Alex had promised her father to stay for at least an hour at their neighbour's housewarming party. She spent most of the time near the buffet while half the neighbourhood was deeply involved in important adult conversations that she just thought were boring and pretentious.

"You don't seem too happy."

"What?" she mumbled as she turned around, trying to hide the fact she had just stuffed half a slice of mango cake in her mouth.

John giggled and reached for a napkin. "There's some whipped cream on your chin. I guess I can tell Mrs. Nadler that her cake was a success, can't I?"

Alex nodded, hoping this wouldn't turn into a forced attempt to socialise as it must have been apparent to everyone how much she would have preferred to do anything else this afternoon.

"When I was your age there would have been a million things more entertaining than spending my afternoon with a bunch of old people," John said. "Okay, to be honest, there are still a lot of things I consider to be more entertaining."

"Then why did you organise this party?" Alex asked, pronouncing the word "party" as ironically as possible. Though she still tried to appear indifferent, she liked the way John talked to her. He didn't seem to treat her like a child unlike many of the other neighbours so she decided to give him a chance to prove that he's not as boring as the rest of them.

"That's what people do when they move somewhere new, isn't it?" he said.

She shrugged and scanned the buffet for what she hadn't tried yet. The pizza rolls looked nice. "I don't get why anyone would voluntarily move here anyway. It's so lame."

He laughed. "Maybe I'm just a lame guy."

"I don't think you are," she replied. "At least not as lame as the people who used to live here before you."

"Thank you," he said in a tone that sounded more like a questions than a statement but the smile on his face indicated that he understood where she was coming from. "Tell me something about the people here then."

She frowned. "What do you want to know?"

"I don't know. Give me some gossip. Start with him!" he said and subtly pointed across the room.

"Dr. Shephard?" She picked up the paper cup that had her name written on it with black sharpie and filled it with fruit punch. "Some say he's drinking a bit too much. Probably got that from his dad. He's living with Miss Austen but you never know – she could also be doing it with Sawyer."

"Who's Sawyer?"

"Mr. Ford."

"Oh. I thought he was living with Dr. Burke?"

"Yeah… it's complicated," Alex said and downed the punch despite it being much too sweet.

"Sounds like it," John said and helped himself to a piece of mango cake before nothing would be left of it. "And who's the lamest of them all?"

She scoffed. "Probably the guy in the grey woolly sweater who's been sipping at the same cup of cold coffee for an hour because he's just too polite to get rid of it."

John followed her line of sight to the other corner of the room. "That's your dad."

"I know. He hates coffee."