The people you have to deal with

I certainly appreciated the time Katie spent with me today, reassuring me that everything would be all hunky dory.

But it didn't help my mood when I got back to the house to see that some of the other high school boys (Declan's football friends) had arrived. By the time I was back, they were all out in the backyard with Davo, Declan and a couple of the girls. Most of them were already shirtless, probably looking to show off in front of the girls, underneath the Australian sun.

They certainly didn't greet me with the sort of love I got from Rose and Tayla the day I walked into the house. Not that I wanted that from them of course, but at least a friendly welcome would have been nice.

I sighed at the sight of Henry Foley and Ryan Tanner in the backyard, two guys I didn't get along with whatsoever.

The other notable face was Scotty Reid, a similar look to Declan, just shorter and skinnier in size. He was one of the only guys to properly say hello to me that afternoon. Nothing too flash, but it certainly was a much nicer reaction than what I received from Henry Foley. He gave me the cold shoulder, ignoring me in the group setting as expected.

The arrogant jock was almost becoming my number one rival. I'd never had a 'rival' as such before but if this was a cheesy teenage television show, he'd be the perfect cast for that role.

The first time we spoke to one another in the land down under was at dinner time. Declan's Australian friend Davo, was cooking us up a barbecue. Having experienced what real barbecue's were like in the south of the U.S, I had to say I was a little surprised to see the Australian version of a BBQ was just cooking up sausages and placing them in pieces of bread.

Davo stood at the barbecue, shirtless, his long blonde locks looking marvellous as he flipped sausages over with some metal tongs. He called out for everyone to start coming up and getting their dinner.

"No shrimp on the barbie?" Rose asked him in her best Australian accent after Davo put a sausage on her plate.

Davo pointed the tongs at her, almost in a half-aggressive way, "They're called prawns, not fucking shrimp, and to answer your question, no, no prawns, just snags love."

"Snags..." Rose muttered as she looked at her sausage on the plate before walking away, amused by choice of word.

It was obvious she wasn't too pleased with having sausages and salad for a main meal.

I was up next, a little more appreciative of the food, despite not overly impressed either. As I made my way over to the salad bowls that the girls had helped prepare earlier, where I was next to Henry. He gave me a side eye look as neither of us said anything while we filled our plates.

"You good?" he suddenly mumbled out to me.

Neither of us made any eye contact as I replied back, "Yeah fine, yourself?"

"I'm good," he said in a blunt matter.

That was probably the friendliest he had ever been to me. But it didn't last much longer... Henry checked to see if anyone was close enough to us to hear what he was about to say next. I felt him get closer to my right side, leaning in to whisper to me, "Don't even think about going near Annie this week..."

I didn't appreciate the comment and instead of just agreeing for the sake of it or ignoring his words, I hit back at him.

"What are you going to do Henry? Beat me up?" I asked, knowing he didn't have much of a leg to stand on here.

"If I need to, don't tempt me Hawkins..."

I scoffed at his threat and with that, we said nothing more as we rejoined the others.

This was a holiday and I wasn't going to let these jerks ruin it for me as they had done so when we were on school grounds. The girls would have I my back if it ever came to blows, it would only paint Henry Foley in a worse light so I knew he wasn't going to try anything.