lost stars

“I’m happy for your amusement then,” she said sarcastically, tone dripping with the indication that she most certainly was not happy. “It must be nice to be so simply amused. Ignorance is bliss, they say.”

Kai shook his head as she mocked him, finding it hard to hold back a laugh as her anger faded. “You think I don’t know that? Dave’s father leaves hefty donations in their name every year to secure his spot, it’s out of my hands.” Every so often Kai had to allow him to leave the bench, though it never did anyone any favors besides the other team. “Do you think he’d fair better as a goal keeper? Then you could take a few shots at his face.”

“Do you think,” she mused, “there’s any chance that if we put him in goal and strategically shot some penalties in his direction, he might tragically develop an injury which took him off pitch for the rest of the season?” Perhaps that wasn’t the fairest suggestion, but she wasn’t exactly a good loser. “Just a thought.”

Kenzie laughed before getting up, motioning for Libby to follow as she headed to her villa. “I don’t need any drinks to go around naked. I have no problem showing off my goodies like that. It’s usually just other people who have issues when I want to take off my clothes,” she joked.

“I can assure you,” Libby drawled, “that I have absolutely no issues whatsoever with the removal of your clothes.” She wiggled an eyebrow to emphasise the statement, and followed Kenzie, just a step behind as she led her to the villa. “Although I respect the rejection of societal norms. Clothes are dumb.”

Kenzie just shrugged in response, preferring to not talk about it at all. “Maybe. But for my own standards, I am absolutely amazing and good at just about everything,” she joked, grinning to let the other know she wasn’t that serious. It wasn’t like she was super stuck up about herself. “I haven’t touched the mini bar in my room yet and I doubt Andie has either, so I’m sure it’s fully stocked.”

“Perfect,” she said with a wide smile, probably the most genuine expression she had given in her entire conversation with Kenzie. “If your bar’s full, then lead the way. I drained mine the other night. And I’ll need to be pretty fucked to skinny dip.”

“Sadly no. I have issues when it comes to my own beauty,” she said, leaving it vague and her tone playful. She’d rather not go into her own insecurities about her appearance. “See? I’m not totally lame,” she joked, getting up from the table. “Perfect! Let’s see what we can find to get fucked up!”

“Maybe we can work on those,” she muttered, shaking her head as Kenzie described herself as not lame. “I mean, I’m sure you are by someone’s standards. We all are. But not by mine,” she allowed. “Where are we gonna start?”

“Don’t Libby come on me,” she hissed, although her anger cooled as quickly as it had come on, replaced by a grudging sense of acceptance.... well, as accepting as she was capable of being.  “Dave shouldn’t be on the fucking team. He wouldn’t be able to score if I had him stand still with the ball and wheeled the goal right up to him. Useless. The other team was crap and they still beat us.”

“Thanks. You’re not too bad yourself,” Rhia said. Her eyes followed Libby to her clothes even as she departed from the wall, continuing her walking lap. Her question was fair enough, though the observation only brought a pink flush to her cheeks and shame to her chest. “Yeah, I guess you’re right….” Prompted by Libby’s disapproval, Rhia moved to the shallower side of the pool. Her arms outstretched by her sides, and she jumped and lifted her legs to attempt to float. Flailing desperately through the pool water as her torso sunk and dragged her down, Rhia abruptly brought her feet to the floor.

She stood, looking disoriented as her heart thumped furiously in her chest. “On second thought, no. I don’t have a death wish,” Rhia sighed. “Besides, the water’s still nice,” she shrugged. She hated feeling like she was missing out on something, but the blonde had long since given up her dreams to learn to swim. “You could always join me and find that out for yourself though,” she teased. Rhia smirked at Libby and cocked an eyebrow, as if to taunt her into complying.

