**Updated every Saturday**
He'll have to break all the rules to keep her, but first she has to break just one and let him in...
It's taken four years, but Anna Fray has finally put the past behind her. Mostly. She fills her days working in a bar and...
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I hovered in front of the mirror in the staff bathroom, the scent of day-old bleach and Amber's sickly-sweet perfume stinging my nose. It wasn't decorated with the same exposed brass pipework and wide porcelain sinks as the customer toilets downstairs. Instead it had a couple of cheap white cubicles, a single pedestal sink and a frameless mirror with a chip on the bottom left side. The flickering fluorescent light gave it the eerie atmosphere of a hack and slash horror, that moment just before the heroine got her throat slit by a psycho in a mask.
My shift had finished fifteen minutes ago, and if I'd left straightaway as usual, I would have been slotting my key into my front door by now. But I hadn't. Instead I'd spent those fifteen minutes staring at the girl in the mirror, trying in vain to make myself look... more than I was. I wasn't sure what I was going for, I just knew I didn't want to walk into Atticus' flat looking like the girl in front of me.
I pulled the band from my hair and let the dark waves tumble down past my shoulders. I was hoping for that hair shampoo moment, the one where the woman runs her hands through her hair, and it slips through her fingers like silk. Instead mine kinked where the cheap elastic band had pulled at it throughout the morning. I tried to run my fingers through it, but they caught on the fickle ends. It must have been a year since I last had it cut and this tangled tantrum was its revenge.
With a huff I flipped the tangled mess to the side and just hoped the winter winds outside tamed it. Either that or I could blame them for its bedraggled state.
I wiped the smudged mascara and eyeliner from under my eyes and dabbed on some old pink lip balm, bringing some colour back to the gnawed surface. before chewing it off again.
Am I making an effort? I pondered as I chewed at the plump flesh. The acrid taste of fake strawberry flavouring coating my teeth.
"Fuck," I grumbled as I stared at the face in the mirror, swiping my hand across my lips to remove the rest of the pink tint.
I couldn't remember the last time I spent this much time on my appearance, and I didn't know why I'd started now. Was it just because I'd assumed Olivia would be just as extraordinary to look at as Atticus, and some vain part of me wanted to compete? Or was it more worrisome than that? Was I putting this effort in because I was meeting people in Atticus' life and I wanted to... make a good impression?
I shook away the questions in my head and bundled my hair back into the folded bun it had spent the past six hours in.
Before I could change my mind, or let the voices in my head torment me anymore, I marched out of the bar and on my way to meet Atticus.
I wasn't sure what to expect meeting two more Watchers. I barely understood what they were and yet here I was going to immerse myself in their world like it was any ordinary Tuesday. I wondered briefly whether my reaction to Atticus was normal, but as I rang his doorbell, I decided I didn't really want to know the answer, because it didn't matter. Somehow I'd found myself in this situation, and even though I should have been freaking out about how much the world around me had changed, all I could think was that I didn't want to go back to the life I'd had. I would rather plunge headfirst into something completely unknown, than shrink away back into the humdrum routine of drinking and sleeping and watching my life pass me by.
