Cleopatra was perched on the wall when I arrived at the arboretum. I began worrying that I was too late, but when I quickly checked the time on my phone, I saw I was technically still five minutes early.
"Been waiting long?" I asked as I got closer.
She jumped, cheeks flushing a little as smiled at me. "I thought I would be late so I left a little earlier than normal." She looked around for a second, seeing the birds pecking at the ground before flying back to their trees, then grinned up at me. "Where do you want to go?"
I shrugged, tucking my hands back into my jacket pockets. It was September, and the weather was holding onto the last heat of the summer. Cleopatra seemed not to have noticed the faint breath of wind that picked up the handful of leaves that had already fallen from the trees, as she only wore a long checked shirt over a vest top and leggings. "It was you who asked me out remember?"
She rolled her eyes at my teasing, and pushed herself away from the wall. "I recall it was you who wanted to see me." She commented, and began leading the twenty minute walk that led to the upmarket side of town.
"You'll admit you missed me in your own time." I nudged her shoulder playfully, and smiled as she sent a fake grimace my way.
"Yeah well, you already admitted it." She mumbled, adjusting her bag on her shoulder.
We followed the road, as the houses began growing larger with sprawling gardens surrounding them. We passed a few children on bikes, and several adults wearing pressed suits marching across their drives to the expensive cars in their driveways.
"I always wanted to live here when I was little." Cleopatra suddenly spoke up. "Dad would take me on walks down to the beach, and I'd dream of having a room on the top floor of one of these swanky houses."
I bit my lip, unsure of whether to tell her I lived in a house similar to these, but on the other side of town. "Where about do you live?" I asked.
"On one of the estates about ten minutes from school." She tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing up at me before speaking. "It was just me and Dad and he doesn't have the money to live here. But, to be fair, I don't know anyone who does."
I nodded, deciding to keep quiet about my home. If, or when, she visited me there, she would see it for herself.
Her cheeks were a flushed pink when I looked down, her eyes darting from my face back to the road. I realised a little too late she'd been watching me as I'd been thinking, and I felt my own cheeks heat up a little too.
"Have you lived here long?"
"Yeah, we moved from a bungalow to a bigger house when I was about five, but we've not left the county." I explained, scratching the back of my head. "I nearly moved away though."
She tilted her head to the side, questioning me. "Where would you have gone?" Her voice was gentle.
"My Uncle To-" I cut myself off, aware of how people reacted whenever the Avengers were mentioned, even if they were my family. "My Uncle said I could live with him, and go to school over in New York."
She blew through her cheeks, chuckling a little. "You turned New York down?"
"I couldn't leave my Mum." I admitted, holding my head a little higher. I felt defensive when talking about any member of my family, and that included my mother. "I knew it would hurt her too much if I moved away."
"But you've got other siblings right? I mean there's like, five of-" She stopped abruptly, cutting herself off as we reached a set of traffic lights.
I raised an eyebrow in faint amusement as she stumbled. "I know people know a lot about my family." It always pissed me off whenever cocky teenagers acted like they were best friends with me from articles they'd read, before getting to know me. Somehow, it didn't bother me as much that Cleopatra had read the same articles.
"I don't know how much is true." She bit her lip when she looked up at me. "I mean, I know that you've got siblings and stuff, but tabloids make up stories to get readers."
"It's fine." I told her, truthfully. We crossed the road, and took a footpath that led to the top of the slope that led to the sandy beach. "There are a lot of us, it's not exactly like we're hiding ourselves."
She twirled in front of me, her mood changing from being a little shy, suddenly becoming confident as she changed the topic. "How are you finding school then, Mr God?"
I kicked my toe on the path. "Better with you." I mumbled. She looked up at me, expectantly waiting for an answer. Glad she didn't hear what I'd said, I spoke a little louder. "Fine, although I've now got Nathan giving me daggers and Mollie flirting with me."
Her mouth hung open for a mere second, before she fixed a smile back on her face. "Mollie's flirting with you?"
I pulled a confused face, gesturing as she carried on walking backwards. "Her and Stacey broke up, I guess she wants a rebound."
Her brows furrowed, her lips forming a small pout. "And she chose you?"
"Don't say it like that."
"Like what?" Her fake smile was only growing larger the longer I looked at it. "Do you... I mean, are you going to get with her?"
I scoffed, and rested my hand on her shoulder. The sun crept from behind a cloud, and the gentle breeze was beginning to subside. "No."
Her eyes held mine for a moment, as if challenging me to lie to her face, before she shrugged my hand away. "What did Nathan say then?" She fell into step beside me, tilting her head to the side so she could hear me a little better.
