` grass always greener [open!]

[Ember Candi Blaine]

It was chilly out by the pier, but who was anyone kidding? It was always chilly out by the pier with the breeze coming off to Like Michigan right beside you. Everyone’s hair and jackets were almost constantly being pulled to one side and people were squinting to try and avoid the wind going straight into their eyes. It was particularity windy on the late summer day and certainly not one of the warmer days either. The pier was quite packed due to all the college students recently coming back and meeting old friends at the mall, which is exactly what Ember was doing that day as well. Well, she was there a little early and her friends wouldn’t be there for at least another hour, but she did enjoy her time alone. Well, that and she had a few things she had to grab before she and her friends ran around like idiots then got drunk way into the night. Ember had always been a partier, but that was because she had always had such an easy time in school she had to do something to make her life a little more exciting. Otherwise, she was just sitting there, having finished her homework and gazing up at the ceiling, which wasn’t exactly fun, but it was the only other thing to do except goes to the crazy parties she had always loved, even though when she looked back at them they all seemed very stupid.

Now, though, Ms. Ember had a coffee cup from Starbucks in one hand and a bag from Victoria Secret in the other. She was walking fairly quickly down the pier in her high stilettos. Ember was short, she knew that and she had learned to accept it. She did, however, know that there was no reason she couldn’t hide the fact that she was so short from time to time. Heels were a girl’s best friend, after all, and she tended to use them to their best. Sure, she was probably killing her feet and legs by now, but she didn’t care, she just loved the way heels made her legs look. Even in the thick cold Ember, who had never been out of Chicago and San Francisco and was very sued to this weather, Ember had on a pair a very short jean shorts and a simple, tight fitting, low cut, quarter sleeved, red shirt. Her bra straps had slid down her arm slightly and were now peeking out of the bottom of her sleeves, but those were black. She didn’t really care and she did love to show off her body. It was fun and she did think she was a joy to look at.

Now, a lot of people would then think that Ember liked her job, she was basically showing off her body for money, but that was far from the truth. Sure. She didn’t hate her temporary occupation, but she didn’t like it either. It was just how she felt things had to be at the moment and she was fine with that. Her parents had no money to take care for her and she had to keep up her insanely expensive habits in some way. She smoked, she drank and she loved designer clothes, hence the Victoria Secret bag clenched in her fist. None of the above was easy for a college girl to keep up with financially. She had difficulty keeping herself fed, much less anything else so a job waitressing wouldn’t cover the expenses. Luckily, her working didn’t hinder her grades either, but that was thanks more or less to her intelligence, she would think. And the fact that she had learned from long ago how to study and pay attention in class and take notes to find a way to get the information down in her head in the quickest way possible.

As she was rushing Ember’s blonde hair flew into her face and managed to obstruct her vision. Not having a free hand to push it out of the way Ember shook her head and got the hair over her shoulder once again. However, while she was doing this, she managed to plow right into someone walking in the opposite direction along the pier. While she managed to keep a hold of the coffee, though some did spill and fall onto her hand, when she winced though it wasn’t quite hot enough to burn her anymore, the bag of lingerie flew from her hand as it went down to catch herself and fell all over the feet of the person she had just bumped into. Ember’s eyes went wide as she shoved the coffee glass into the hand of the other person involved in the collision as she leaned down to gather up her unmentionables.

Was she embarrassed? Hell yeah, she was. Sure, she paraded around in her panties and bras most nights, that being said, the whole pier didn’t have to see her choice of thongs and pushups. And what if the person she ran into was an older gentleman? Oh, that wouldn’t be nice at all. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she finally managed to pull the bag open and started to shove the stuff closest to her into the bag. “It was totally my fault, I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going at all,” she spat out, not using the proper grammar she knew she knew, but why would she? Nobody cared and anyone who did was too vain to bother with. As long as someone could figure out the point she was trying to get across and didn’t view her as an idiot or a snob, she was happy with her life. See, that was her intelligence once again. She knew when to use whom, but in the sense of being grammatically correct and in the sense that using whom in the wrong crowd got you viewed as a snob and that was never something you wanted. Just because she was a snob did not mean future employers needed to know that.

