"Sooooo, Gareth says you're getting married." Madeleine blinked up at me with a faux innocent look plastered across her face.

I coughed, instantly choking on the water I'd been drinking. In between gasps I managed to glare at Madeleine and wheeze out a reply.

"How the hell do you know Gareth?" I continued sputtering.

"I know the Heimlich manoeuvre. Do you want me to demonstrate? Oh, could I? Please? Lucky and I have never had a chance to try it out!" Lucas handed me some tissues as the coughing subsided.

"Thank you, Luke. Madeleine Duvall! I am not one of your little guinea pigs. And how the f-"

"Language!" Hissed Lucas, looking around for his mother, and sounding uncannily like her.

"-hell do you know Gareth?" Madeleine smiled sweetly.

"I know everything." She smirked and Lucas rolled his eyes. "Anyway, his mother and my mother and Lucky's mother are part of the same reading club. They're reading-"

"Okay Lena! But do you know Gareth personally?"

"Well-" Madeleine smirked wickedly, delighted with the idea of flouting her knowledge at me.

"Shut up, Del." Said Lucas fondly, laughing and pretending to shove her. She rolled her eyes and laughed, tousling his tightly coiled black hair. It was starting to get long now, nearly a cute little Afro. Gosh, only Luke could get away with saying that to Lena. "Yeah, Evie. We attended some party on a yacht in Alexandria ages ago. Rafe was there, of course, and Gareth too. We know him, y'know? Also, we saw him at the juice bar place yesterday."

"He ordered a Luxe Lime Crime. He told me he was in love with his smoothie. In a relationship for life." Piped up Madeleine, ever so helpfully.

"Great Lena, thanks."

"But, Evie, speaking of relationship," Lena drawled out my name. "You're wearing a ring!" I looked down at the glimmering diamond that twinkled on a 24-carat gold band on my right hand. I'd completely forgotten about it but should have known that there was no way the Duvall and Montague Detective Agency (Or had their name changed?) wouldn't notice. Rafe had bought me a ton of jewellery in addition to my new clothes and shoes and yet this was my first time wearing any of it. I just thought it looked nice. Classy. I liked beautiful things.

"So?" I said. Lucas raised an eyebrow at me as Madeleine persevered on.

"How are you and Rafe going?"

"Good." I said shortly. "Better than how you're going with that essay? You've written the same sentence three times over now."

"Oh, f-"

"Language, Lena!"

"I think it's her lack thereof, Luke. It seems she's confined to those twelve words only. C'mon Madeleine, broaden your lexical choices!"

Lucas and I snickered. Madeleine barked out a mirthless laugh and threw her pen at me which I, surprisingly, successfully ducked away from. However, in the process of doing so, I knocked over what remained of my glass of water.

"Oh-"

"Language!"

*

The next day, my classes seem to drag forever. The professor gave us a reminder that our oral presentations are due in a few weeks and Rafe caught my eye, winks, because it is sorted. Now, anyways. I flash him a smile from across the room and try to avoid his gaze as I hastily scribble down the history professor's words. I've come to the realisation that I don't particularly like history at all and I can practically feel my grades start to slide downhill as soon as that epiphany arrives. I don't even think that I enjoy anthropology? The only class I seem to enjoy right now is literature. And I often find myself lingering by the science labs, wishing I could be inside there, partaking in the analysis of DNA fragments with a gel electrophoresis or perhaps ascertaining the chemical structure of a drug with proton nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectroscopy.

Rafe catches me up in the hallways after class and asks if I want to get lunch with him but I tell him that I'm busy with schoolwork, that he should meet Gareth who has probably spent the entire day, thus far, attached to his PlayStation. I have fallen a little behind in history but I don't tell him that. He'd only offer to help me and I honestly feel quite awkward only with him right now. I think back to when we first met. Surely there was some moment when I just felt safe and comfortable and normal with him? Whenever it was, if it ever was, it's long gone now. Fractured by my refusal to share the truth with him. Even if it is only to keep him safe.

