“Yeah, he made it pretty clear all he wanted to do was make me angry, and it worked. I’m not very good at just letting things slide off me. It’s kind of hard to be nice to someone who is so mean. I don’t think I keep it up if I tried. Besides, the one, teeny tiny compliment he did give to me only happened when I turned something around on him. It was really mean of me, but it was the only kind of respect he seemed to give me at all.” Jia Li’s explanation wasn’t detailed, but it got the point across. The guy didn’t want to deal with a girl who was nice; he wanted to deal with a girl who could hold her ground. Then again, if the dryad was nice to him, and he stumbled all over himself, it would be so worth it. She just didn’t think he was the sort to really ever lose his confidence.
“Um… That doesn’t really make sense in this case. I think he just really didn’t want to deal with me, so he did everything in his power to make me go away.” Jia Li’s long fingers moved over the almost healed cut on her palm from when he had stormed through her, kicking her book from her hands and consequentially wounding her hand a little. He hadn’t even given the glimmer of an apology.
When Kaydence revealed that she’d been topless, Jia Li’s eyes widened and she tossed the siren a sharp look, but the other woman was prepared with a hand up to stop the words that were forming on the dryad’s lips. She swallowed the shock of what she was going to say. That topless policy sounded eerily familiar, but it was probably just a coincidence that he wouldn’t make any bet unless she was topless if she lost it. A lot of guys liked breasts a lot, after all, and the two women had already revealed that both guys were jerks. Maybe guys like them were just automatically prone to coercing women into being half naked?
“Did you sleep with him?” She asked curiously. Having never had sex, it was still kind of interesting to hear about others’ intimate escapades as long as they didn’t go into too much detail.
“Wow. I can’t imagine never going to public school. Did you like it?” Jia Li asked curiously. She would feel like her social skills were really lacking if she hadn’t gone to public school. “Eh, it was all right. I mean, there are a lot of people, and not all of them are nice, so I guess it’s a lot like college. There are a lot of cliques, too, but there are also people who can be friends with everyone no matter what their social circle, and there were a lot of people who would play sports and be involved in the arts like theatre. I hear that’s pretty rare for most schools, though, so maybe my experiences with school aren’t what you should be hearing about. Some other person probably went to a more traditional school where you had the popular crowd and the losers or something.” The dryad shrugged as she ran. Her breathing was getting slightly heavier, but she was still perfectly all right.
“That’s understandable. My dad worries about me all the time, too. I think it’s just a parental unit thing. They just want to make sure we’re all safe but still happy.” It was true. Her father was pretty liberal about things, but he had never just allowed her to run wild. He’d always been sure she had direction and discipline, but she’d been a pretty good kid growing up anyway, so there weren’t a lot of punishments during her childhood.
“To each her own.” The dryad replied. Settling down wasn’t as scary a thought to her as it was a frightening practice. Getting close to someone was what worried her, but she hoped she’d get over it someday.
“I get anyone can be something they’re not. Even a jerk could secretly be a pretty good guy, right? There are two sides to every coin, you know?” At least, she hoped that was true sometimes. What if he wasn’t as bad as he’d shown himself to be? No… That probably wasn’t right. Good guys didn’t mock girls immediately after kissing them. A good guy wouldn’t kiss a girl at all unless he really liked her.