went back around the other side of the stand and starting looking at something else, occasionally looking over his shoulder at her.
Andy felt frozen to the spot. She looked at the lipstick in her hand and decided that if she was going to do this then she had to do it right now and not fluff about with stalling. She reached out like she was putting the lipstick back and used her fingers to push it up inside her sleeve.
She felt like she could hear her own heartbeat and she was waiting for someone to put a sudden hand on her shoulder.
She had to remind herself not to just start running. Instead she walked away from the lipsticks and over towards the hair dyes, picking up boxes and reading the backs of them before putting them back.
Every step towards the door was like someone squeezing her heart in a sharp little cage but onside on the street she could see Hector leaning against a sad gratified tree beside the road. Andy crossed through the security buzzer gate but... nothing went off. She gave him a tight look of triumph but didn't stop walking, carrying on down the street. Hector was at her side soon enough and she slipped the lipstick out from her sleeve. "Beat that," she grinned, high on adrenaline and the thrill of bad behaviour.
Hector took the lipstick from her fingers and unscrewed the lid. "Very red," he said, turning it way to far out of the tube and then grabbing her arm to make her stand still. Hector painting her lips red was the sexiest thing that Andy had ever experienced and she didn't even know if he'd made her look like a clown. All she knew was that a boy was watching her lips intensely, his brows furrowed, and she could feel the soft pressure against them.
Andy pressed her lips together when he was done and said, "good?"
Hector nodded. "Yeah, it'll work."
She spent the next hour with Hector and by the time they parted he'd stolen a handful of other things. On the tube ride home Andy was wearing a white t-shirt with the print of a half-naked woman on a motorbike. A gift stolen just for her.