So, I lie. I tell him I need to finish off an essay about The Giver. I remember studying it in high school, but my uni class is bringing it's depth to a greater level, tearing apart the storyline and unfolding hidden meanings in all of the words. I wonder inwardly if that continues on throughout our live: if upon further, more learned inspection, we will find the hidden layers in all the things that surround us, the buildings the people. Rafe laughs, unaware of my unspoken tangent, "Who is the receiver, then?" And I attempt to smile. Jokingly tell him the name of my literature professor. But inside, I'm thinking it's Jonas, Rafe! Haven't you read, like, anything in your life? And then I instantly feel bad about it because it's such a mean thought.

And the reason for it is probably because I am trying to force him to hate me. Even though I like him, I need us to break up. Deathbringer.

I don't work on my essay though as I'd already finished it. Instead I walk to the Sushi Sushi store and am pleasantly surprised to see that there are still a myriad of my favourite selections remaining, including tobiko rolls. After all the time spent with Rafe, I'd had my fair share of caviar in these last few weeks, which isn't to say I hadn't had any before- perks of being (ex) best friends with a socialite to be- but I'd always preferred tobiko to caviar and had been craving it immensely. I wondered if Rafe knew the difference. Caviar from a sturgeon, tobiko from a salmon. Then I remembered that I'd been trying not to think of him.

We needed to break up. Our togetherness was a mistake. A lapse in judgement on my part as a result of sleep deprivation and the supercedement of fear in favour of disillusions of a bright and beautiful future.

I sat in the gazebo in the Japanese gardens. Let the cold wind stir the ice riddled branches around me. Curled up in a designer blanket, I videocalled Noah. Just when I was about to give up, he answered.

"Evie!"

"Hey Noah!"

"Evie, darling, you must tell me everything! Archer? I totally called it! Your email was so cryptic though! I spent like five minutes trying to figure out who you were talking about. Rich Boy? I mean, do you know how many of them are around here? I mean, where you are, in Astoria but here where I am, too! Oh my gosh, and is that Hermes, you're wearing? Oh you lucky girl, that hasn't even been released to ready-to-wear yet!"

We talked for nearly an hour before I finally told him. Another lie. But I needed help.

"Noah, I don't think I like him." Noah stopped talking, literally speechless.

"Uh. What?"

"I said, I don't-"

"Evie, I heard what you said but I do not understand. I've never seen you look so in love!"

"But Noah, I don't-"

"You do look sad. But-" He trailed off.

"But what?"

"You... There's something you're not telling me, or Rafe, for that matter."

Noah's piercing gaze cut me through my phone screen and in that second, I burst into tears. Noah didn't know about my curse either; nobody around here did. But I couldn't tell him about that. So instead, I told him about Elio.

Noah was close to tears by the end of it. His eyes shining. My closest friend loved me. And that made my tears stream down even faster.

"But, Eva, darling, why haven't you told him? Rafe needs to know this." He said gently. "I think you do love him," Noah continued in even though he saw my eyes widen in surprise. "Why are you hiding things from him? God, Evie that creep Elio needs to be locked up. I feel physically sick just thinking about it. He- oh my god. Are you alright?"

We talked for a while longer. I promised Noah that I'd tell Rafe. Ugh, another lie. And Noah hadn't even helped me with my original problem. We needed to break up, still. In fact, he hadn't even ameliorated the issue, instead pleading with me to stay with Rafe, give him a chance.

I needed to bring back my standoffish demeanour.

If you can "love" somebody -I think Noah is wrong; I don't love Rafe- and yet dislike them immensely at the same time, then surely you can 'hate' somebody and like them too, right?

But it's so hard.

He does care about me. And it makes it harder for me to dislike him. I have to tear apart his personality to find what I really don't like about him.

Maybe the perfect figure he presents to the world? The witty yet charismatic front he puts on? What about the ceaseless hubris that is his hamartia? His narcissism, charm, affinity for beautiful things?

