One - The Bad Boy Finds The Mermaid

HUNTER 

First day of college and my fists were already bruised. My baggage out of the dorms before I could say a word. And now I was pretty much left out to fend for myself because my father wouldn’t help me.

How easier life would have been if he had agreed to pay rent for a small studio apartment and paid for the gas for my car as well? But instead, daddy dearest had blocked my credit cards, confiscated my car keys, (I drove a Red Maserati sports car so that hurt like bitch) and if that wasn’t enough, kicked me out of the mansion and now I was officially kicked out of the dorms too.

That left me with renting a little apartment the size of a matchbox in a danky little neighborhood where you could hear the constant barks of the stray dogs and the police sirens because this place looked like a hell-hole.

Maybe I was complaining too damn much but what else did you expect to do when you’d fallen from grace.

There was only one true friend I had, Fredericko, he was my man (not in the literal sense) but he was my bro, my Spanish-Italian brother from another mother. When my dad wouldn’t lend me money, Fred let me borrow some, when dad threw me out of the house, Fred welcomed me into his house, when my one-night stands tried to wreck my car, Fred took care of it. Fred was the definition of how a best friend should be. And when my exes so much as tried to bitch about him, I’d dumped them right then.

Because it has always been bros before hoes for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I had nothing against the female species, more so when they were under me. Again, I have nothing against women but I liked to believe I hadn’t met any particular good ones either. The ones that I’d known lusted over gifts, sex and fancy dates. They never cared about me or never wanted to get to know me better.

Anyway, so since I was thrown out of the dorms, I had no other place to go so I had crashed at Fred’s house for a few days until he suggested the matchbox apartment and when I went to see it, I’d almost had a panic attack. The rent was very good, and I had one debit card that my dad had no idea about which I was going to put to some use considering the fact that I needed some money to give an advance payment to the landlord.

My father, Wyatt Brantley had enough money to buy a fucking island and this town if he wanted but he thought my step-mother had spoilt me rotten and that if my actual mother was still around, I would have been in line. I still had some lessons to learn according to him, like doing an actual job, paying the rent for the apartment blah blah.

I hated my life at this point. I’d lost a good amount of those looser show off friends now that I wasn’t a rich boy anymore. Not that I gave two fucks.

Staying out of trouble had become my life’s mission but I screwed that up too.

There was a guy who was badmouthing me, saying that it was another of my stunts to gain sympathy from the professors in our college for extra brownie points. I didn’t care what people talked about me, but then he’d talked shit about my little half-sister and I’d lost it and pounded his stupid nerdy head against the wall.

There were screams, someone calling me a monster and loose threats from the Dean to call the police on me.

I’d gone to the nurses office and gotten the bandage wrapped around my busted knuckles. The nurse knew me well enough to laugh and joke about it, after all, I was a regular here.

That night I looked at my small apartment (that was previously covered in cobwebs that looked like a movie set they could use in conjuring), and appreciated the work Fred and I had done with the paint Job and moved some furniture in from my old bedroom. It still depressed me.

At that moment, I realized I was so lonely, apart from the chocolate brown fluffy Cocker-spaniel I’d picked up off the streets. Leslie lay asleep on his little doggie bed. I refilled up his bowl with food and water, picked up my car keys (an old Jeep Wrangler that had been lying around in the garage back home, for which the keys I had to literally beg my step-mother to sneak into my hands while my dad was busy with something else)

The car was my sixteenth birthday gift from Dad. I’d used it a lot back then and later it was just sitting around in the garage because I bought other cars; my dad bought for me, I mean.

I made my way to the car and slid behind the wheel. I didn’t have any plan in mind, I was just going to drive as far as I could to cool off my head. I’d be back before midnight, I thought. I knew if I got my hands on some booze I’d be drunk out of my mind and rest would be history. I drove for around thirty minutes, and parked near the beach. I always came to the beach because it helped me calm down. I parked the car and stepped out of it. I decided to take a walk down the beach.

The smell of the sand assaulted my nose. There were no people on the beach tonight because it was a workday. The moon shinning bright, it’s beautiful silver shadow illuminating the dark waves of the ocean. The sea looked calm and I suddenly felt at peace, like I didn’t have these depressing thoughts anymore, like I still had a purpose in my life. Not just to drive expensive cars, get treated like shit by my father or the pressure of doing good academically so I could take over the company one day. I just felt at peace.

I turned around and began heading back towards the path I’d walked from and suddenly my leg struck on something.

A dead fish?

I glanced down in the dark, the moonlight being the only source of light. It wasn’t a fish. It was....

It was...

A girl?

A beautiful girl with glowing aqua blue hair that lay around her in a messy braid. Her skin pale white, or was it the moonlight playing tricks, I didn’t know. Her eyelids were shut tight, her lashes longer and her lips full and luscious. She was lying on her side. I crouched down below and gently pulled her body facing in my direction.

She was topless.

I dared look down, and she was fully naked too. It was just that she’d been covered in a lot of sand so it must have been hard for someone to notice her in the dark.

What the hell happened to her?

Was she raped and left here by someone to die?

I let out a string of curses. Who could do something like that to a woman? I couldn’t see any wounds on her body. I pushed the strands of hair away from her face and patted her cheek a few times. “Hey, wake up!”

“Hey, Aqua girl. Wake up!” I said.

I turned her to face me tried and tried to give her CPR, I felt her chest rise and then she opened her eyes for one goddamn second.

Bright blue eyes, the color of her hair and the ocean. She closed her eyes as soon as she opened them. It was a almost like a blink.

She was alive.

Oh thank god!

The aqua girl had some glow about her. The kind of radiance I’d never seen before. Why was she so radiant? Maybe it was my eyes playing tricks, it was time my depression was taking a toll and I could be bordering to schizophrenia. Maybe the girl had blonde hair and was even wearing clothes. I could be imagining the blue hair and the naked part. I tried to look for a wallet or cellphone or something that belonged to her but if she was robbed or assaulted, chances of finding anything were close to nil.

I cleaned the sand off her thighs and guess what? Ha!

She had a fish tail.

A Fucking Fish Tail!?

Yeah. One hundred and one percent Schizophrenia.

I realized I must be high on drugs that I wasn’t even taking. Oh well.

I put my arm around her head and the other arm went below her knees, as I picked her up bridal style and made my way towards the Jeep.

I couldn’t just leave her lying on the beach like that. Aqua girl could sleep at my place and then tomorrow, I’d give her some clothes and take her home. If she was a druggie or a party animal and just happened to be sleeping on the sand, then it wouldn’t be my problem.

The fish tale had suddenly vanished replacing with limps and that was my cue to realize I was severely hallucinating earlier.

Fish tail? Pfft. Stupid me.

---