Frigid Flora

eleven - the party

Chapter Eleven

Some people have a curious nature. Up until a few days ago I would have said that I fell under that description. Now I wasn't so sure. There was a line between having an inquisitive mind and becoming borderline stalker in order to retrieve the information you sought.

Prying into other people's social affairs had never been something that interested me, that had always been Skylar's expertise. Who would have thought that it would only take the hushed whispered words of "party" and "Parker" to change my mind.

Though Parker had driven me home on the night of the catastrophic date failure where we'd left things on a relatively upbeat note, something had changed between us. It had first started after the forced kiss in his car; a lingering sort of awkward tension. It seemed to have worsened considerably since then.

Every time I looked at him the scenario would play on repeat inside my head. His hand bunching up my blouse, the other grasping the back of my neck whilst his lips crashed against my own. Either that or how jealous he had looked when dragging me away from Beckett.

I hated it.

Whether this was happening to him as well, I couldn't tell. I presumed that it was only me seeing as I was the one acting odd around him. Parker was just acting like his usual self.

Or so I had thought.

The first mention of a party had been two days ago during my math class. Seeing as I never understood what was happening with that subject, getting distracted with other things was easy. Especially other classmates' conversations. I guess that's why twenty minutes into the lesson I had accidentally tuned into the excited babbling from the girls in front of me.

"He's never hosted a party before. I wonder what his house looks like?" Victoria Saunders gushed.

The first seed of interest had been successfully planted into the soil that was my brain. Those that were likely to host a party already had. Who could it have been?

"Well I know what it looks like already. I've slept with him." The girl next to Victoria replied smugly.

She was fairly new to town, if I recalled correctly her name was Quinn. Lots of boys were fawning over her as if she was a shiny new toy to play with - there were never many new people that moved to Oakton, there was wasn't much to see in our relatively small town so many people became obsessed with newcomers. Quinn was well aware of the attention she got and each day her skirt moved up a few inches. Soon she'd be strutting about in her underwear.

Victoria let out a dreamy sigh. "I still can't believe you slept with Parker Heywood last week."

It was two days later and I still couldn't fully believe it. Firstly, Parker hadn't hosted a party before. For someone who was known to enjoy a party or two (that was until he seemed to make a full time occupation staying by my side and irritating me of course) I found it hard to believe he'd never held one in his own house.

Secondly, Parker had slept with Quinn. I didn't know why I was so surprised. Parker liked girls and he was notorious for fooling around with them. I'd always known that he stripped them of their clothes, dignity and self esteem (I'd even told him so) yet somewhere during the few months I'd spent with him it seemed to have slipped my mind.

Quinn turned around after a few moments as if she had sensed my lingering stare. She smirked at me, a rather prominent look of self-satisfaction glistening in her eyes, before turning back around whilst chuckling under her breath. She wanted me to be annoyed and annoyed I was. The rest of math class my brain was preoccupied with thinking of ways to discreetly impale the back of her fiery red head with my pencil.