Piper tried to place if she had seen the man around campus before, but she was at a loss. She knew there was no way she could meet everyone, but she had imagined that she had frequented enough parties to know a good amount of people on campus. Pulling herself from her thoughts, she offered the man a smile before swimming to the edge and pulling herself out of the water. She was at least thankful she had a swim suit on, unlike the other poor soul.
“Never trust anyone to not throw you in a pool at a party like this,”she told him with a soft laugh. “They are animals, really,”she said jokingly as she guided him to a table where some towels were sitting once he was out of the water. “I’ve been here about a year,”she admitted with a shrug. It had felt she had been there much longer. She truly loved it there. “What about you?”
The stranger sure had a point, after all - it had been stupid to show up there not to prepared for something like that. Perhaps he indeed got in too deep on his task to minimize the burden of his family name and, in the process, forgot much of what he usually knew about parties. It’s not that Max was always reclusive, but few people managed to break his common facade, and so he couldn’t remember the last time he really had fun at a party.
He followed her quickly, arriving at the edge first for the simplest of reason: swimming had been a way of forgetting about everything negative since, as a young boy, his mother took him to a class filled with other peers. Yet he waited, sitting instead of stepping out of it completely and sighing at some of the following thoughts. “Sure there’s some hope they will learn good manners.” This time he was joking, and showed something resembling a smile before finally rising to his feet. It made sense though, they hadn’t met - a year wasn’t enough to meet many people.
“I arrived a few months ago. Used to live in Australia and study there, but they got me an opportunity after a student left.” Max never actually learned the true complete story, but then he never asked. Whatever it was, he was sure thankful somehow they were able to create an extra spot - a lot because, with the reputation and his family falling into disgrace, few where the Institution opened to give him any chance.
“Now, let me guess…” He shook his shirt so it didn’t glue to skin, what seemed to be the beginning of a smile on the surface of his lips. “You’re majoring in psychology, been here for a little more than a year and actually hate this place, but secretly can’t leave because of some dark deep secret?” Of course it was all in good joke. Asking for her name or why she was there sounded too easy, and not at all fun; now since when did he want to have any fun?