I didn't even think he was attractive at first.

Nothing about him struck me apart from his hair. Shoulder length, dark brown with a slight wave. It only caught my attention because we were in an expensive suburb, and most of the guys hair there looked like either a poodle cut too short or a porcupine with blonde tips.

We were going food shopping, not the general orange juice and yoghurt kind, the party kind. Kali had arranged a sleepover with all four of us girlfriends at her house, and guys were definitely invited. This was a once a year occasion when her overly-restrictive parents went on a dismal vacation somewhere else in the state. Not too far away, but just far enough for us to finally have some fun.

He looked out of place, standing in the shopping centre car park, leaning against his old red pickup truck, another thing that stood out in this area. Getting out of the car with Kali, Erin, and Sasha was like waiting for a bus that was scheduled for the next day. All of them refused to even unbuckle until they had re-applied their makeup in the cars side mirrors, had a few puffs of a cigarette, made some comment about how I should start smoking, and then re-applied their lipstick yet again after it had partially come off on the cigarette.

During this process I got out, shut the car door and stood in the sun, letting them all choke themselves with smoke with the windows rolled up. I stared at the guy from behind my sunglasses, which really didn't do their job as I still had to squint.

He was tall. Very tall, I noticed as he towered over his car. He was wearing a black leather jacket with zips, and on a day with this kind of temperature, this was strange, but still not even close to the strangest thing about him. The fact that he stood there with his hair all over his face, wearing clothes suitable for the middle of winter, while leaning against and old red pickup and smoking a joint in broad daylight wasn't what stood out the most, it was his expression.

Intense. So intense it was hard to look at. It was hard to decipher what kind of an expression is was. He didn't look angry, exactly, he just looked…intense! From where I stood about 20 metres away, I could almost feel it physically, and I realised why.

As I had been analysing the other aspects of him, I hadn't realised that he was staring straight at me the whole time, fixing his intense eyes on me. Before I had the chance to start blushing and quickly pretend that I was looking for my lost dog or something, my friends saved me and got out of the car finally, a cloud of smoke billowing out of the windows as they rolled them down slightly to let some air in.

When we got out of the supermarket, bags full of every kind of liquor and junk food to make it a night to remember, the red pickup truck was gone. I stared at where it had been, noticing some skid marks on the bitchamin nearby, probably made by him pulling out too fast.

"Ella…hellooo!! Wakey wakey!", Erin said as she climbed into the backseat of Kali's Escalade. I jumped into the other side of the car.

"What were u staring at?", she asked in a jokingly suspicious voice.

"Just some marks on the road, probably some idiots doing burnouts after hours or something".

When we got home, we all got drunk, and when that happens with all four of us, one person always sobers up first and ends up looking after everyone else. That person is me. Kali had invited her boyfriend over, her fourth this month, and while they were busy occupying themselves upstairs in her bedroom, Erin and her boyfriend of 2 years were busy arguing over what song to play on the stereo, and as they were both smashed, they music they finally agreed on sounded more like folk music off an oldies station than something to dance to. Sasha and I sat on stools facing the kitchen bench.

Kali had organised blind dates for both of us, but they guys who showed up at the door looked about 35 and were both covered in tattoos, so Sasha told them they had the wrong address, and they bought it, but were back 20 minutes later knocking on the door, at which point we turned the music up, blatantly ignoring them until they left for good.

The rest of the night was alright, apart from the occasional bump on the head, as the drunken Erin leaned across the bench to grab another beer and consequently banged her head on the fridge door.

Later on I went up to check on Kali and her new boyfriend Keith…or was it Callum?, knowing that they were both so drunk that it was impossible that they were still awake, so I was unlikely to be interrupting their err… 'activities'. I found them both asleep in the bathtub, completely passed out and decided to leave them, as they were in no state to tell the difference between a mattress, and a bath partially filled with vodka.

The next morning everyone woke up with the worst migraines we'd ever experienced, so we all sat there in the kitchen in silence, gulping down potfuls of black coffee. Just as I had sobered up first, my migraine was the first to go, so as Kali's parents were coming home the next day, and I knew that no one else was in a well enough state to leave the bathroom or kitchen, I offered to collect the bottles and cans and put them in the trash out front.

I walked out her front door with the large, black garbage bag slung over my shoulder, and opened the gate. I hadn't looked at the clock yet, but I guessed it was around 11 am, considering everything was in full light, and the heat was just starting to creep up again. I opened the lid of the trash can, and after practically going crazy swiping away the flies that came buzzing out in my face, I buried the bottles and cans under another bag of garbage that was already in there, in case her parents had the presence of mind to check if we'd been drinking. Over-protective, enough said.

Satisfied that I had hidden the evidence (what the hell), I looked down the street. Ever since I was little, I had been jealous of where Kali lived. I would have given anything to live on a street like hers with oak trees spread down each side , each one perfectly planted 5 metres from the next, with perfectly flat and smooth roads, whose white lines hadn't faded a bit since they were painted, houses with turrets and great picket fences surrounding them, whose size can only be compared to a department store. Everything about where she lived made me long to someday own an expensive house in the suburbs, have a perfect lawyer as a husband and to someday produce 2 gorgeous daughters.

When I had stopped day dreaming, I started to make my way back inside, when I heard the loudest crashing noise behind me that made me scream and spin around. I stared at what the noise had come from in amazement and horror, as I dialled 911…