"He wants to kick my face in for stirring trouble." I gave her an amused smile, "so thank you for that."
"It's not my fault!" She lifted her hands with a soft laugh, "my plan was to split them up, not make him hate you. Why don't I talk to him?"
"Because that talk will end up in you hitting him. Or him punching me. And I don't deal well with confrontation." It wasn't strictly a lie. I had a tendency to let the frost giant part of my heritage creep into conscious whenever my emotions overwhelmed me, which included getting angry at a schoolboy with a self-inflated ego.
"I doubt he'll do anything anyway," Our feet landed on the soft sand, and a genuine smile stretched across her face as she stared across the miles of sea that was now visible. "He's a bit of a wimp."
"I'm not bothered by him." I told her, looking down to see the coastal breeze attack with full force, as a warm blast knotted her hair into a mess around her face.
She giggled as she pushed it back, producing a scrunchie from her bag to tie it away from her face. "What do you want to do now?"
I looked around us, seeing slightly fancy shops line the promenade, with trinkets and art work hung in the windows. "Want to go window shopping?"
"Yes! I can never afford much stuff like this." She grabbed my hand, and led me up onto the sturdier paved path, and into the first shop.
The warm touch of her fingers around mine caused my whole body to flare. My skin prickled, hairs rising as she squeezed my hand gently when she pushed the door open. A blast of air conditioning hit us the moment we stepped inside, and her fingers dropped to tuck her wild strands of hair behind her ears.
She turned to see me frowning slightly, still coming to terms with the roll of nerves that hit my stomach, and she paused. "Are you okay? You look a little pale." Her eyes bore into mine, her hands outstretching to touch mine again. I quickly slid them back into my pockets, and coughed, turning to the side.
"I'm fine. What's this shop?"
She looked a little hurt, but pointed to the small bespoke keychains and hand-sized metal sculptures that lined the distressed wooden shelves. "It's like an art gallery, shop place I guess. All expensive too."
"Every item is hand made by local artists." A thick Cornish accent broke into our conversation, belonging to a short, round lady with eccentric blue curls. "They only charge what they believe it to be worth."
I bit my lip, staring at a painting of a dark blue smudge, painted beneath a single line of pale blue. A yellow dot sat between the two, and yet the price tag announced it was expecting to be sold for £500.
"Talented artists." Cleopatra murmured, catching what I'd been looking at.
I couldn't hold in the snort at the strength of sarcasm in her tone, and we quickly left the shop as the batty old lady began to rant about young entrepreneurs needing respect.
Cleopatras hands stayed firmly in her pockets as we moved into a second shop. Dusty books surrounded us, with almost unpronounceable titles embossed in cursive gold font on their spines. The smell of worn leather and old books hit us the moment we walked in, and Cleopatra immediately wandered off to a stack of books that were balanced precariously on a table.
She looked like she was in heaven.
With some of her knotted, tangled hair pulled back in a bun, and the rest tucked behind her ears and falling down her back, she definitely looked dishevelled. But not in a bad way. Her long shirt doubled as a jacket, and she slowly slid the button fastenings closed as she twisted her neck to read the titles.
She looked so in touch with where she was; so comfortable in this environment, that I myself began to feel a little out of place.
I stayed to the side, withdrawing a couple of books that looked faintly familiar to the ones in Dads library at home. It was meant to be a family library, but he owned the majority of it. Mum had a small selection, covering just under a third of the room, and the rest of us had a narrow section of wall filled with books from when we were slightly younger. Roald Dahl and J K Rowling were sat amongst the Brontë sisters, and Jane Austin.
We learned that if we wanted our own collection of books, to keep them in our own rooms.
Cleopatra appeared at my shoulder half an hour later, with a brown package tied with white string clutched between her two hands. I gently closed the book I'd been reading from, and slid it back onto the shelf. "Find something good?"
She nodded, her constant smile not leaving her face as she gazed down, stroking her thumb along the tied bow. "It's my step-Dads birthday next week and I needed to get him a present."
"What did you choose?" I enquired, as she slid the carefully wrapped book into her bag.
"He's obsessed with the history of vehicles, but not modern ones. He likes steam trains and really early designs of boats and stuff. So I got him a book that included some fancy drawings of engines..." she caught my expression and spluttered out, "I don't know what any of it means!" She laughed, "I just know he likes it."
"Did you get him anything else?" I held the door open, letting her step out onto the footpath. Her chunky boots cracked a small shell that had been swept from the sand onto the path, and she looked down in surprise.
"A book on flowers."
My eyebrows raised, "flowers?"
She nodded happily, and began walking again. "He loves them. We've not got a very big garden, but he's made flowerbeds along the three walls. We've got hanging baskets, potted plants, veg growing on the windowsills... you name it, we've got it."