Finally, Ember got all of her belongings shoved back into the bag and stood up, a hand out for the coffee she had put into this person’s hand. At this point she wouldn’t even be able to tell you the gender of the person in front of her, even though she just spent time by their feet. She hadn’t been paying attention to that and now just wanted to get her apologies out and be on her way before any old gentlemen could start staring or anything like that. “Sorry again, I hope I didn’t make you drop something,” she said, still not looking at them as she glanced around them to see if she could find anything at their feet.

((open to anyone!))

[Jamie Colburn]

Like most days, Jamie was bored out of his mind. He was always easily entertained, but he was only entertained by one thing for so long. His attention span wasn't usually all that long unless he was working, and since he was currently on his extended vacation... he obviously wasn't working. There was always people watching, a favorite of his pass times right along side sex and drinking, but on a day like today there weren't really all that many people out and about... so that would get boring much too quickly. He could always go throw money at frivolous things, which he also enjoyed and could afford, but he'd already done that so many times that it wasn't nearly as exciting as it used to be. This wasn't to say he didn't still enjoy it... he just couldn't really think of anything else to throw money at. He already had a fancy sports car, he'd already bought an expensive horse, he'd already bought a house that could probably room 8 people and he was the only one living there. He had just about everything a guy like him could possibly want... and no, that didn't include every sort of video game ever invented.

That was one thing about Jamie that people tended to not understand. He wans't like most guys in the way he lived. He was not interested in football, the extreme opposite of his half brother who was obsessed with the sport. He probably wouldn't ever drink beer if his life depended on it, and he most certainly didn't sit on the couch all day playing video games or watching TV when he didn't have anything to do. He could occupy himself with much better things rather than waste his time in front of a screen. Sure, sometimes he couldn't think of anything to do, like now for instance, but when that happened he tended to just go wander the streets and parks until he got some sort of idea or was interested by something long enough to consider it entertainment.

On this particular day, Jamie was not having any luck in finding something to do. All the people he saw were boring. He would stop occasionally to observe in hopes of something interesting happening, but it just wasn't going to. They were all just average people, nothing special about them, at least not as far as he could tell by simply watching them. The more bored he got the more frustrated he got with his inability to find anything to entertain himself, and he was starting to think this extended vacation business was overrated. In a city where there were a million and one things to do... there was really absolutely nothing to do. The more he tried to come up with something to do, the further he got from actually doing anything. So he finally decided to head in the direction of the Pier in hopes of perhaps finding someone to bother about anything he could think of that might bother them.

Time ticked on and no such luck still. He was really starting to get sick of this place. It felt like he'd been trying to find something to do forever and was just about to give up and head back home when all of a sudden seemingly from out of nowhere, another one of those average every day people veered suddenly in their formerly straight path right directly into him before he could even react to them coming towards him. All of a sudden, this Joe the Plumber turned into the Queen of England. As the lingerie went flying everywhere as the bag fell from her hand a slight smirk crossed Jamie's face. He didn't care about the items, it was more her distressed reaction that caught his attention. Oh the joy of watching people in uncomfortable situations because of him... it never ceased to amuse him.

An instant later, the flustered girl shoved the hot drink into his hands and hurriedly started shoving the Victoria's Secret items back into the bag with urgency that seemed almost panic-like, though he couldn't say he blamed her. After all, what girl in her right mind would want everyone seeing all that? Oh sure she undoubtedly wanted select people to see it, but not everyone... like the homeless man standing on the corner with a cardboard sign or the old man who was eying them with a certain judgmental stare, or the little kids who were walking down the street with their parents. No, he definitely couldn't blame her for her haste... he just found it amusing is all. Of course, considering the lifestyle Jamie lived, there was nothing there that he hadn't seen a million times so he was completely not fascinated by the scanty fabric pieces that she had finally finished stuffing into the bag.

"Clearly" he said in response to her saying that it was completely her fault, "You really should pay more attention to where you're going, if it hadn't been me it would've been some solid inanamate object that would be far less forgiving. He glanced at the brick wall of the building which she would have walked into had he not been so conveniently placed between it and her. He chose to simply ignore her inquiry into dropping items, it was insignificant and he saw not benefit to himself in responding to that. The last thing he wanted was to get into some sort of conversation that had anything to do with that, it wouldn't be nearly interesting enough. Granted, her walking into a wall wasn't very interesting either, but he was sure he would eventually find somewhere to toss a derogatory comment in regards to that topic at the very least.