Because, now that I've been thinking about it, we are pretty alike, he and I.

Maybe it's his insufferable pride that annoys me. His demeaning, albeit unintentional, ways. But if Rafe is Mr Darcy, that makes me Elizabeth. With the fatal flaw of prejudice. And perhaps it's true. I suppose that I am prejudiced against Rafe and his Astorian ways. But then again, maybe the both of us are entwined in this vicious circle of pride and prejudice.

I think I'm reading too much into this.

Or maybe I'm just reading too much Jane Austen.

MadeLucky had been tasked with a comparative analytical essay regarding 1984 by George Orwell and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (called it!). Texts which I remembered studying -and comparing- in year ten. I'd dug through my old hard drive, sifting through dozens of folders of my old essays and had inadvertently stumbled upon some of my old analytical pieces about Austen's use of irony in her "esteemed text". I'd immediately grown nostalgic for the summer reading of my high school days and had thus spent several hours at the bookstore curled up in a corner, rereading the endeavours of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy for possibly the seventeenth time.

That was where Rafe found me at 8:42pm on a Thursday night. Apparently, I'd agreed to meet him at the Poseidon Fountain in the Town Square immediately after I'd finished tutoring Lena and Lucky. Oops. I mean, he couldn't blame me. I didn't feel like dealing with Barnes at the town library, and all my copies of Austen's works were at home-at my parents' house, so of course I had to peruse the bookshop. I didn't even have a shift on that night, and the bookshop usually closed at 5:00pm anyways, but I had let myself if. I'd done it often enough before, and Ollivander Robinson had come across my sleeping form, sprawled amongst the books at 8:00am in the morning on more than one occasion. Only difference is that this time, I forgot to lock the door and turn the lights off. I'd only meant to dip into a few chapters of Pride and Prejudice, but once I'd started, there was no turning back and by the time Rafe had ambled into the bookstore and found me, I was almost three quarters through the entire book.

I did apologise profusely. (Okay, maybe I said sorry once. Obviously I wasn't too filled with regret that I'd spent some quality time unwinding with Jane Austen). But the apologies were quickly forgotten when I learned that Rafe hadn't watched, nor read Pride and Prejudice. Or virtually a n y classic, for that matter. Well, with the exception of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which he reluctantly admitted that he'd only bought because of my constant indirect referrals to it.

He isn't really mad that I'd ghosted him (shame really; maybe I could've built up a plethora of things for him to hate about me), and really quite understanding of my ditzy ways. But he does roll his eyes a few times as I attempt to feebly make excuses, and hyperbolically tells me that he could have stayed at the golf course with Gareth for an extra nine holes probably, in the time it took to find me. He is, in actuality, extremely understanding considering I stood him up and left him waiting by the fountain, one of our favourite meeting places, in the cold for over forty minutes before he sensibly decided to go looking for me. Although he does chastise me for leaving my phone on Do Not Disturb (okay, so maybe I should have switched it off after my tutoring session with MadeLucky ended, but I forgot. Once, weeks ago, I left it on and we were interrupted by constant instagram notifications that Noah was live-streaming Miu Miu's Summer resort collection.)

Thinking about Noah confuses me though. He wanted me to give Rafe a chance. So maybe I will try. And so we sit, cross legged, leaning against shelves towering with books for a while as I attempt to justify my ghosting him by waxing poetic about my favourite writers.

After prompting him to talk about the stories that have lingered with him since his childhood, Rafe sweeps his hands through his hair a few times before he hesitantly admits that he has a penchant for mythology. His eyes light up gold when he reminisces about the seemingly endless summer holidays of his youth spent with his beloved cousin in England, before his mother's death when she'd take him to visit her side of the family. The way that he describes the splendour of his aunt and uncle's library and collection of artefacts is so gorgeous and I adore the spark that comes over him as he recollects his memories with his cousin.

