"You can't keep dancing with the devil and then ask why you're still in hell." He told me, clear as day.
And that's when I realized that I deserved better than that; I deserved better than to be spoken down to and treated like a bother, better than to be seen as nothing more than a nuisance. That was when I realized that he was not worth it, and I walked away.
Chapter 5
La tour De France
part 1
IDECIDEDasofyesterday evening that I would do my best to keep my distance from boys like RK. They're no good privileged pricks with a superiority complex who have been placed on a pedestal all their lives, think that money gets them everywhere and that they have the right to treat others like they’re inferior. I would like to say that River merely thinks he's a king, but he is. From what I've heard from the students, the school worships the ground he walks on, and no one knows why. He is the golden boy of St Kathrine’s. When he says jump, everyone asks how high. He can do no wrong in their eyes. I barely know anything about him. All I know so far is that he only speaks when spoken to, is incredibly reserved and under no circumstances does he ever utter a single word about his personal life. River had quite the peculiar accent. Some people had said he was English, because he harboured a slight London accent when he spoke English. Other people insisted he was French because he spoke it so naturally as if he’d lived there all his life. Nevertheless, River Kennedy remained a mystery, an unsolved mystery that I refused to get myself lost in.
Keomi and I were doing our homework in our room when we heard a knock on the door. Keomi immediately jumped up and unlocked it, letting Geneviève in. She and Keomi were going shopping that day so they could catch up. Geneviève looked stunning as always, wrapped in a blue Oscar De La Renta floral dress and, God knows, how many carats around her neck.
"Are you ready?" She asked Keomi, and Keomi gave her a look that suggested that she forgot.
“Umm, I will be..” Keomi murmured,
“Don’t tell me that you forgot?” Gene gasped, “We planned this days ago,”
"I'm sorry, Gene, Armani and I got a tad bit carried away. Just give me 5 minutes, and I'll be good as new!" She exclaimed, grabbing some clothes and running into the bathroom.
"Hey," I said, hoping to get on her good side this time, even though I secretly envied her.
"Hello, how's your project going?" She asked, and I noticed that she was trying to be civil this time.
"I'm still not sure what I'm going to paint, but I'm sure It'll come to me," I sighed, and she rolled her eyes.
“You cannot go through life with an attitude of procrastination. If you do, there will always be someone else far more prepared ahead of you.” Gene groaned, “Especially at a competitive school like this one,”
Geneviève De La Fontaine was the complete opposite of me. She was far from impulsive, she was determined, filterless and had a rather radioactive tongue. I could understand why that made her a great artist. Her imagination must be running at a thousand miles per hour. I originally thought Geneviève was just a mean girl, I’d come across many of those in my lifetime, but I often felt like she was simply misunderstood. That perhaps she was just hurting and defending the memory of her friend in the only way she knew how.
"River asked me to tell you something." She murmured under her breath. At the mention of his name, my heart began to thud in my chest.
"I don't want to hear anything he has to say," I replied, and she was taken aback. She was obviously oblivious to the fact that he was awful to me the other day. "Not right now, at least, I’m sorry.”
"Wow, really?" She scoffed in disbelief. Almost as if she couldn’t fathom that someone didn’t want to hear from River. "Tu es une garce." She cursed.
"I'm not a bitch, Geneviève . I just can't think about River right now," I responded honestly, and she nodded slowly.
"D'accord, but he really wanted me to tell you this, and I don't take orders from you, so I'll tell you anyway." She sighed, taking a seat on my bed.
"He wanted me to tell you that, and I quote, Saturday, be there." She said, and I sighed, collapsing my head onto my desk. Does he really think I'd go see him even after he treated me the way he did?
"Stop being such a baby, River is complicated, and since you’re so adamant on not leaving him alone, you better just grow accustomed to it. I'm sure that if he put your ass down, he either didn’t mean it, or you deserved it." Geneviève taunted just as Keomi came out of the bathroom. She looked gorgeous.
"Let's go. See you later, Armani," Keomi said, waving goodbye.
"I'll see you around," I replied, and then they were gone.
As night crept over, I begun to feel that thing again, that thing I felt the day I'd spontaneously decided to waltz into a strange bookstore at 3 AM. Something was telling me that I had to see River tonight and that I'd regret it if I didn’t. What River Kennedy needed was to be treated the exact same way he treated others. He was used to getting exactly what he wanted out of people just by flashing them those damn blue eyes that drowned you till you couldn't speak. Not this time. I was going to ignore him. Make him wait, he wanted me to meet him at 9 PM, and It was 9:15. It'll take me about another 15 minutes to get to Parc Monceau from here, and that should give him enough time to think about the extent of his actions.
I put on my red trench coat and headed out. The air was chilly all around me. The streets bustled with people laughing, drinking and having fun on that eventful Saturday night. There's a reason why Paris is called the city of lights & it’s because you're always able to find life even in what seems like a graveyard, light even in the darkness. When I arrived at Parc Monceau, I looked around. It was beautiful. The evergreen trees bowed to the summer wind as I passed by, and as the starry night sky reflected in the water– I couldn't help but feel so alive.
"Where the hell have you been?" River's voice boomed knocking me out of my trance.
"In my dorm, where I should be after the way you treated me yesterday, that was not okay," I dictated, making it clear that I wouldn’t tolerate this bullshit from him anymore.
"Did I maim your fragile little feelings?" He mocked, and I let out a chuckle in disbelief. “What a pity.”