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[Ember Candi Blaine]

Ember rarely had a problem with being bored. She was overly energetic and loved people and since she did live in an apartment complex, it wasn’t exactly difficult to find someone to talk to. Then there was also the fact that the highly intelligent female also was very good at entertaining herself. She enjoyed curling up with a good book or going for a nice walk. Now, though, you also had to realize that Ember was also a poor, intelligent girl. Free time was actually something she had little of because if she was not in class, she was at work, if she was not at work she was doing homework and if she wasn’t doing homework she was studying because she was convinced she should have homework. Just because she was smart did not mean that she had everything incredibly easy either. She had to learn just like anyone else and she had to study what she was trying to learn to keep it all in her brain, granted, yes, she was tired of studying but she knew she couldn’t stop. No scholarship meant no schooling.

With the exception of her intelligence and the need she felt to get good grades, Ember was basically your average girl. She liked clothes and shopping and hanging out with her girlfriends. She liked guys who played sports and girl’s night out. The big difference between her and a lot of girl, however, was her hate of chivalry. She didn’t want a guy to go out of his way to open a door for her and the whole idea of not allowing her to carry a single bag was insane. She had broken up with many boyfriends because they thought they needed to take care of a girl who was happier taking care of herself. Not to say she wouldn’t be happy to have a boyfriend or whatever else, but she didn’t need one to be happy, unlike a lot of people she knew, guys and girls alike. And she was never one for one night stands or anything like that. She was too amazing for anyone to get that easily.

Now, Ember would also deny that she was uncomfortable because of him. She was uncomfortable due to the situation; she’d be uncomfortable even if she ran into her best friend. Granted, if that had been the case, the two of them would have a great laugh and leave it alone after that. Men like that did tend to bother her slightly. It wasn’t because of him, nor was he the reason she was flustered and it was by no means his doing that her bag went flying. It all would have happened, no matter whom she ran into or if she didn’t run into anyone at all and just, for some reason, dropped her bag. Sure, she had a rather large ego, she admitted it without a second thought, but she was also smart enough to know when she had nothing to do with something. The sun didn’t come up because she wanted to get out of bed and there wasn’t a sale at Victoria’s Secret because she went shopping that day and saying Ember was uncomfortable because of Jamie was just as laughable when it was all really put into perspective.

After she ran into the man she determined would probably slightly older than she was, but it was really hard to tell with anyone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five so what did she know? She pushed the stuff into her bag and took her drink back by the time he spoke. She listened closely but rolled her eyes at his words, making it very obvious that she thought he was insane. She took a step back, her heels clicking on the concrete and she gave him a once over. “Honestly,” she said, her eyes coming back to rest on his and her weight shifting forward slightly, “I think I would have rather run into the wall. The wall wouldn’t move, sure, but I think your hair’s gonna get me,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders as her blue eyes wandered up to the top of his head.

Okay, sure, it wasn’t the best insult in the world, but she didn’t want to be too mean. Guys who put product in their hair always made her laugh. Yup, it was so manly, everyone knew that, to mess with your hair in the morning and do something with it more than combing it. She knew some guys who spent more time on their hair than she did, and these were guys who called themselves straight. This guy, well, his hair even had more volume than her mob of blonde did. Why would anyone want it to stick straight up anyway? Make the already tall, thin guy just look taller and thinner? This guy could use a little extra muscling around his shoulders, for Ember’s liking at least. Sure, he wasn’t ugly, she couldn’t say that he was by all means, but he also wasn’t her perfect man either. In fact, he was hardly something she would even call hot, but that was just her.

“Well, I see I didn’t make you drop your pride,” she said, once again rolling her eyes to the top of her head when he decided not to answer her question. Ego… not an attractive thing for men when it replaced kindness. Just as she was about to say she was glad he wasn’t hurt and walk away a flock of pigeons flew over them and before you knew it one of them left a present right on Jamie’s shoulder. Ember almost burst out into laughter, but managed to stop it at a slight giggle by biting the inside of her lip. “A proud man is always looking down,” which was more or less true the moment before, even in her heels, Ms. Blaine was only five foot five, “but, as long as you’re looking down you can’t see what’s above you,” she said, with a raised brow as she glanced back at the birds above their head and shook her head. “Sorry, that was probably a little over your head,” she paused for a second, “in more than one way,” she took another step back, of course, referring to the fact that she doubted he knew who she was quoting in her words.