“No?” She tilted her head to the side as she watched Rhia attempt to float, as if it were fascinating to Libby, her eyes fixating on the girl for a moment before her lips curved upward, “fine, you’ve convinced me.” Her dress was half off her body anyway, it didn’t take much to slip it off, a plain black bra and matching panties her only covering as she slipped into the water, the ends of her long hair dipping into the water and spreading out around her as she swam over to Rhia, “you’re right. It is nice,” Libby said simply. 

“I still think,” she continued, “you’d trust me more if you floated a little. Trust me for a second?” She requested, taking a step closer, her eyes suggestive, “if I hold you up, you won’t fall.”

“I always notice beauty,” she explained with a brilliant smile. “Well, we can raid the mini bars in our villas for drinks and then maybe go skinny dipping down on the beach. I mean, who really needs a bathing suit? It just gets in the way.”

“Do you spend much time staring in the mirror then?” She joked. “I guess that sounds like fun,” she added, a smirk suddenly on her face as she seemed to quietly plot the events of the night, before leaping to her feet. “Right, come on. We have mini bars to raid.”

“People that think that it’s not their job to clean, apparently,” he figured that they may have grown up surrounded by people that did everything for them, so they didn’t learn how to act any other way, “Yeah, I feel like some forget that the cleaners are people too.”

“I’ve always thought,” Libby said slowly, “that you can tell a lot from a person by the way they treat service staff. Although that seems to damn a lot of Luxor students by what I’ve seen. Not really giving me much hope for the future generation.”

“All you have to do is sit there and be hot. Which you’re already an expert at,” Kenzie pointed out, complimenting the other. She took a sip of her water before leaning forward on the table. “Yeah, I know she does. She’s pretty smart like that. But agreed. Thankfully I benefit from it right now, but it could be very different. Anyways, why don’t we do something more fun than rant about the system and how corrupt it is.”

“So nice of you to notice,” she said sweetly, before raising an eyebrow. “And what’s your idea of fun, then? I’m curious,” Libby said earnestly, leaning forward in a mimic of Kenzie’s body language. “Go on. Surprise me.”

“We are just paying a bunch of money to get a job and then pay off loans and taxes that we got while being in college,” she agreed, smiling over at Libby. “How totally unfeminist would it be if I just said that I would let guys buy me food because they think I’m hot? I mean, scamming the system could really work for the both of us, I think,” Kenzie suggested, shrugging her shoulders. “Yeah, my mom would not be happy about me just spending all the money my grandparents have left me for school on being lazy. She has always wanted me to work for things, not just take from others.”

“I suppose scamming the system does have it’s use,” she mused in agreement, not that she’d allow herself to do such a thing. Eliza Sato was, as was most likely obvious, far too deep in her principles to dote on a man long enough for him to purchase so much as a key ring for her. Or even be amicable for that length of time. “Your mom has the right idea, I guess. The whole thing’s based on a screwed up system though. Fuck capitalism, right?”

“True that.” Carew shrugged as he looked up at her from his place in the sand. His fingers absentmindedly drawing out a tic tac toe board as he glanced up at her. “So I take it that means you’re here to cause as little trouble as possible?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she countered. “Maybe my brand of trouble just requires less of a clean up job from the overworked resort staff. Would that really be such a bad thing?”

“You do have a good point, I don’t know why it’s so hard for some to clean their own mess or to at least make a smaller one,” he knew that they were in a resort, and they had people to do that for them, but they didn’t need to make as much of a mess as some did.

“Ugh, literally. Who raised them?!” She agreed, shaking her head in abject disappointment at the student population. “I get that there are cleaners, but like.... have some respect for them. Don’t need to give them twice as much to do.”

“You’re a great roommate,” Libby said in a sugary response to her statement, wandering over to the pile of clothes and unashamedly beginning to rifle through in search of the drugs, her eyes still watching Rhia in the pool. “You’re not gonna float on your back or anything?” Libby questioned after a moment, raising an eyebrow as she swallowed the pill and continued to speak. “Water looks nice. Seems a shame to just walk around in it.”