I love you like a brother. || Open ||

They sat on the beach, a little away from the other people on the beach, a space of thirty centimetres between them. She was dressed in a light summer dress, her shoes set on the ground next to her, the heels dug into the white sand. He was in the usual - a white button-down and some trousers - and looked completely out of place in the surrounding area, filled with bikini-clad girls and guys in trunks. At the current moment, she was staring at him intently, blinking only every other minute. Her fingers tapped lightly on the sand, and her hair flew around her face, but she ignored it, in favour of boring a whole into him with her eyes.

He had a book in his hands - A Complete Guide to Roman Mythology - and it was open to the very centre page. His eyes were trained on a sentence - In the legend, Romulus and Remus are orphaned when their mother, Silvia, is imprisoned and the infants are cast into the Tiber River - but annoyingly, he kept reading it over and over again. He was well aware of the fact that she was squinting at him, and had been enduring it for the past five minutes, attempting to ignore her. He kept trying to read, but after reading the same sentence another two times, he finally closed the book with an angry thud and snapped at her, "Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"You need friends," was her immediate answer, and it made him wonder if she had been thinking up a response for that very question that whole time, so fast was her reply. He scowled. "Seriously, Roman, live a little. I've been following you for three days, and all I've seen you do is read. Books. Not magazines. Books."

His scowl grew more pronounced. "Why have you been following me, Evadne?" He had noticed her shadowing him a few times before, and had tried to call her out on it, but she only smiled and gave him one of those stupid beaming smiles the Aphrodite kids were famous for. He had met her a week ago, and they had become acquaintances - friends, even - but he hadn't seen until she had started her stalkeresque tendencies.

She shrugged. "I'm not following you. I'm just watching your diminutive progress. Don't change the subject. You need to get out more. Make a few mates. Get a girlfriend. Get a life."

"I'm perfectly fine the way I am, thank you," he growled. He pushed the book closer to his face, trying to hide his face from her.

"If you just talked to more people," Evadne continued, ignoring him. She sifted sand through her fingers absent-mindedly. "Really. You're handsome. You could get a girlfriend." She sighed at his gesture and snatched the book from his hands, throwing it away a few metres from where they sat.

"Excuse me, but that was incredibly rude," Roman said, scowling even more. He made no move to retrieve it though, not really interested in it anymore anyway.

Evadne shrugged again. "You aren't listening to me. That’s just as rude. Now, I love you like a brother-”

“You barely know me!”

“-and so I will give you this advice. See that girl over there? The one sitting under that tree? Go talk to her.”

“What? Are you kidding? No! I don’t know her, she’ll think I’m odd-”

“No, she’ll think you’re friendly. Now go.”

She shoved him forward, but as they were sitting, instead of falling he only moved a few centimetres.

“Go, Roman!”

“Fine. But once I do this, will you promise to leave me alone?”

“Mhmm.”

He scowled at her again, then wearily got up and approached the girl, his stomach growing heavier every step with nervousness. Once he had reached her, he stood awkwardly over her and said, “Er, hello.”