Talk To Me

07-I || A Horror Story Over Dessert

It was 6.45 PM and I was in the back of a purple Prius while Tallulah was up front and Tasha was at the wheel. It was only a twenty-minute drive and yet they were insistent on making conversation. I was helplessly trying to tune in instead of debating whether or not to fake a heart-attack or just throw the door open and dive out because I still was confused as to how I'd gotten dragged into this in the first place. I'd met him in a funeral, turned him down, then had let his sister barf in my toilet, had turned him down when he showed up where I worked, and then accepted an invitation to a party from his sister? Where was the flow in that ridiculous storyline and why was I even searching for a flow because real-life storylines don't have a flow in them. Real life is you walking along on a minefield and being expected to deal with it if you're blown sky-high.

"I'm so glad you could come with us, Harper," said Tasha, grinning at me through the rearview mirror and I rearranged my grimace into a smile just in time. "So bummed that Dianne can't come though, it would have been terrific if you two could've met."

 "Well, I for one am glad we're inviting Harper along instead." Tallulah looked at me and rolled her eyes. "Dianne and Tasha think that extreme PDA is totally socially acceptable."

 "Shut up, you dork!" Tallulah squealed as her twin pinched her on the arm and was I in a car, or inside some weird mobile kindergarten? "Dianne and I never kiss in front of Mum and Dad."

 "Who said anything about kiss?" asked Tallulah, innocently. They seemed to have forgotten about me in the backseat; yes, there was a god. "Remember that one brunch, you were sitting next to her and then from under the table—"

 "Tallulah! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" 

 Squeal squeal squeal, giggle giggle giggle.

 Holy mother of god.

Tallulah nattered something else when my phone buzzed. Vanessa Downing, an undergraduate at Crestview just a year below me, had posted a tweet about how FINALS ARE WRECCCKIIIIINNNNGG her AAAAASSSSSSS. Well. Hope the desperation doesn't drive her insane. I hope she finds a way to deal with it, like me.

 "Well anyways, glad you had the time, Harper." Fuck, they'd remembered my sad sorry and silent presence. "Wendy never had the time."

"Right, yeah," I said, sighing as I switched off my phone and stared out at the whizzing streets. "Wendy was..."

 "She lived in the apartment before you," supplied Tallulah. "Then I guess we couldn't exactly expect her to come out with us, she was...you know, old." She laughed like aging was the funniest thing in the world and it was something that was never going to happen to her.

Maybe some part of me had agreed to this because that same part of me knew Jared was not going to take no for an answer. For some reason he was pursuing me, me; I was being pursued by a guy who was ridiculously out of my league and I wasn't taking advantage of that good fortune. He would grow curious. Mystified. Wonder why his abs and his eyes and his hair and his smile weren't working on me like they worked on thousand other girls. And then he would investigate. And I didn't need anyone investigating me, least of all him. So I was going to this party to throw him off the scent.

That's what I kept telling myself all the way out of the car park to the driveway into the villa and now the car was stopping and Tasha and Tallulah were getting out and saying something to me and I wasn't paying attention and I got out of the car too and stared up at the villa.

It was very, very different from the lake-house I used to live in.

Because this wasn't a villa. This wasn't even a house. This was a home.