I tried to pretend to ignore him but every now and again I would glance and looked up to check if he was looking. He was sat cross-legged, wearing a vest top and a pair of shorts with tattoos all over his body. He was tattooed from neck to legs and it didn't even look like there was an inch of him that wasn't covered. He had the right side of his lip pierced and I could see his dark brown eyes so clearly from here.
Then I suddenly became shy and started to pack away my things. I didn't dare look at him again and I left without a word. I raced home without stopping to think and when I got in through the front door I threw my keys in the bowl, hung my Superdry jacket on the peg and ran to my room without a word. my dad called me downstairs for dinner and after that, I logged straight onto Facebook to check my messages and sure enough, Brittany was messaging me.
Oh. My. God. Have you SEEN the new guy? He is HOT. His name's Oliver and he's starting college tomorrow! Message me back quickly!
Before I realised, Brittany and I were chatting about this Oliver kid for hours. Funny thing was Brit knew quite a lot about him. I found out he was in our year at college and he was studying Fashion Design (for a guy?), Photography, Music and Music Technology. His birthday was November 20th and he was single.
Always Brit's way. Finding out if a guy was single or not so she could start flirting with him the moment she sees him.
I replied to both Brit and Taylor and told them I'd meet them outside the local convenience store so Brit could drive all of us to Sam's house. It was a case of trial and error to find it because Brittany's Sat Nav was terrible.A lot of people who probably expecting me to come in in the most amazing dress for the party but I just threw on a skimpy gold sparkling one with black heels and tied my hair up in a ponytail and plaited my fringe to the side and made my way to the store. I didn't have to wait long before Brit turned up in her tiny little Nissan Micra.
'Hey, someone looks sexy.' Brit said as I stepped into the car. I punched her on the arm but she only punched me back harder.
'Hey guys, we don't want any bruises on our arms when we get in there. We'll look well scrubby, blud.' Taylor mocked me from the back seat so I turned round and glared at her.
It only took Brittany about 20 minutes to get to Sam's house and it wasn't like you didn't know which house it was.
Nearly every single light was on in the house and there didn't even look like a place to stand on his lawn and people were even standing in the doorway. His house was amazing. There were so many windows it looked like his house was made out of glass. We had a clear view of the living room and the games room which was filled with arcade games. There was a roof garden (or whatever you call it) that had its own mini golf set and a balcony. It looked so much better than the other houses that surrounded his.
We found a space outside of his house and went in to find Sam. People stared at us as we sauntered into the house and looked for Sam. When we found him, Brittany went weak at the knees. His hair was dyed a dark blue colour and he had bright blue eyes. Brittany couldn't help gazing into them and I kicked her in the shin to stop her from looking like an idiot. She winced in pain at hissed 'stop it' to me and smiled at Sam.
'Hey, Sam. Thanks for the invite, we won't be any trouble.' Taylor assured him. Brit stayed with Sam and we went to explore who was at the party.
It was mostly first years and even kids from year 11 still in secondary school but there were some kids from second year. Everyone stopped to look at me and frankly, it was getting on my nerves. I just felt like turning round and screaming 'will you stop looking at me' but I knew it would only start rumours and people would be staring at me even more.
I started walking round the house, trying to avoid the drunken kids making out on the stairs and I concluded that I would not be going upstairs tonight.
I walked out to the garden where Sam had probably the biggest pool that kids were jumping into.
Then I saw him.
He was there, still in the clothes I'd seen him in earlier and his tattoos were even more visible in the dark, weirdly. He turned round and looked at me and smiled. I froze to the spot.
He walked over to me and I felt like I wanted to run away again just like before. He was much taller than me, about 6 foot 2 and my neck started to hurt because I had to look up him. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at us. I looked around and mouthed 'what?' to everyone I saw and they suddenly went back to what they were doing.
'Hey, was that you I saw earlier by the river?' he asked. He had a heavy Sheffield accent and it was clear when he spoke.
'Um, yeah it was.'
'You were drawing too?'
'Yeah, just some clothing ideas.'
'Seriously? Me too.'
He smiled again me again and then I knew what Brittany felt like when she saw Sam. My knees nearly gave way and I stumbled. Oliver grabbed my arm and steadied me and I felt light headed. People stopped and stared but they didn't even make an attempt to help me. Oliver helped me into the kitchen where he sat me on a stool and got me some headache tablets.
I looked into the living room and saw Brit chatting up Sam and Taylor was nowhere to be seen. Purely because she'd text her boyfriend to come to the party to entertain her. Another reason why I wasn't going to be going anywhere near the second floor tonight.
'So,' Oliver said after handing me the glass, 'what's your name?'
'Cassandra or Cassie or Cass; whatever you wanna call me.' I replied.
'Can I call you Cassie?' he asked. I nodded. 'Okay then, Cassie. I'm Oliver. Oliver Sykes. But you can call me Oli.'
