Oakenden, Ten Years Before
Elizabeth Day was walking five meters in front of him, and yet Logan couldn’t bring himself to lengthen his stride in order to catch up, his nerves causing him to dawdle along behind in a way that he hoped wasn’t creepy.
They walked the same route every school day, but he’d only really noticed that, and her, the year before when Jack Wilson started paying her attention. The guy was a dick, but because Jack’s family was rich and he was good at football, he thought that he was top shit. Yet people didn’t seem to see that Jack Wilson really wasn’t everything that he claimed to be.
Elizabeth had been fooled by Jack’s self-proclaimed perfection and they’d started dating.
Logan knew that he would be the better boyfriend for Elizabeth. Jack Wilson didn’t deserve to have someone as nice and as pretty as her. However, Logan could count the times he had spoken to Elizabeth on one hand, and most of those times had been just been stupid polite stuff like hi, and thanks. They didn’t share any classes, play the same sports, or any of that shit.
The only thing that they had in common was the walk too and from school. But, he had yet to figure out a way to turn that to his advantage.
As Elizabeth reached an intersection of the road and paused to look for traffic, for a brief moment, he was just behind her. Fate was on his side because as she started to step off the curb, some idiot in a sports car blasting music shot past, going twice the speed limit, and if Logan hadn’t reacted, pulling Elizabeth back onto the sidewalk, he might have been forced to watch her pretty face get smashed all over the tarmac.
“Oh, wow!” Elizabeth gasped.
“What an arsehole,” Logan scowled after the car. “He almost killed you.”
“Thanks… Liam isn’t it?” She said as they crossed the road together.
“Logan,” he supplied.
“I’m Elizabeth. Libby,” she told him.
He didn’t tell her that he already knew that. “Hi Libby,” he said with a charming smile.
For a moment they walked in silence, the conversation exhausted between them, and he dredged through his mind for something clever to say, coming up empty handed. The silence stretched into awkwardness, with her sliding him looks from under her eyelashes, obviously wondering why they were still walking side by side.
She slowed her walk. “Well, this is where I turn off,” she lied as they neared an alley. “I’ll see you around, hey, Logan?”
“Sure thing, Libby,” he replied with a frown. He could protest, he thought, catch her in her lie, tell her that he knew that she didn’t live down that way as he’d been walking behind her for a year, but he hunched his shoulders, shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away kicking at the autumn leaves. If that was all the gratitude the bitch had for him saving her life, he thought angrily, Jack Wilson and Elizabeth Day deserved each other.
From behind, he heard the roar of an engine and the bass of music, and paused to watch, glaring, as the arsehole in the sports car screeched past him. “What a f-king arsehole,” he muttered under his breath. “Ah, what the f-k?” He added as the car pulled up out front of his house.
As he closed the distance between the car and himself, he saw Gillian hop out of the car and bend over to blow a kiss to the driver. Logan caught a glimpse of a young blond man with bright white teeth bared in a grin before she closed the door. The car took off with a squeal of wheels.
"Who’s that?” Logan demanded. “Does dad know that you’re getting in cars with idiots who drive like suicidal maniacs?”
She jumped and turned to face him. “Ah, shit,” she pulled a face. “F-k off Logan.” She spun on her heel and sashayed towards the house.
“Are you seeing him? He drives like a f-king wanker,” Logan followed behind, more than willing to redirect his ire over Elizbeth Day’s lack of gratitude onto his older sister. “Dad’s going to go nuts when I tell him.”
“You’re a f-king worm,” Gillian told him as she reached the front door. “No wonder everyone f-king hates you and you have no friends. I’m f-king eighteen. An adult. Dad can…” She said as she stepped into the hallway.