"We'd spend long languid days exploring the grounds," he says, "Running from each other in the endless stretch of green of the hedge maze, convinced that we'd awakened some prehistoric Mayan deity.

"I remember once, she convinced me to explore the manor with her, and she led me on a wild chase across the rooftops of the manor, around gargoyles and chimneys, following 'clues', eventually discovering secret servant corridors with the mansion."

He's so lost in thought that I don't even know if he's still talking to me, or just giving voice to the fond memories of days gone by.

Rafe explains how he and his cousin would sit in the library, by the window seat, with the doors wide open allowing the warm air to lazily drift about the room as his mother would sit with her her sister and brother-in-law and describe centuries old fables about Avalon and Excalibur, myths about Atlantis, Mayan apocalypses.

The stories he tells, the ancient mythologies, are so beautiful that I can just imagine the hushed summer breeze that sweeps into the library disturbing the white silken curtains, causing them to stir about in the wind, like ghosts who've come to share in the tales.

I'm so intrigued by his past that I'm slightly annoyed when the bell above the door rings to signal the arrival of a customer.

"We're closed!" I announce, frustrated, but it turns out that it's actually just Mr Robinson, who'd forgotten his wife's anniversary gift in the store room. He cheerily greets us both, slightly surprised by our closeness but saying nothing of it, grabs the eggshell blue Tiffany's box, and bumbles back out of the store, all in a matter of minutes. I want to sit back down with Rafe, listen to the stories he was told as a kid. But the moment is lost. It's too late to study now anyway and we bid each other adieu before I lock up the store and we walk back to The Henley together.

Rafe doesn't meet my eyes as we nonchalantly engage in small talk about our classes for tomorrow, what Gareth will do while we're at school, and the weather of the coming week, and I feel that maybe he's slightly embarrassed and surprised for delving into his memories with me. Honestly, I'm quite surprised that it happened too. He seems anxious to get to his room and after saying goodnight, he leaves me and my newly borrowed book- okay, 'purchased', there is, like, no way I'm giving it back now; nevermind that I probably have like five copies of the very same text at home- by the roaring fire, and stalks to his room. A few hours ago I'd been so engrossed by Austen's novel, but now, I gently toss it aside and stare into the fire wondering what about Rafe...

He, like me, has a sad ache that settles deep within his eyes and I wonder, is it my fault that it is there?

~~~

I feel like I've never talked to my readers in this book?? Well. That should change, like, right now. I'm so restless and I really feel like just socialising, sooo...

Hey guys! I'm Amberly. Okay, woah, that's a lie.

Amberly is my pseudonym or my 'chosen name' (has anybody read the Skulduggery Pleasant series?? I really wanted to be like Valkyrie and Tanith and obvs Skulduggery aha.) 

Anyways, I wrote this story when I was seventeen and still in year 12. It was kinda an exam stress reliever thing and now I'm rereading it as I upload and I'm realising how messy it is but I also kinda feel proud ? of seventeen year old me for writing an entire novel?? So please excuse any mistakes or weird plot tangles; year 12 me was sooooo super stressed about exams...

I remember sitting on the tables in the English classroom at lunchtime in the weeks before my final exams, legs dangling off the table as mascara streamed down my face and I cried to my English teacher about how close I was to failing calculus. (SPOILER: I didn't fail math, or any other subject, for that matter.)

Okay, that's kind of a tangent. I guess what I'm saying is, my brain was very busy thinking about logarithmic graphs and the sorrow of The Women of Troy and Le Chatelier's Principles so there is a chance that the plot of this story does get a little bit tangled so please don't kill me and I hope you keep reading!

Also, just know that your lil comments n votes give my life - which I desperately need right now. First year biomedical physics is K I L L E R. So please tap the lil star to rejuvenate me n motivate me to finish my homework.

Thank you for reading both my pointless spiel and my book!! I utterly adore you for giving my lil story a chance ! xxx

Thank you