delaurentis:
Gio sat back against a log, cigarette dangling between his fingers as he rested his arm on his bent knee, one leg stretched out before him. One of the little rugrats he’d been suckered into looking after had spilled whatever juice they had in their canteen onto his shirt. He’d managed to get most of the stain out, the only evidence being a faded red mark on the gray of his tshirt. Now all he was doing was having a smoke as he waited for it to dry.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he put out the cigarette and went to put back on his shirt. “Don’t smoke, it’s bad for you,” he says, thinking it was one of the kids from the camp he was supposed to be watching, though when he looked back he realized it was someone from Atticus. “Oh, it’s just you.”
Bracken cracked beneath her feet, the scent of the woodland doing far more to calm Evangeline’s hectic thoughts than she would have thought possible. The concept of relaxing, of sitting back, taking things ‘easy’ and having no schedule that outlined her divisions of time for a week was hellish to Evie, whom relied on her planner as much, perhaps, as she relied on oxygen to breathe. But somehow, time away from her desk, from seven cups of coffee, from bobble-headed figurines that lined her bookshelves as souvenirs from various staff members’ summer travels abroad had allowed her -- in some ways -- to reconnect with the person she was before her husband’s blood was shed on her hands. She had lost control, and to regain it she had become analytical, factual, organised, her life planned out to the very second to avoid any instant left to impulse again. But here, with nothing to focus on but the wind on her face and the sound of the whistling breeze, Evangeline felt at last at peace. Perhaps to take control, you first had to surrender it.
“Just me?” Evangeline repeated, her tone peaking up with heavy sarcasm as she sauntered through the clearing, recognising the boy as having taken one of her modules in the fall semester. Giovanni, if she remembered correctly. A bright lad, but quiet. “My, my. I’m offended. How ill you must think of me. It’s enough to bring a tear to my eye.” Eyes travelled lazily over the planes of his chest, her gaze lingering a little too long, before she turned her head to give the student privacy, her lips pursing into a hard line. With a toss of her hair from the blow of the wind, she sunk down onto the log beside him removing a cigarette from her pocket and holding it out towards him, in the hope that he’d respond with a lighter. “So you’ve been lumbered with the brats, have you? What fun. I don’t envy you, old boy.”