I could see some of her step-fathers passion sprinkling into her, seeing how her eyes lit up by just talking about them. "What's your favourite flower?"
I scrunched my face up as I heard myself ask the question, and silently chastised myself as to how awful it sounded. "I mean-"
"The Birds Of Paradise are absolutely stunning." She cut off my ramblings. "When they bloom, they open up to look like a flying bird. They're incredible, but I've never actually seen one in person. Or there's this plant called a Bleeding Heart. They're so beautiful, they look like little hearts, and when a droplet of rain falls down it, it really looks like it's bleeding." She gushed, eyes sparkling as she stopped walking to face me.
We both stopped as her smile grew wider, her chest heaving a little as she finally caught a breath. I flicked my eyes to hers, convincing myself I didn't want to stare at her slightly pouty lips as her smile faded. "I expected you to say a rose, or something."
She laughed softly, and took a step closer. I instinctively took one too, feeling her body heat seep into the air around us, warming our cheeks as we stared at each other.
"Oi Cleo, can you lend me the notes Mr Bell left us for Art?" Cleopatra took a step back, turning to face the skinny teenager who hung his head out of a window above the shop next to us.
"David, do you live here?" She called up, not sounding anywhere near as frustrated as I did for him interrupting whatever the hell just happened.
"Yeah. So I got the first bit about a moodboard, but-"
"I'll text you tonight." She shouted, then gestured to me to walk alongside her.
We were quiet, but not uncomfortable, when we reached a small pasty shop. The queue was unusually short, and so we joined the back of it, discussing the flavours we would buy.
Once we had the hot bags of food in our hands, we found a large rock polished by the high tide. It was still dry, and so we tucked our legs under ourselves and perched on it, looking out over the sea.
"So you take Art?" I asked, hating myself for never actually asking her what subjects she was studying.
"Yeah." She swallowed the bite of her Mexican bean pasty, and turned to face me. "I do English Literature with you, Art, and History."
"They compliment each other." I mused, leaning back a little.
She nodded, "I'm not going to Uni, but if I chose to then at least I have some A levels, you know?"
"What are you doing instead?" I expected her to be applying to Universities at this time, so her confession took me by surprise. She worked hard in lessons, and even though we both joked around and got in far more trouble than my Mum would approve of, she was almost the top of our shared English class.
She looked down at her pasty, scrunching her nose for a moment as she thought. "My Dad's got an in with a tattoo parlour across town. He managed to get me a fully paid apprenticeship which is just... its incredibly rare to be paid when training there."
"You want to be a tattoo artist?" I stared at her, studying her with a new eye. She didn't have the appearance of somebody I usually associated with tattoos, and I realised my prejudices as she cocked an eyebrow challengingly.
"Yes." She said defensively. "I've already given Dad and James some, and they're good."
"I'm not debating it," I surrendered, trying to convey my sincerity, "I think if you enjoy it then you should embrace it."
She looked down, a hint of a shy smile on her lips hidden by a bite of her pasty. Once she'd swallowed the piece, she glanced at me. "What about you?"
"Business, and Religion and Ethics."
"Seriously? That's a lot of work with English on top of that." She looked as surprised as I did for her.
I shrugged, "I'm used to the writing aspect."
"What are you doing next year then? Jetting off to Uni?" She nudged my shoulder playfully, "if your Uncle offers New York again your should totally take it."
I debated telling her a lie, but I felt my gut clench at the thought of leading her on. "I'm going away for a year."
"Oh fun! A gap year! Have you got your tickets booked? Where are you going?" She talked my ear off in between bites of food, and my inner monologue continued its battle.
"I'm going to Asgard." I mumbled, staring to sea.
She looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression, before the penny dropped. "That sounds incredible! Honestly Tyr, that sounds... a whole different planet." She let out a breath that sounded close to a chuckle, as she shook her head in slight disbelief. "Send me a postcard?"
"Sure." I grinned, "And I'll come and visit you at the tattoo place when I get back."
She smiled at that, and I nudged closer to her. I felt her head tentatively rest on my shoulder, and as my heart suddenly began thudding harder, I gently balanced mine on hers. Her hair was soft under my chin, her body moulding into my side like we'd sat like this hundreds of times before.
"What is it you want to do?" She asked after a while, moving her head to look at me.
"I... I'm gonna stay on Asgard for a bit. Work with my Uncle." I wasn't lying. I wasn't, I was simply hiding the truth for a little while longer.
I didn't know what was happening to me with Cleopatra, but I didn't want to stop whatever it was before it even had a chance to start.