Walking toward's Prescott's house instead of stalking away from it - or rather Iggy's house - felt distinctly different this time around. The sheer frustration that seeped into every pore at last encounter was just a faint tingle now. I wasn't sure what had me feeling calmed, perhaps the afternoon stroll compared to a lone woman's evening pace at dark.
There was no need to check over my shoulder or keep my phone flashlight a tap away. Or it could have been more than that, but I shook that thought away in favour of this business negotiation task at hand. Mergers and acquisitions danced in my thoughts rather than the warm vision of dancing at the very doorstep I had now reached.
Looking up to the terrace house that was usually strewn with cans and riddled with men of different sporting codes, it looked like any other sunlit, charming abode on this street. Grey awnings stretched to a charcoal roof, and the front porch caught streams of light ideal for basking in the sun while reading. Not that anyone at this house picked up a book. Unless forced or dared I would wager.
Leaving my Architectural Digest hat to one side, I opened their front gate and toddled in towards the party house lay dormant. But before I could knock the door swings open and I'm greeted by Prescott and Leary with surprised looks overtaking their faces. Shock even. I looked curiously at each of them before edging forward.
"What has each of you looking so... caught?"
"Harper - hey!" Preston bug-eyed with an enthusiasm I'd never seen from him prior. "Caught - pfft. What is there to catch?"
"Catch indeed... hey, Harper." Prescott waved with a nod.
"Preston, James. What's going on?" Confusion in my tone spilling over. "Is Iggy here? Don't tell me he forgot." I release my seven tonnes of books onto the table and run a hand through my hair once inside the door.
The living room was adjacent to the kitchen I knew a little too well and the thought of our last encounter, both Hunter and Iggy respectively made me feel unwelcome having only stepped foot inside a moment ago. I physically shook it off attempting to shrug the feeling of ick off with it.
"Nothing at all, Harper. Don't mind our surprise you're here, we thought Valis was talking some mad shit but apparently the boy has more game than we give him credit for." Preston stalked into the lounge room at a slower pace making towards my books, braced knee making each step laboured. It'd been a nasty fall skiing in Andorra over the break that had seen him relegated to the bench.
"Please, don't flatter him. We have a law assignment to work on. That's it. Hence mountain of books. How's the knee?" I sat down on their couch and Preston and James followed suit, moving inwards from the doorways from which they'd been lingering. I think they'd expected me to be more awkward, more tentative to setup here of all places. But they quite obviously didn't know me or my work ethic all that well.
"Hey, don't mind us." James adds hands raised in defence of Preston's tease. "Impressed is all. Valis never invites anyone here, well at least to study that is."
Expecting me to recoil perhaps, James smirks a little as if he's unravelled my idea of Iggy entirely. Shattered my dreams. Wherein actually his little aside doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
"You think I don't know how football players behave, Prescott? Is that it? Naivety was left at the door of the apartment I share with the three hooligans four years ago." I smiled briskly to meet James and Preston's now changed faces, a shade of surprise swallowed and a hint of mischief in each of their eyes. I would bet even a little impressed, not that what I said warranted any sort of praise.
I was a realist when it came to these guys. Post Asher my outlook on the men that wandered this campus had rendered itself to be purely transactional. I hadn't slept around per se, but if I had the urge to that was my business. I wasn't going to be strung along my mediocre sports players with inflated senses of entitlement. University was close to wrapping up and any of the players both on and off field who entered real adult life wearing their collegiate sporting achievements as a badge were of little interest to me. And the same went for their pride in pulling large portions of the female student population.
YOU ARE READING
Closing Arguments
Romance"He should never have hit you, but winding him up like that..." "Like what? Talking about being your partner, working with you, spending time with you. That's no fabrication, H. We are going to be spending a whole lot of time together this semester...
