chapter 8

"Richard, please, I have a seat for you right here," just as the man began to lower himself to the seat of the table right beside his boss, the kraken struck again. This time, all because Vincent had stolen his designated seat by her side, it was to seat him opposite. Poor, poor Richard had no idea.

"Thank you, Misses Pierce,"

And here it comes. "Please, it's just Marian," And don't you worry, Richard, soon enough it will be just mom — that would be the next line, right? If all went to plan? If Blue succumbed to the plan B of 'I've done nothing but provide for you, you owe me this'. "Vincent, this is my daughter," and Marian spoke just as her loyal husband found a seat by the woman's side and planted a slobbery and forced kiss on her taught cheek. Soon enough, she would become disfigured by plastic surgery, one would think. It would get to the point where the woman's lips would be so far stretched out from face lifts she would no longer be able to even close her mouth. And if it came to that point, there would be no cheek left. It would be just lip. Everywhere. It would be the joker but with a smooth and ageless complexion. She would permanently have the ear-to-ear grin she hadn’t had since she was 14.

"Blue, I presume, happy birthday from yesterday," Blue watched as the man shifted in a way that would have been awkward if it had not been him, of all people, and moved to extend a hand to her. The hand was smooth as she accepted the gesture; smooth and cold and stony and somehow smooth again yet not at all soft. Exactly stony. It was the perfect way to describe the hand. And yet the man had unclothed her with said hand a mere twelve hours ago — perhaps she didn't have the time to think about it when so readily consumed by what his blue-steeler felt like either pressing against her or inside of her. "Is the coffee any good?"

"The maid made it, she makes the best coffee — Blue, give Vincent some coffee," Marian sounded almost frantic as she ordered the sleepy-eyed, messy-haired daughter to give up the cup of life and death she had cradled against herself for the entire exchange. Marian was and always would be the last person to know what exactly Margetta's coffee tasted like; the woman hated coffee, she'd rather die before she tasted a single cup. Poor Vincent was in for a large surprise. At the very same time, he was in for the best surprise of his life.

"Try it," The blonde thrust her cup to the man and the contents spilled and shifted over the lip as she did, only just narrowly escaping the leap from the mug to the table. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice so low no one else on the table heard her; a trick she had developed over the years to escape the wrath of her mother. "You won't get anything from me you haven't already,"

Blue watched eagerly as the man chuckled shortly and lifted the mug she had nursed only a moment before to his own lips. When he did, he took the same large gulp Blue had innocently taken the very first time she tasted the intoxicated brew of the morning. With the same never-failing tone of amusement, she watched as the man's eyes widened and he lowered the cup to the table with a stable grip. No one would ever know he was startled by the contents of the mug, thankfully — no one but Blue. Blue quickly gave in to a short chuckle of her own. "Blue, this is the best coffee I have ever had," The man murmured the words to the girl, though the volume could be debated to be unnecessary. Marian had launched into conversation with Richard about his career and his love life which would leave anyone with even a vague sense of innocence to believe that Marian wanted to marry Richard... something that would surely launch the apocalypse.

"Thank you, Vincent, it's a secret recipe," Blue, too, shared the same murmur Vincent had adopted. Bradley was too occupied by striving for completely even distribution of butter on his bagel to notice the quick banter between the two. Richard was too consumed by Marian and her small talk and Marian was too subsequently consumed by Richard. Margetta was too occupied by scratching a hardened spot of food from the table as she collected used crockery.

"And how much of this secret recipe exactly do you use?"

"Five shots,"

And just as Vincent raised the teacup to his lips and the words slid through his ears, he succumbed to a loud and short laugh which finally someone noticed — in fact, something everyone noticed. All conversation fell to an immediate silence.

Blue's heart sank. Vincent, as charming and frightening as he was, would need an exceptional explanation as to how the man who never laughed suddenly did, and because of a woman he "just" met. "Your daughter makes the most inappropriate jokes, Bradley," Blue offered Vincent a guilty smile as she took in his words, and though the man had thrown her under the bus at the expense of protecting himself and her from the scrutiny of Marian Pierce, the quip did the job. Blue knew that it did the job, because Marian sighed and frowned at her daughter from across the table, and she gave the girl a look of disapproval. Vincent offered Blue a quick and mischievous yet somehow apologetic smile, a smile to which the girl offered a short "Sorry," to the woman from across the table.

So that was how Vincent got to the; by covering his ass with somebody else and managing minimal damage—it was both offensive and charming... it got the job done with no hard feelings.

But then her father said something that she didn't expect him to say; "She got it from me," a quick phrase that completely caught Blue by surprise. All Blue wanted to say at that point, was a simple 'Tell him off, then', but it fell into the bank of insults and jokes which would never see the light of day. Yet through all the headache that had come from Vincent and the 'special coffee' in less than thirty seconds, the man finished the cup in less than five seconds, refilled it and slid it back to Blue in a manner at which the contents didn’t make the same leap of faith for the dinning table.

Then, he murmured lowly. "You're going to need this," and so Blue followed his example and gulped the contents of the mug quite quickly, herself. Perhaps they were a match made in heaven; a match of creeping alcoholism and dry humour... not to mention striking looks.

"Blue, you're going to Harvard, aren't you? — Richard makes large donations, he's found himself to have a large influence over the board of application," Marian asked the question she knew was rather a hooded version of 'You've agreed to go because you have no choice, haven't you?'

Blue paused as she refilled her cup of one part liquor, three parts coffee. It only took a swift two moments for her to prepare the quip she didn’t have a single urge to suppress. Perhaps if she stirred enough of a scene, she’d be sent to her room and she could escape Richard. More importantly, escape Vincent. "Richard, you want to sleep with me, right?"

