Mr. Elitist [ A Novel ]

03

| Nathan |

She was un-like most girls I had looked at before. And I mean, really looked at. I liked her name though.

Isabella.

It was a very pretty name.

In comparison to most woman I noticed, she was very plain looking. It wasn't that she wasn't attractive, because that certainly was not the case, it was that she wasn't overly dolled up. Nothing about her was . . . fake. She had soft features and dark brown hair. She was shorter, but her body was still impressive. She still held a presence in the room.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Eric laughs loudly next to me, watching Rachael take off down the beach while Isabella struggles to take her heals off so she can run after her.

"Come on Izzy! You're so slow!" I hear her calling and Isabella grabs her heals in one hand, barefoot now as she runs to the sand.

"You know I can't run without a bra on!" She calls back to her best friend and I watch her clutch one arm across her chest, the other holding her heals, picks up the hem of her dress so she can run better.

I don't think she realized we were close enough to hear that, especially because Eric seems to think it was hilarious.

"They're the most interesting girls I've met out of all the others at parties like these." He muses, grinning to himself. I glance over, raising an eyebrow.

"Isabella is very . . . alive." I say and he scoffs.

"Really alive? Try hot. Rachael is too." He says and I roll my eyes at him. Eric was worse than I was with being a player. He didn't care what it took, as long as he got the girl he had his sights on to sleep with him. At least I was respectful. And I meant alive in a good way, different from all the other women I usually found attractive, and her simplicity intrigued me.

"Lets walk down there and join them." He says, leaving the path and walking towards the ocean. I follow behind, walking slower. Eric was good to have around at a party, but sometimes he was too much for me. Rachael waves to us, the light from the party bright enough that I could still see the two of them running around, even if it was dark out. Isabella kicks water at her friend, who shrieks.

She had this kind of carefreeness to her that I think I liked. I wasn't used to people being so at ease around me.

Eventually we all ended up at a table, after paying a visit to the bar, talking. I felt better with a scotch in my hand, and listening to Rachael and Isabella talk was surprisingly entertaining. I usually found party conversations to be boring and pointless, but each story they had to tell got better and better.

"So, you're telling me, you had those two boys hidden under your bed the whole night?" Asks Eric slowly, trying to understand the last story they'd just told us.

"Yes!" Says Rachael laughing and Isabella's entire face lights up, laughing too. Apparently, when they were in middle school, they'd snuck two boys from school into Rachael's room in the middle of the night. And when Rachael's mom came to check on them, they put them under bed, only to leave them there the entire night.

"We were little innocent children! And if her parents had caught us, we would have been in so much trouble." Says Isabella and Rachael nods.