#parker10

Mari had her small handful of roses in her hand as she slipped through the party, intending to call it a night. She hadn't read any of them, remembering the...message she had gotten last year as well. She'd wait till she was in her room, thank you. In fact, Mari was on her way to do just that, trying to get out of the sorority house without drawing too much attention to herself. She had gotten closer to the exit, but wasn't quite there yet when she made eye contact Parker, offering her a small smile. "Hey," she said, nodding her chin towards the plentiful flowers the other girl had. "Get anything good?"

Nate had been avoiding Parker. What else was new, really, for the past four years of their lives? There had been brief periods of time where they found their ways back to each other, but it was much more frequent for their orbits to not overlap at all.

It was the pattern he had predicted from the beginning, so he didn't know why he still felt such guilt over it.

But he did.

And it was the guilt that him as hard as he nearly crashed into her, spinning the corner of the hallways of the theatre building on his way back to the guilt. Nate caught himself in time, rocking back on his heels as a hand automatically reached out to steady her, hovering or a moment before it dropped back down to his side. "Sorry," he muttered, glancing down towards his feet, their last conversation running through his mind.