"Blue!" Of course, her mother never accounted for how strange it would sound for her to scream a colour in disapproval.

"I'm not sure how you want me to respond," and as Robert offered no more than the words and a small frown, her father chuckled and Vincent offered an amused grin of his own — and finally, Blue truly wondered how old exactly Richard was, and whether her mother would have cut off her head altogether if she had referred to Richard as 'Robert' in the very same damning sentence she had spoken. With the inappropriate remark and the deliberate use of the wrong name, both Richard and her mother would surely be so offended they would simply bond over the traumatically aggravating experience before running off and eloping. Best case scenario.

Yet before Blue could pipe in, Vincent stole her thunder. Admittedly, she was finding it increasingly harder and harder to hate him. “She’s saying that the only way she’ll get into Harvard is by sleeping with whoever it takes,” And as he spoke, he peered at Blue from the corner of his eye with a slight smirk and a devious twinkle in his gaze — a look that told her she could get anyone to do anything by sleeping with them. Case in point.

Quickly and awkwardly, Richard forced a laugh. "She's just like you, Bradley — she's hilarious,"

For the first time of perhaps the entire history of the breakfast table, Blue was the only person not laughing.

Instead of joining in and perhaps succumbing to peer pressure and forcing a belly-involved laugh at something not even remotely amusing, Blue found her feet in less than a moment. "Please excuse me, mom, I need to use the bathroom," but as Blue tucked her chair in quietly and Marian launched into conversation, the blonde kicked a certain someone's chair on her way past. Vincent wasn’t met with an even remotely explaining glance, but instead a generous view of her shoulder as she walked quickly towards the doorframe and slid right through.

From there, she flattened herself against the wall just by the frame's shoulder, where she waited with a certain intent and lingering frown. Blue wasn’t sure what the appeal was for Richard; perhaps the allure was her dowry, perhaps it was simply the 'Blue effect; the effect of a combination of her revealing clothing and the way in which her jokes made her seem so irresistible and yet easily obtainable. In shorter terms, she was cheap and came in pretty packaging. That was the 'Blue effect'.

It took little more than a minute or two for Vincent to deliver a simple excuse of 'needing to take a call' for Blue to grab the man by the arm as he emerged from the zoo which was the Pierce breakfast table, and to steer the man with surprising strength in the direction of her father's study. Tragically displayed on the wall was an oil painting of Blue as a five-year-old, which both ignored. In principle, if the pair were caught emerging together, Blue simply used the bathroom of her father's office, Vincent simply locked the door as he took the call... it was so perfect it could have only been intentional — Blue’s only reason, however, was the lock at her disposal.

Vincent, with a sharp and cruel smile instantly took the girl’s hips in his hands as she silently locked the door, drawing her flush against himself. “Round two?” His voice was rough and low as he bowed his head to search her eyes. He knew that she didn’t take him away for a quickie, of course, but what was the harm in teasing her? From the way her hips instantly rocked against his and her hand lifted and hesitated as though she was itching to touch him, he knew that she wasn’t as against the idea as she’d like to have him think.

Shaking her head, she gathered the little resolve she had to break away. Quickly, she shook her head, drowning, gathering her thoughts. "No! What are you doing here?"

"I was invited for breakfast by your mother, Blue, do you expect me to turn down all future functions which may involve you simply because you told me 'we can't see each other again'?" His voice, though he tried, wasn't quite as cold as his blonde counterpart's. He watched as she crossed her arms, pacing slowly, hair tangled in a way that made him want to clean her up… There was something about her that gave him instincts he didn’t know he had.

The girl pouted, if only slightly. "Yes, but when you say it like that it makes me feel like an asshole,"

Though by that point, Blue had brought herself to expect a response completely different to what she was given, Vincent's own tone was soft — hell, even his hands were, the rough and marbled hands, as he gripped the upper-arms of the girl before him. "Well, I need you, Blue — you intrigue and arouse and entice me," Was this simply a product of the 'Blue-effect'? It couldn't have been. At the time of both their meeting and their intercourse, Blue had acted far from incapable of intelligent conversation and had dressed with both modesty and a mature appeal, though of course, her mother had dressed her. Perhaps Vincent, at that point, was simply a fluke. An outlier from the theory. A result of experimental human error.

Blue sighed. Shouldn't the roles have been reversed? "Look, last night was great while it lasted but..."

Vincent also sighed. When he spoke, he didn't sound as though he was parenting her, despite the fact she sounded she was, him; as though she was trying to explain to a baby that she wasn't evil incarnate for plugging up the very socket it had stabbed blindly with a fork. "But what, Blue?" In fact, he sounded affectionate… almost.

When Blue finally spoke again, she threw a glance to the oil-painting by her side, blushed deeply, and decided things could not get any worse. She was having the awkward 'morning after' conversation, even without the unintentional and meaningless sleepover, next to a thirteen-year-old portrait, locked in her father’s office, tipsy at eleven in the morning. In other words, she accepted that, in that moment, she had nothing to lose. "I don't know! I don't want to have my heart broken because I decided I could play ball in the same league as a rich fucking thirty-year-old,"

Blue searched the eyes of the man before her but failed to find anything conclusive. They held a certain air of both thinking and withholding something—Blue would probably never know what exactly. It was in the way his brows turned down ever-so-slightly and fell just between a gaze and a frown; in the slight upturn of his lips; in the flexing of his jaw. It was intriguing. Slowly, Vincent approached, edging the girl backwards until finally she met the wall. Only then did he lift his hands to brace the wall either side of her. And Blue was far too taken by the fact that in that moment, Vincent could do whatever he wanted with her and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Not that she wanted to.